Things to do!

Check out all the amazing arts, crafts and other works created by the Wurrumiyanga Community in the tabs below!

BIMA Wear

At Bima Wear, we are our own bosses determining our work practices and schedules.

Only Tiwi women staff the island workshop. They engage external non Tiwi where needed to support the enterprise and the Bima Wear Incorporated Association.

In the workshop on Bathurst Island they are kept busy printing and manufacturing

• the famous ‘tops and skirts’ worn proudly by Tiwi women on the islands, in Darwin, interstate and overseas
• custom made coffin covers for funerals
• ceremonial nagas for men, ceremonial skirts and tops for women
• group uniforms for travelling Tiwi
• outfits for our kids to wear to their first Holy Communion and Confirmation
• wedding dresses, priest vestments and homewares 

We want to make sure there will always be a place like Bima Wear for Tiwi women and girls for as long as we need it.

We want to make sure Bima Wear keeps making clothing for our community.

We want a future where Tiwi women and girls feel free to express themselves, are in control of their lives and where they have financial independence.

We want Bima Wear to be a place for Tiwi women and girls to have cultural and enterprise leadership, autonomy and skills.

Ngaruwanajirri

At Wurrumiyanga on Bathurst Island, one beautiful building known as the Tiwi Sistine Chapel or The Keeping Place houses a small group of Tiwi artists who attend daily to create artwork in a peaceful environment. This is Ngaruwanajirri Art Centre.

The artists are guided towards excellence in their finished artworks and are represented in State Galleries across Australia and over the world. Renowned for their use of traditional Tiwi cultural materials such as ground-up local ochre pigments, artists also work with a variety of contemporary media including wax and dyes on silk.

This Centre began in 1994 with funding for the support of Tiwi with a disability and the core attendants today are disability artists. They have each developed exceptional creative skill. Sometimes referred to as free, loose, naive, or Outsider art, the work of Ngaruwanajirri artists is unique. A separate group of able-bodied Tiwi carvers work alongside this core group in a purpose-built space adjacent to the Keeping Place creating both large and small carvings.