Brett Leavy (Virtual Songlines)

Learn how Brett Leavy, Creative Director and “Virtual Heritage Jedi”, is using VR and videogames to preserve First Nations culture.

With all of the extra time that everyone is currently spending at home, there has never been a better time to pick up a new game – or perhaps to begin making one. The Games Talks 2020 series brings together some of Australia’s best and brightest coders, leaders, developers, artists and animators to take you behind the scenes of their games and their careers, and to answer your questions.

Watch the Virtual Songlines trailer

About Brett Leavy

Brett Leavy is a First Nations, Digital Aboriginal and descends from the Kooma people whose traditional country is bordered by St George in the east, Cunnamulla in the west, north by the town of Mitchell and south to the QLD/NSW border. Brett’s dedicated his working life to cultural knowledge recording and the industry of communications. His digital work seeks to represent the arts, cultural stories, heritage, traditional knowledge and histories of First Nation people using new, immersive and interactive technologies.

For over three decades, Brett’s researched how to “build a time machine” to take people back to places where the traditional knowledge of First Nations people originated. Guided by Traditional Owners, anthropologists, archaeologists, botanists and the interactive games industry, he is inspired to create entertaining and engaging systems to represent the interactions between first settlers and traditional peoples. His studies inspired him to establish a business that sought to deliver virtual reality products that merged traditional knowledge with 3D virtual landscapes to present pre-colonisation Australia with all its embedded traditional Aboriginal culture, language, artefacts, community, trade and much more.