What sits before us in our very own librarium....

What are the chances of your letter getting into the Sydney Morning Herald?! Bill and George Intern, Skye Gibson, who is currently helping us catalogue the Librarium, thought she would give it a good Aussie go. Amazeballs. Five fake gold stars to you Ms Gibson!

BRING BACK THE GREEN BANS

It's Saturday night and I've just been hanging out at the PCYC in Woolloomooloo watching the 1985 documentary made by Pat Fiske called Rocking the Foundations. A film made about the astounding and amazing Green Bans movement and the Builders Labourers Federation in the 70's in Sydney. Wow. This film screening caps a 4 week walking project made by Big Fag Press and Cross Arts Projects and presented by Performance Space which took people on a lively and intense walking tour of the Green Bans sites throughout kingsCross and Woolloomooloo.This is by far my favourite work of art this year. This is the Sydney that I love and engenders an awkward fucked up feeling of patriotism. Where has that Sydney gone? The Green Bans were put in place (among others things) to stop the big end of time from demolishing low income homes to make way for luxury hotels. Now you don't need to demolish homes you just need to out the rent up.

WE ARE HERE. BUT WHAT ARE WE?

This week we are contemplating our sector and thinking around a space syndicate that would wrap its loving arms around all our little tiny artist run space enterprises and hold us tightly and keep us safe until the bad awful real estate barons of the neo-liberal world die screaming "But, we CAN eat our money!"

In the meantime perhaps all ARSES (Artist Run Space Enterprises) should get themselves to the national symposium of Artist Run Everything. SEPTEMBER 1 - 4 In Sincity.

CREATIVE CRUNCH TIME (or can Sydney afford to keep pricing out creativity?)

Panel beaters from last weekend’s panel at VIVID’S Creative Sydney provided a strangely upbeat mix of responses regarding the question “Is Sydney pricing creativity out of the picture?” Or in other words “Is the high cost of living in Sydney fucking over the very creative people who make Sydney a great place to be”.  

In this context it is important to note VIVID Sydney is produced and financed by EventsNSW, which is a wing of the Tourism portfolio of the State Government, soon to amalgamate into a new entity called Destination NSW and receive an additional $45 million dollars in public money to add to its $400 million dollar budget. Hence the question seems to be better phrased as: Now that ‘creativity’ is a key driver for the economy, in particular for selling the metropolis to consumers of tourism, how can growth be maintained when it’s obvious to everyone that overheads in the cost of production are so high, and that not all parts of the sector can compete evenly.

So rephrasing the question to “Can Sydney afford to keep pricing out certain types of creativity?” Well, the cynical answer is, errrr, yes.  If the vision for Sydney includes main stage musical theatre and $900 million dollar convention centres, then yes.  And particularly if your vision is shared by the same decision makers who were not overly concerned that large flat screened TVs in Sydney’s pubs were a valid alternative to live musicians. Or that real estate prices are allowed, nay encouraged to, continue rising by the business community and the government, pushing out anyone who can’t afford to keep paying them. Or that artists who play their part in gentrifying an area for 2 years in a “free” warehouse given over by developers, should be gracious in moving on and leaving their creation of surplus value behind for others to profit from. Yes, the answer is a definitive Yes! Sydney can afford to price creativity out.  As long as this is the kind of Sydney you want to live in.