Friends of the South Australian School of Art Inc.

Conversation and Coffee with Joanne Cys

I first met Joanne in March of this year at the AGM of the Friends of SASA, where she was introduced to the meeting and spoke to us a little about her role at UniSA and the work she was doing in her position as Executive Dean. She explained about the academic transformation of faculties throughout the University and how she saw the newly named academic unit “UniSA Creative” encompassing so much more than the previous Art/Architecture/Design Schools that we were more accustomed to.

Joanne came across as a warm and personable professional and so we thought it might be good to introduce her to the broader Friends group by way of an informal interview and discussion.

I met Joanne for a second time, over a coffee, with life member and Founding President Jack Condous, and was quickly in awe of her significant and numerous achievements throughout her distinguished career, which I sense is set to continue for many more years to come.

Early Years

Having previously read Joanne’s biography on the University website, I wondered if she could pinpoint where her passion for Design developed from. Joanne clearly recalls a Year 10 careers night at her school, where one of the speakers was Geoff Nairn, a renowned Adelaide architect at the time. This chance meeting exposed Joanne to the idea of a design career and after she had spent some time talking to Geoff, she was later encouraged to pursue this interest by one of her teachers.

That teacher in turn connected Joanne with a famous furniture designer and retailer named Langdon Badger. She visited his beautiful furniture showroom and was fortunate enough to be taken on as a work experience student at about 15 years of age, which then led to a Saturday morning and holiday job. Joanne identifies that this is clearly where her passion for Interior Design developed and grew.

Joanne believes that Langdon was possibly South Australia’s first qualified Interior and Industrial designer, having started his studies at the School of Art doing Fine Art in the early 1950s. (I noted that this is an interesting connection to our Friends of SASA alumni/group)

Formal Studies

Joanne undertook her first degree as a Bachelor of Arts student at Adelaide University, which she still considers the most valuable educational experience she could have enjoyed. She majored in English Literature and Politics (an unusual combination) and is still using knowledge and skills learned during that course in her daily life today. After completing her BA Joanne realised that she wanted to do more formal study. She had enjoyed studying a couple of architectural electives in the BA, which now led her to apply to SAIT (South Australian Institute of Technology) for a three-year Interior Design course, which also proved to be “brilliant”. One of the benefits of this study was the more technical knowledge and practical application of this course – “it was very hands on”– and a lovely small cohort of students to belong to.

Joanne continued working at Langdon Badger’s store (and was paid commission on furniture sold) throughout her years of study. In an interesting and extraordinary quirk of fate both Langdon and Joanne were inducted into the Design Hall of Fame in 2016. It was such a memorable evening for Joanne, not least because Langdon had played such a pivotal role in bringing her into the design career for which she was also now being recognised.

Working life begins

After these six years of full-time study, Joanne secured a job straight out of finishing her Interior Design degree, with Matthews Architects in Melbourne Street, North Adelaide. She worked here as an Interior Designer doing mostly commercial work, which was really the focus of Joanne’s passion at that time. Joanne remembers that during 1991/2 we were experiencing a full-on recession and so fortunately for her, work experience once again put her in the right place at the right time and led to this professional position with Matthews.

Career highlights

For Joanne, the influence of Langdon Badger as a mentor cannot be underestimated, as he also educated his clients on principles of good design, which Joanne absorbed like a sponge while in her part time job. Langdon talked to his clients about proportion, balance and scale, for example, and this became a part of Joanne’s natural milieu from this time onwards.

While working at Matthews Architects Joanne became interested in the work of the Design Institute of Australia (DIA), which fired her passion for not only Design but also Design Education. Joanne was soon elected to the State Council which led to other involvements across the global Design world. She held the positions of State Treasurer, State President, joined the National Council and gave years of consistent involvement to the Institute. She was ultimately elected as National President in 2008 for a two-year term, which afforded her the opportunity to be involved in global design associations thereafter.

Joanne describes herself as “a bit of a joiner” - which comes as no surprise – as you don’t achieve all that she has by just sitting on your hands and waiting for things to drop into your lap. Joanne is obviously the type of person who says “yes” to new opportunities and lets it be known what she is interested in so that people sit up and take notice. She likes to contribute and volunteer with professional organisations because of the altruistic value that she can personally add to them.

During the time of her involvement with the DIA, the Institute oversaw the amalgamation with the Society of Interior Designers of Australia (SIDA) and the Australian Textile Designers Association, a union which brought great strength to the DIA. Because the Design Institute was multi-disciplinary and included Industrial, Product, Interior, Graphic, Textile, and Furniture Design, all design disciplines and practitioners were now amalgamated into one recognisable and professional association.

