When the punters at a Council meeting start asking difficult questions about theatre and its future in the city you do have to start pinching yourself. In the Mercury prophesies of dodgy stuff going on, or likely to, at UTAS and with 'theatre', Launceston's Council meetings will have a little bit more touchiness in the air than usual. Funnily enough you could smell air freshener and grease paint sin the air.
UTAS seems to have been saying one thing and planning another. And as time progresses, of least concern, are the city's ratepayers and residents and their aspirations for a viable 'cultural landscape'. Various people – UTAS staff, students, alumni, etc. – worry about just where the university, on its northern campus, is heading and with what consequences for the region's 'cultural landscape'.
It's taking eons for UTAS to put up a credible 'business plan' for the university proposed operation and its programs to be offered in the north. Progress towards anything actually happening is glacial. With a Federal election looming for possibly May 2019, and with policies being thrown overboard willy-nilly in Canberra you do have wonder if there will be yet another shift in thinking.
As a UTAS alumni said upon hearing about UTAS's latest announcement, "you really do have to wonder if anyone is thinking clearly when $200Million is being talked about to move a university a few kilometres when the river rates pretty much the same as a third world sewer and waterway." Interesting point and an unlikely vote winner!
The City of Launceston's Council represents a population of, apparently, something in the order of 69K who have various expectations of the 'cultural landscape' in which they live, work, recreate, study, raise families etc. There is precious little evidence that this council and its aldermen pay all that much attention to regional people's cultural aspirations and realities. As for UTAS, its strategies relative to its proposed 'drama course' changes and in the context 'the state's north' is both bewildering and bemusing laced as it is with so much bureaucratic 'balderdash'.
The evidence on the ground is that the 'planners and their unthinking fellow travellers' are both clueless and careless. I'll happily retract that IF I could be shown a credible 'business plan' that had been produced in-house at UTAS. Even so, I'd eat my hat IF they had anything to do with concerns on the part of UTAS for anything resembling 'cultural landscaping' and/or cultural-cum-civic engagement relative to the region.
Given the chain dragging at Town Hall and with an agenda for a 'Cultural Strategy' set well away from 'around the council table' the shaping of the city's 'cultural landscaping' seems to have handed over to almost anyone for hire from elsewhere. Somehow, anyone from elsewhere who needn't be 'engaged' in cultural production and/or related cultural networking might well get 'the call'. Moreover, their briefings are typically 'commercial in confidence' or something similar.
With a changed – shrinking/diminishing?– 'industrial landscape' in northern Tasmania there is a paradigm shift in play whilst the nostalgia for past glories lingers in the memories of a dwindling demographic. It is of some concern that this is the background for the bewilderment of just about everyone else trying to make 'their' sense of the region – new arrivals, visitors, tourists, et al.
If Local Govt. is about anything, it is 'placemaking and placescaping' and imaging that a 'place' can sustain itself in some kind of time warp is fanciful. That's so albeit that the City of Launceston, on the evidence, is entertaining a view that it can construct a 'cultural landscape' and plug it in as if it were a new electrical appliance or some such thing.
The 'Tamar/Esk Region's' cultural landscape is what it is and it is the way the communities have shaped it – one way or another over time. The region is no longer an agrarian cum industrial landscape shaped by economic imperatives in relative isolation. Certainly, in significant ways its a cultural landscape shaped in secession by the First Tasmanians, colonialism, industrial agriculture, industrialisation, globalism plus the histories and heritage bound up in the aftermath of all this – and increasingly in a global context.
However, what is the current understanding of the city's 'cultural landscape', that is the vision held by the city's decision makers? It appears to be relatively clear that 'cultural tourism' is likely to figure large in the regions economy looking ahead. How well is this being understood?
As it stands 'the city' lacks an articulate and sophisticated understanding of its 'cultural landscape' . Consequently a vision of what it's 'placemaking tasks' is needed, might be needed, indeed must be held and articulated. Sadly and unsurprisingly, on the evidence, there is no apparent understanding of the city's base line cultural realities or dynamics.
For example and interestingly it seems that the 'cultural vision' is to:
- Have a museum and art gallery funded by constituents and the State Govt;
- Investigate the feasibility of the QVMAG delivering"best value";
- Investigate the feasibility of being funded by the State Govt equal to the TMAG;
- Seek $3Million recurrent funding from the State Govt;
- Implement a "Cultural Strategy" in 2018 to more effectively leverage the city's "cultural assets" (yet to be sighted!)
- Provide $3Million "seed funding" for a cultural infrastructure project such as a "public art trail".
'Culture' is a much more expansive and multidimensional concept than any of this suggests.
Under SECTION 65 of the Tasmanian Local Govt. Act it is a requirement of Council that strategic decisions making must be carried out upon 'expert advice'. If the text above comes out of "expert advice" it is apparent that its 'author/s', whoever they may be, lack credible expertise. Much more concerning is the city's alderpeople being unable to detect the flaws and weaknesses in the 'advice'. The knock-on cum trickle-down being the city is seemingly imagining itself in a 'cultural vacuum'.
Apparently UTAS is similarly placed strategically. It is therefore no surprise that those charged with delivery of a credible 'business case', or an implementable 'business plan', haven't actually been able to deliver on that expectation.
That UTAS might not be able to, or even be interested in, contextualising it's course offerings relative student and community aspirations is disappointing to say the very least. Nonetheless, this kind of hubris has become the expected modus operandi.
It's all somewhat mystifying given that UTAS has succeeded in talking Launceston's alderpeople into gifting public land to the university along with apparent unspoken commitments and assurances to provide additional infrastructural support consequent to 'the gift'. All this to be funded by ratepayers unless the funds are imagined to be falingl from the sky. UTAS's accountability and transparency in relation to future 'university offerings' in Launceston are falling well short of what should be the case given all that is at stake – and given that it is a public institution in receipt of community largess.
For context the QAVMAG conscripts something in the order of $4Million or something like $130 plus per rateable property annually. Sponsors, donors, et al over 125 years plus have contribute to building a $240Million cultural, scientific and social community resource that is a significant element of the 'national estate'. The institution employs something in the order of 50 people meaning that something like 150 jobs exist in the region for people with skills that otherwise wouldn't exist. That's the positive story.
Sadly, this is counter balanced by opaque and functionally unaccountable governance by 'the council' – the Trustees being the city's Aldermen. With Local Govt Elections but weeks away this component of the city's budget needs exposure given that the region's 'cultural landscape' is increasingly what ratepayers', residents', business people, et al will be depending upon for their well being.
Candidates for council's upcoming elections are largely unaware of the 'cultural stewardship function' imbedded in their aspirations – especially in regard to the QVMAG. Given all that is at stake voters need to questioning all candidates – incumbent and new – about their understandings of this aspect of their role as an Alderman/Trusttee of the city's/region's cultural estate and their accountability relevant to that.
With the revelation that the QVMAG had "lost" a component of it's collections. This single item has a potential value of $20K to $30K yet most concerningly is its potential to become 'lost' within the institution's collections management and governance regime without too much of a consiquence. The incident is simultaneously concerning in regard to the lost cultural material and all that is invested in QVMAG collections. The strategic governance weaknesses all this brings to public attention must not be made light of. After this there are many more uncomfortable questions that sponsors, donors and ratepayers will and should be asking.
Without accountable and transparent governance the city's ratepayers and residents are being neither adequately serviced nor appropriately represented.
Ray Norman
September 2018
Launceston
