This week I am finishing up my three-year term as a councillor at Randwick, NSW. The working conditions are not ideal in local government (LG), but I am leaving believing deeply in LG’s ability to support the community in a very direct way, especially when it comes to the arts!
In this article:
There is an outdated adage that councils are for roads, rates and rubbish. This excludes a lot of the community in the local government area (LGA), especially artists. For a start you need to own a home to pay rates and, when they say roads, they are not talking about public transport, bikes or accessible footpaths!
Local councils can support emerging and under-represented artists, without the well-intentioned spin, but red tape, that the state government wraps around access to space for artists. Emerging and under-represented artists are the crucial level of an arts ecology – and the one that is suffering the most in this country.
The NSW Government has, and is, building more major galleries, museums and infrastructure, but these spaces are for artists who work within the institution, which is not a comfortable or welcoming space for all artists. Also, I wonder more and more, where are the artists going to come from if it’s completely unviable to practise as an artist in NSW?
Read: New toolkit to help artists engage with local government
Federal grant money has been reinstated, but the obsession with professionalisation of the arts means that the demands for even the smallest amounts of money make it impossible for most artists to deliver on high-end major projects. Artists need time and space to make work and experiment!
When I started my term as a Randwick councillor, I asked the staff to take me around to all of their venues. I have always been interested in seeing art in spaces I guess people call off-site. But all off-site means is that it is not a traditional gallery or white cube. I think that off-site is situated within the community. It is possible to see work off-site after hours and in spaces where non-arts people live, work, commute and feel comfortable.
There are often spaces that the council owns, that haven’t even been considered as somewhere people may want to use for a studio or even to show their artwork. And while not every council has the same types of spaces or funding that wealthier inner city councils have, if there is an empty office, a hall that is chronically underutilised, a sports facility that isn’t used all the time, then it should be made available to everyone.
Some of the ideas I proposed and was able to implement are below.
Randwick Town Hall, Randwick
When I put this motion up, the annual town hall usage, even pre-COVID, was around 1% of the time. It is a beautiful old hall near the town centre, which is also a major bus and light rail exchange.
I have used town halls in other LGAs for my own exhibitions, which have also been made available to artists. However, in my experience, the condition of the spaces has been dire or the guidelines that the council put around the usage were extremely prohibitive. So I took this experience into consideration when drafting my motion.
With the motion I raised regarding Randwick Town Hall, I asked for the staff to look at how they could repurpose the Town Hall so that it could be used for exhibitions. This included removable walls, a light system and affordable rates.
Invigorating town halls, which used to be accessible to all, sees them being used again really well by a lot of councils. But it is important to note that minor changes and updates to halls, which are often in an extremely unloved condition, can optimise these spaces for artists!
Barrett House, Clovelly
This house was bequeathed to the council decades ago by a local silent film pioneer family.
After being given to the council, the house and garden were used for a number of years as a great space to showcase renewable energy in situ. But developing technologies and a huge new sustainability hub in the Council meant that it was outdated and wasn’t being used 100% of the time.
As with my motion for the Town Hall, I suggested expenditure be made on a basic hanging system and some lights. It is now used as a residency space that allows artists a few months at a time to work on new ideas and then present their work to the community with a small community celebration at the conclusion of their time.
Read: Maximising your relationship with Council
The kitchen, bathroom and garden make it a unique and warm space for small groups to visit and for artists to experiment without a huge amount of pressure to produce and finalise exhibition-ready work in a major space.
Studios at the Lionel Bowen library, Maroubra
While arts and culture has been neglected in Randwick since the inception of the LGA, extremely strong community support has started to seep through and an arts and cultural strategy was introduced in 2021. Despite this, as with many councils, the Randwick libraries were thriving cultural hubs! Every inch of the libraries in Randwick is maximised and made available to an extraordinarily broad cross-section of the community.
This studio space motion was really the library manager’s suggestion, proposing this really small but lovely area to council for artist studios. When I went to have a look at the space I completely agreed.
With the understanding of what people need from a space, the library staff have respectfully refurbished these little spaces with minimal budget to make it workable.
It is now home to residencies for writers, poets, filmmakers, video artists and other forms of artists who can use a small space for their practice.
NSW local government elections are this week!
If you live in NSW and you see a space in the local community get in touch with the council!
Enquire about the usage levels of that space. If you don’t get any movement with the staff, get in touch with your local councillor and propose a way to revitalise that space.
Halls, offices, libraries, sports centres, sports fields, flag poles and billboards are for the whole community and should be used as such!
I believe more than ever in local government, but I do understand why it often feels as if it isn’t for everyone with the famous “roads, rates and rubbish” slogan bandied about by rusted-on council stalwarts.
But that is up to all of us to change!
