Denmark Knowing Nullaki Festival celebrating the Wilson Inlet coming to town in May and June

The Knowing Nullaki Festival is coming to Denmark in May and June with art- and science-based events for local schools and the community.

The festival, run by Green Skills, will start on April 30 with free events scheduled during May and culminating in an art exhibition ending in June.

Green Skills senior projects manager Dr Louise Duxbury said the festival would celebrate the Wilson Inlet and highlight the importance of seagrass to the waterways in Denmark.

“The whole purpose is to see Nullaki, which is the Noongar word for seagrass,” Dr Duxbury said.

“The Wilson Inlet is a water body that relies on the quality and the health of the seagrass.”

Throughout the festival, WA artist Angela Rossen will be the artist-in-residence at Denmark Arts House for five weeks.

Rossen is an honorary research associate at UWA in the School of Biological Sciences, and works with schools and community groups across WA to highlight the biodiversity of their environment.

She will create collaborative artwork inspired by the Wilson Inlet with students at Golden Hill Steiner School, Kwoorabup Nature School and Denmark Senior High School.

Students will have the opportunity to add their own individual drawings of local species to Rossen’s artwork.

Other activities for school students during the festival include biodiversity workshops and cultural tours with Menang elder Vernice Gillies.

A public cultural tour will run on May 7 with Ms Gillies and Larry Blight.

Dr Duxbury said the cultural tour would be one of the highlights of the festival.

“It just gives you that other lens on a really special part of Denmark,” she said.

“Everybody who drives over the bridge in Denmark drives across the Kwoorabup river, and that river is connected up with that inlet — it’s just really at the core, and the heart of the town and everybody just loves it.”

Other events will include a community biodiversity survey of the inlet on May 14 where attendees will hear from Ms Gillies and Mr Blight, and have chances to bring soil samples to look at under microscopes.

The festival will end with an exhibition at the Butter Factory Studio of artworks, with the exhibition running from May 26 to June 26.

Rossen will lead nature painting workshops on May 17 and 19, when members of the public will have the chance to create artworks that will be exhibited.

Visit https://greenskills.org.au/knowing-nullaki.