a different kind of citizenship
American sociologist Oldenburg was one of the first to recognise the role of places such as coffee shops, bookstores, pubs, and hairdressing salons as spaces for socialising and building community. He referred to them as third spaces: un- planned places, beyond work and home, where unrelated people could connect.
It is not surprising then that when I talk to people about the precinct they often comment on how much they enjoy the local coffee shops, bookstores and pubs.
But what’s been exciting for me is the discovery of groups of local residents initiating their own cultural activities across such spaces. One such remarkable cluster of local citizens is the Kensington Arts Group. Formed over six months ago by Kensington residents, they have developed a unique arts program including music and literature evenings in the local pubs, and sustainable visual arts projects in collaboration with local schools – an extraordinary feast of cultural activities for the enjoyment of everyone in and around Kensington.
Such community driven initiatives are I think a reflection of a different kind of citizenship in action – an inspiring form of artistic citizenship – one that uses the arts as the vehicle for building community and affirming our humanity. I look forward to more developments like this.
Teresa Crea Lead Creative
a quiet riot in norwood
It was only a few weeks ago that I return from London, thinking about all the wonderful things I had seen and how they might relate to City of Norwood Payneham & St Peters; ideas about place making and the notion of community building (things for the next blog instalment). Then just over a week ago, Britain and particularly London was gripped by social anarchy and I start thinking how on earth did this happen.
At the end of July, I was in Dalston and Hackney, soaking up a vibrant and emerging community spirit. Self-assured, adaptive and expressing a local sense of community that brought together all walks of life. The regeneration of Dalston appeared to be springing up everywhere, almost as an antidote to the hard economic times that are gripping the country. Local people (the tax payers) are now deciding how Council’s limited budgets should be spent. They, not Council, are deciding what is important and in the case of Dalston, the community have started with their open spaces, pocket parks and community gardens – places that they valued.
So how could the riots happen, when this community was starting to thrive? How could things change so quickly and what were the causes. Last week, I started to understand some of the reasons.
the value of mainstreets
As a main street Magill Road is central to local community identity, both historically and today as it changes with the times and the needs of the community. Magill Road is home to a mix of traders and artisans focusing on antiques, interiors, gifts, arts, food and beauty. Most business are distinctly individual and reflect the the unique skills, trade, craft and personality of the owners. Magill Road has a point of difference from any other location … you will not find this unique mix of shops in the big shopping centres, nor would these types of businesses generally flourish and survive in these centres.
Many businesses have longstanding relationships with their customers. Most businesses pride themselves in a high level of ‘old fashioned’ personalized customer service. Eureka Antiques has been trading on Magill Road for almost 30 years and is now restoring the furniture of whole extended families and the children of original customers. Magill Road is not about sameness … it is unique, rich in creative energy and full of character. These qualities are integrated with the wider historical and emerging character of the local community and provide enrichment to all.
Peter Young, Eureka Antiques & Gallery
young and local
I socialise around the area and it’s good having a heap of places around, but I think it would be good to have more of a ‘youth’ arts feel. It would make it more appealing. I think having more live performance and more visuals created by youth. Being a Film and TV student I like beautiful visuals. If you had a “Norwood Film Festival” it would get a lot of attention especially from university students like myself. I also know a lot of musicians would like to have local festivals to perform in.
Cameron Edson University Student, Member of Youth FM
Should We Let Our Children Play In The Road?
Some might find this statement provocative, worrying or just mad; but when I was growing up in the late sixties that’s exactly what my parents used to encourage me to do. As a child, most days were spent after school playing in the street, learning to ride my bike, kicking the football, playing chasey or just hanging-out sitting on the curbside chatting to friends and other members of the community.
Somewhere between then and now the role of the road within our cities has changed significantly. I can’t tell you when, but the increased need for safety and security and the risks associated with the interaction of vehicles and pedestrians has become so absolute that there is a perception that absolute separation is now required for all our roads.
While the risks and dangers associated with roads remain very real, should these risks warrant the sterilisation of large tracks of land within in our cities, towns and suburbs?
Note from the Future – All industries are Creative.
