Sustainable living project. An hour from Sydney. Hell Yeah!

If you are sick of rent hikes in the city and are dreaming about a life of growing your own food, practising your art, but still being in proximity to the city, and living in a community designed around your needs, you should definitely check out this eco-village in the making. Since 2006 a passionate group of people from Sydney and the Central Coast with diverse backgrounds have been hunting for a site to design an eco-community with affordable housing, shared community spaces, food production and of course environmental sustainable design. A bunch of us visited on the weekend to check out where the project is at, and to take a wander on the property they have their sights on: a now abandoned NSW Horticulture industry site in Narara (1 hour and 15 minutes hours north of Sydney) ranging 63 hectares bordered by Strickland State Forest. It's a pretty AMAZING site. Already a site for food production, including a dam, greenhouses, and a 7 minute bike ride from the station. Co-director Bek actually grew up there. (There is hardly a patch of Narara that she didn't ride her BMX bike over.) The prospects for securing the land look promising. But it needs passionate people to get involved. Of course, my usual reservations about 'intentional communities' rise to the surface, but the woman who has been spearheading it, Lyndal Paris, I have to say is pretty awesome. And she seems pretty onto all of the 'software' required in organising community, finance and governance structures. And she is particularly interested in artists taking an active role in designing the community. So I dunno, it seems pretty exciting.  Anyone wanna stick their hands in the soil?

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.