Launceston's famous, or infamous, blockie route is one of those classic city stories - it's woven into the fabric of the city's tales.
The blockie route was born because of changes to Launceston's CBD streets, when the introduction of one-way streets created a unique block for car enthusiasts to travel and be social.
The route's significance to Launceston's cultural and social fabric is an example of how culture can be everywhere, not just in arts or theatre, City of Launceston creative arts and cultural services general manager Tracy Puklowski said.
And it's those types of stories, the grassroots cultural stories that the City of Launceston council is seeking to inform its new cultural strategy.
The cultural strategy has been on the cards at the council for a few months, however community consultation had to be put on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The draft cultural strategy lays out five proposed strategic aims for the council:
- to respect Aboriginal culture;
- to realise the potential of our cultural places and assets;
- to foster creative practices;
- reveal our cultural stories; and
- build and extend partnerships.
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However, Ms Puklowski said now was the time to reengage in that conversation, and said the council was conscious of how the pandemic had impacted the cultural and arts scenes.
"Culture is inclusive, it can be found anywhere," she said.
The City of Launceston draft cultural strategy can be found online, but Launceston residents are being encouraged to give their feedback via an online survey to help shape the final draft.
She said a lot of hard work had gone into the draft strategy and the council was seeking to identify what parts of Launceston's culture was important to the community.
"There is culture in everything, it's in our car culture, our art, our theatre, but it's also in our food and sport," she said.
"It is emerging through the identities of the people who live here, which is diverse." in Launceston's cultural lexicon, featuring in a recent web comedy series and even advertisements for National Pies.
"It's certainly become a part of that much broader identity of who we are as a city," Councillor Gibson said.
"Over the years the blockie route has caused the occasional problems with hooning behaviour, but it has also been a positive social outlet for many people growing up in the city."
Mayor Albert van Zetten said the blockie route had been identified as a cultural icon of Launceston, but said there were no plans yet to remove the route through traffic management.
Launceston's traffic management has been envisioned through the Invermay Traffic Master Plan and the recent Greater Launceston Traffic Vision plans.
Councillor van Zetten said no plans had been made yet on whether to remove Launceston's one-way streets, but that was part of the second stage of the council's City Heart program.
"We want to have a good understanding of what Launceston's cultural strengths are, which is why feedback from the community is important to us," Cr van Zetten said.
"That will allow us to begin work on the second phase of this project, which will be aimed at developing actions arising from the feedback we've received."
- The survey is available at www.yourvoiceyourlaunceston.com.au and closes on August 28.
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COMMENT: This 'cultural strategy' has had more manifestations than the script for the movie, 'The Tale That Never Was'. Well yes there was COVID-19 but that shouldn't have drawn community consultation to a halt nor the research that lends substance to this kind of thing.
Here we cannot blame the journalist as clearly the problem is deeply embedded in the 'media release and briefing notes' 'that came out of the Orchestrator General’s Office at Town Hall. The task at hand it seems is make it all look "FANTASTIC" and "POSITIVE" irrespective of the city's, the region's, the place's, layered and and quite often larder of somewhat 'Gothic stories'.
Singling out 'LONNY'S blockies' as a signal for 'truth telling' is more than a little bit spurious in that it has a lot to say about the slanted and rather shonky process Town Hall is aiming to sell to what it imagines as an uncritical, compliant and sycophantic 'audience’. The aim it seems is to impose this process upon the community and make them pay for it. Rather than engage with 'the people', the people who know things, go find the ones who will not rock the boat and give them some money.
Back then he said that "most importantly it's [the process is] about recognising this is a lens that we now look through that makes Launceston one of the best places in the world to live," but he might say that wouldn't he – he yearns to be mayor.
Cr McKenzie claims that the process has taken so long because it is such a "huge strategy" to transform the city. But that's not what this should be about and Cr McKenzie's arrogance here is palpable as this stuff just isn't his role.
And as for Cr Finlay saying that the way culture had been "defined in the strategy" is really important. Well it is not Local Govt's role to DEFINE culture it is Local Govt's role to reflect upon it and respond to it – certainly not define it. Plus, what is being imagined as 'culture' is so far off beam it is laughable.
Asking a bureaucrat in any manifestation of governance, what ‘culture’ is, nowadays and it will earn you looks of bewilderment most likely. It’s the kind of thing everyone knows the answer to but when push comes to shove nobody, it seems, has a ready answer for you – at least not one that fits some convenient bureaucratic paradigm.
So they'll shape it to their imagining, but especially if you are a historian anthropologist, cultural producer, geographer, geologist, natural scientist, whatever, you'll hardly be able to contain yourself.
Culture is the central concept, the corner stone, upon which the study of anthropology is founded. Anthropology encompasses that range of phenomena that are transmitted through social interaction in human societies. So, in this process where the hell are they?
The bureaucrats are evident as is the odd politician who thinks that maybe having something to say might get a vote or two when their credibility is looking a bit shaky.
This council and its predecessors have been at this for a long, long, while, trying to put something in place that congratulates the status quo, the one that suits them, and importantly does not challenges anyone at Town Hall's world view.
There has been a long line of 'experts from somewhere else' commissioned to tell Launcestonians who and what they are, all of whom have got it so, so very wrong, bureaucratically and politically.
And, here we are at it again with yet another set of experts from somewhere else. Enough, enough, stop this rubbish right now and put someone in charge who has real professional credibility and who has some idea about what side up is.
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