Education Focus

The SIDA Foundation continued as a body that funded scholarships for Interior Design students and academics, continuing a tradition of university support. Joanne was invited by the SIDA Foundation to advise on an Oral History project with Michael Bogle, (writer, historian and curator specialising in the history of architecture and design) which seemed to bring her full circle back to people like Langdon Badger and connects to her current involvement with the Friends of SASA and our history project. The forthcoming launch of the Friends’ publication by Jenny Aland, which documents the 150 years of South Australian Visual Arts and Culture, is therefore similarly of great interest to Joanne.

Through her work with the Design Institute of Australia, Joanne was able to travel to a number of international fora, meetings and various conferences and broaden her network of contacts. Thus another professional body that Joanne became involved with is the International Federation of Interior Architects/Designers (IFI) for which she was an Executive Board member from 2011 – 2014, which then led to being appointed as an IFI Ambassador.

The IFI did have an education policy at that time, but it was quite dated, so Joanne decided to offer to lead a review of the policy, which was accepted by the President. A task force approach was adopted and Joanne became a co-chair, leading a group of about eleven international education academics and practitioners. This task became a highly consultative global project, with areas of content to be considered. The group conducted a global survey and carried out several interviews which culminated in a fabulous face to face workshop at the IFI congress meeting in February of 2020 in Dubai.  Fortunately, the event went ahead just before we started to see international lockdowns arising with the onslaught of COVID19. The education policy workshop was scheduled for the third day of the congress (20-23 February 2020) and so Joanne completed her work and flew home in time to (fortunately) avoid quarantine. The new world order of coping with a pandemic, however, meant that everyone got very clever with technology and the last part of the project was finished in the virtual environment. Thus, after some more on-line consultation a new IFI education policy was drafted, which Joanne is delighted to see has proven to be greatly beneficial.

Developing passions

Joanne was still working at Matthews Architects when she felt the need to do some more intellectual endeavour and after speaking with the Head of Department at UniSA, Professor Don Langmead, she was encouraged to first do a Masters Degree and then finally move into a PHD.

After completing her Masters Degree, Joanne was invited to do some part time tutoring at UniSA and then apply for a three-year full-time contract amongst a cohort of level A academics which had been newly established. These academics had practice background across many different disciplines, and Joanne achieved one of the positions created in this particular cohort. Joanne firmly believes that a strength of UniSA has always been its professionally-relevant teaching, even from the early days of the School of Art, then the College of Advanced Education and SAIT. She loved this work and accepted a continuing position at UniSA after the initial three-year contract was completed.

In time Joanne was promoted to the position of Associate Professor and was encouraged to do a PhD. She in fact decided it was “crazy” not to do a PhD, because she was already doing so much work and had published various articles, all of which contributed towards the PhD study. I found her topic to be very interesting – a comparative study of the professional status of Interior Design compared to other established professions such as Planning, Building and Architecture – because as anyone who is involved in the Arts generally would appreciate, the question of “professionalism” is different across the various artistic disciplines and there is often debate about the legitimacy of certain areas in the eyes of some. Joanne found the research to be fascinating work and she investigated the professional structures and constructs, registration legislations and associated concepts. Certainly, Joanne’s approach was structured around the belief that Interior Design traditionally had the stigma of being an inferior discipline to Architecture and she gained some excellent insights along the way.

Current work

Joanne is clearly an impressive performer and always has been, as evidenced by her work experiences leading to offers of employment and, more recently in her roles at Uni SA, where she has been appointed on a temporary basis as Acting Provost* of the University, while the incumbent is on long service leave until the end of June.  So, while Joanne is not actually connected to UniSA Creative department and her Executive Dean role at the moment, we appreciate that this is a terrific opportunity for Joanne and congratulate her on this position. Joanne confesses that she has little time to think about “next steps” but states that she definitely likes to be able to complete tasks before moving on to new projects.

Joanne was also gracious enough to give us her insight and advice on how we can refocus our efforts as the Friends of SASA. Jack and I came away with some ideas and plans for connections to be made and strengthened so watch this space!

I gratefully acknowledge and thank Joanne for sharing her time and her story with us, to be able to in turn give our readers this insight into her varied and illustrious career, and I believe that we can look forward to a long and fruitful association between Joanne and the Friends of SASA. We certainly look forward to whatever lies ahead but let’s hope she does come back to the leadership position of UniSA Creative as we would be sorry to see her go!

*The Provost & Chief Academic Officer is responsible for enhancing UniSA’s educational offerings and the planning and development of the University’s academic programs. The Provost & Chief Academic Officer’s Portfolio leads the University’s strategies to develop and innovate across the curriculum, and enhance the use of digital technologies to facilitate learning.  

Deborah Russell (Dip.T; B.Ed; M.Ed.)

FSASA Board member.