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries economies around the world once again legitimately welcomed some of humanities most long-standing professions into the economy. Creative and cultural industries where embraced and labelled in a way that allowed them to be measured economically. Some of this was due to new technologies mediating creativity, making it easier for them to be commoditised and some, such as art and craft, had always been economic contributors, but through industrialisation had somehow lost their legitimacy in the economy. This loss of legitimacy was partly due to the difficulty in fitting one-off objects into the new industrial framework, and partly due to art theorists who felt that this type of creative work should not be included in the economy. The new terminology of creative/cultural industries allowed a number of disparate economic activities to be linked through the commonality of leveraging intrinsically motivated creativity for economic outcomes. (more…)
soft voices in quiet corners: other cities #1
I remember coming across the website for a project called [murmur] toronto some five years ago while Sasha (Grbich) and I were researching participatory art projects as part of the development of a project up in Cairns that we completed early this year… (more…)
Community
There is nothing better than a daily walk along the River Torrens with man’s best friend – my dog.
There are just so many advantages including getting fit (for both dog and human), but the social aspects of meeting and greeting other people can not be under-estimated. The daily changing scenery of the river and surrounding areas is a privilege to see. The strength and severity of the river after a downpour is impressive and the impact of he recent drought and low water levels was concerning. Living so close to the river, neighbourhood conversations always include comments about the river - another true friend.
Julie Black, CEO Arthritis Australia, Felixstow Resident
Public Spaces – Just add Arts
There seems to be a growing acknowledgment that the arts reflect our identity, our social conscience, our human lens on the world.
It’s an organic ‘thinker in residence’.
Integrating diverse forms of arts (performance, film, visual and music), organically throughout our City and our society, ensures that our human condition is fully expressed – irrepressibly. It’s our insurance towards creating a rich, vibrant, diverse and fulfilling life. (more…)
Renewal
Working in a job focused intensely on cities and how they function, I often come across the statistic that more than 50% of the world’s population lives in cities. It’s an interesting point for a number of reasons but what interests me most is what the term ‘lives’ might actually mean. Do you ‘live’ in a city if you sleep in the city? What if you work/play/relax/eat/drink/fight or love in the city. I think a lot of us think of a city as an entity that uses us- we respond to changes in the city (changes to public transport routes, road works, new buildings etc) rather than thinking that the city is an organic space/shape/being that should respond to a range of influences, one of which is people. Paying attention to how people use the city is really important.
Suburbanisation allowed people to develop a sense of privacy and personal space, which was almost unprecedented in human history (unless you worked as a shepherd or explorer). My parents’ generation, and to a lesser extent their parents, embraced cars, fenced suburban blocks and a belief that life/community/the city were things that you left the house to find. One of the spin-offs of this mindset is the belief that the city can exist without the input of ordinary people. It’s easy to see the development and changes in a city as the work of governments, councils, developers and investors.
Things are changing. More people are choosing to forgo the quarter acre block and opting for medium density housing, community groups such as food co-ops are generating new communities within cities and people are rediscovering their cities not just as places to work but also as places to be. This is great. The difficulty is that while it’s relatively easy to change the way you interact with a city (say by deciding to shop locally rather than by driving to a big shopping centre) taking the next step and actually starting a project that other people can participate in is hard. Renew Adelaide is an organisation which aims to plug a hole between the community and the people or organisations who own space. To put it simply, we match community groups or creative practitioners with spaces that are vacant or underused. This requires open-minded property owners and creative councils because what we’re doing is at odds with the traditional idea that access to space requires financial capital and that changes in a city trickle down from people in positions of power. Renew Adelaide, which is based on the successful Renew Newcastle model, challenges cities to consider the impact that comes from giving the people who use the city a chance to take a piece of the city and make it their own. No matter how good your infrastructure is (beautiful buildings, well-planned streets) it is people that make a city vibrant and Renew Adelaide is all about building vibrant cities from the ground up. Maybe we’ll see you in Norwood Payneham St Peters in the future?
Lara Torr, Project Manager, Renew Adelaide Inc.
