At the end of last year Arts Northern Rivers Indigenous Arts Development Officer Rob Appo was chosen to participate in the Wesfarmers Indigenous Arts Leadership Program, and it was an experience he says he'll never forget.

Indigenous arts workers from all over Australia were encouraged to apply for the Wesfarmers Indigenous Arts Leadership Program, but only 10 were chosen, and Robert Appo was lucky enough to be one of them.

Rob, who began his working life as a butcher in Tweed Heads, took a sharp career turn when he enrolled in a TAFE art course. He turned his long-time hobby into a full-time career, becoming a painter and holding a series of successful exhibitions in Brisbane from 1998 onwards.

For the last two years he has worked as Indigenous Arts Development Officer at Arts Northern Rivers, where his role is to represent the interests of Indigenous artists from the region's seven local government areas.

'The Leadership program was something I was interested in, but I wasn't sure what it would be like or that my application would be accepted,' says Rob.

'It is basically designed to encourage more Indigenous people to enter the arts field to bridge the gap that is there at the moment between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, especially in management and leadership roles within the arts.'

In fact, as Rob discovered during the program, the numbers of Indigenous people working in the arts has dropped over the past few years.

'That's because a lot of the roles filled by Aboriginal people are based on funding cycles,' he says. 'One of the aims of the program is to get Aboriginal people into permanent jobs and to encourage them to join the mainstream employment pool.'

'Even at the National Gallery, where the program was hosted, and which has the largest Indigenous collection in the world, only about six out of 500 staff are Indigenous,' he says.

'It's particularly important to increase these numbers,' says Rob, 'because the numbers of Aboriginal people who actually participate in the arts is high. It's one of the few areas where Aboriginal people can really excel.'

The ten-day Leadership Program sets out to address these imbalances, by inspiring people like Rob and his fellow participants to get out there and encourage Aboriginal artists to take the next step.

Rob describes the course as 'pretty intense' citing a rigorous program of speakers from across the arts and Indigenous arts, combined with group work and a challenging assignment that involved the research and presentation of a five minute talk about a painting of their choice from the Gallery's collection.

They also participated in media training and each gave media interviews towards the end of their two weeks.

The group had full security passes for the National Gallery and were given the grand tour, plus special access to areas normally out of bounds to the public.

'We saw the marketing department, the conservation department and went off site to the storage facility which houses 80% of the collection,' he says.

Rob has come back to the North Coast reinvigorated and still describes the experience as one of the best things he's ever done.

He is now part of an elite group of alumni, trained by and within the walls of the National Gallery of Australia. And he is already beginning to identify the things that really interest him within the arts, like 'the place where art and heritage meet' and the 'establishment of an Aboriginal Arts peak body for NSW.'

Most of all, Rob says, the experience has changed his attitude to his work in subtle ways. 'There's so much more to art than just being an artist, and I really want to encourage Aboriginal people to see the broad range of options that are available,' he says.