CULTURAL SHIFT A MUST FOR THE CITY
Arts adviser has eloquently laid out a vision for making new cultural centre the very heart of the Gold Coast
Done right, new arts precinct could be just what we need
GOLD Coast residents are about to invest in a large piece of concrete. This is not the pier on The Spit. It’s the cultural precinct, which poses the bigger question of what will happen when we give this city a heart.
The most impressive speech at the Evandale council chambers this week was not during the tense debate among councillors either passionately for or against the cruise ship terminal.
Earlier in a special budget committee, council strategic adviser for arts and culture Robyn Archer eloquently explained what a cultural precinct will mean for a city renowned for its nightclubs and theme parks.
She briefly wandered back to her home town of Adelaide, when folk clubs were starting and theatre companies opening up in a city which back then, in the 1970s, had just a few thousand residents more than the Coast today.
Along with the freshly started Adelaide Festival, it was the perfect preparation for her first break, heading to London, where she gained international acclaim as an artist.
The Coast is in a similar place and time. You sense she feels the same groove.
“There are going to be beautiful buildings, it’s going to be a terrific precinct. It’s got everything, this site. It’s going to be great,” Ms Archer told councillors.
“But unless we actually properly fund the things that go on inside, it will be an empty place and none of us want that.”
As ratepayers funding it, what do we really know about this cultural precinct?
The amphitheatre, which can fit up to 5000 people and is being built where the old beehive building once stood, will be grassed and ready by December.
Walking out the front of the council chambers, to your right, you will see an arts tower - not the much publicised “fruit tingle” which could appear later - but a less controversial structure.
The tower and a Green Bridge linking Chevron Island should be ready by 2020-21 at a cost of around $120 million.
Ms Archer’s pitch was to tick off more funding now, to prevent a repeat of the farce when Jeff Kennett opened empty arts buildings on becoming Victorian premier.
Art was not about privilege, its depth was in community, helping the disabled, promoting indigenous culture and ultimately engaging a young criminal who stops reoffending.
“In Federation Square now in Melbourne, it’s not just arts stuff. If you want to protest, you go to Federation Square,” Ms Archer said. “If you want to graduate, you go there. If you want to cheer and celebrate a sports team or an arts event, you go to Federation Square.
“The Gold Coast has lacked, up until now, one of those centrally unifying places, and this is what we want the cultural precinct to do.”
She mentioned Manchester, of the vigil, how a song from the heart of that city united all in grief after the attack.
“This is the moment that allows people to grieve,” she said.
“This is the central social role of the arts. People on the Gold Coast don’t have that kind of place but with this they certainly will.”
For the first time, next year’s Commonwealth Games and its legacy with a festival and funded arts program made some sense of the spending on bricks and mortar.