In October, Indigenous Business Month (IBM) proudly commemorates its ninth anniversary, highlighting the remarkable talent and depth of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander entrepreneurs across diverse business sectors. The month-long celebration aims to spark essential conversations about Indigenous business, fostering connections and relationships.
IBM encourages Indigenous businesses and their supporters to revel in the occasion through a multitude of events held both in person and online, showcasing the strength, breadth, and diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses.
2023 Theme - To gather, together.
Gathering is at the heart of building relationships. We gather to seek solace, to seek feedback, to find information and ideas, to generate friendship and connection. These spaces we create together, when we gather, are exceptionally significant. Gathering spaces both can uplift us in times of stress and pressure as well as challenge us to think anew and act differently. For your business gathering, you make time in your busy schedule to attend training or trade shows, to conference and seek new business relationships to grow and expand your business.
Strengthening our Indigenous business sector requires place-based gathering to expand relationships at the local level. This is done by bringing together local communities and exploring the cross overs between what’s happening in our businesses, in the community and in our personal lives. There is a collective source of pride generated by gathering, seeing each other making a difference through our business ventures. A rich tapestry of connections, information, ideas, and feeling is woven each time we gather. No year do we need to focus on local, place-based gathering and connection than this year. This year is asking a lot of our communities. This year of our national conversation and deliberation about constitutional reform.
Therefore, this year, Indigenous Business Month calls upon Indigenous businesses to gather, together. Gather and connect in your communities, in your towns and cities. Gather together to share and celebrate and dialogue about how you are going during this time of change. We encourage as many localised IBM
gatherings as possible and urge mob to use IBM as a vehicle to showcase the diversity of the way we gather across our many and varied nations.
This year's design - Connection, Solidarity, Continuity
This design embodies the essence of this year’s theme, To Gather, Together, which encourages place-based gathering, creating a sense of togetherness, prosperity and continuity. Depicting a group of people come together, hand in hand with a shared purpose. Each circle represents the diversity and strength of our communities, in business and beyond. Everyone brings their own story, knowledge and expertise to
the gathering and through points of connection, creates cohesion for the whole. The concentric circles reference the multiple events we hold throughout Indigenous Business Month and symbolise the layers of connection and support we aim to foster through this movement.
For more information, visit https://www.indigenousbusinessmonth.com.au/
