Designed to be the formal centrepiece for the new capital, Lake Burley Griffin submerged an area of Acton already highly significant to the people of Canberra. Sports fields and playgrounds, a nursery, workers cottages, golf courses, and a racecourse - meeting places for the local community - once existed under the watery heart of the City.

As part of the ACT Heritage funded project 'The Sunken Stories of Old Acton', students from the ANU School of Art Textiles Workshop created art works in response to community engagement, oral histories, and images of Old Acton. The students spent time listening to collected stories and footage from the community, as well as joining past residents on a boat tour of the lake and in a group memory session in the workshop. From this engagement the students then chose particular aspects of the history of old Acton to explore in art works.

The final works were exhibited at the Nishi Gallery in NewActon on the 16^th and 17^th of November. The exhibition saw around 280 community members of all ages engaging with the works, and the gallery was alive with further stories and memories from the history of Canberra.

Find out more at www.sunkenstories.com

Special thanks to Kirsty Guster from Acton Walkways for making this community engagement possible.