Page 4243 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 21 September 2011
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recommendations be acknowledged as part of the motion. It informs the development of the government’s future arts policy, hence my amendment No 1 seeks to replace the current clauses (1)(c) and (1)(d) with a more general statement that notes the government’s response dated 18 September 2011, which was a Sunday, to the Loxton report on the review of arts in Canberra entitled “Review of the Arts in Canberra: the implementation of the Loxton report”.
My third amendment simply seeks to ensure that the Cultural Facilities Corporation and key arts organisations are included in the consultation process. That is not to say that consultation should be limited to those organisations, for there are many others in the community who should have a say in the development of new arts policy frameworks for the arts in the ACT. I commend these other two amendments to the Assembly.
Ms Le Couteur touched on the Fitters Workshop. I cannot let this motion go by without dealing with the Fitters Workshop. I think it is the most pressing issue that the minister has to deal with at the moment. The government’s decision to move Megalo Print Studio from the current location in Canberra Technology Park in the former Watson high school to the Kingston precinct is, in itself, a perfectly valid one. I want to make it perfectly clear—and I have said this before—that I believe the synergies and the narrative of moving Megalo, which is an industrial visual arts form, to an industrial site or locating it near to another industrial visual arts form, the glassworks, are very strong; there are very strong synergies there.
However, the decision that Megalo should have exclusive use of the Fitters Workshop seems to have been impetuous. In fact, a letter that came my way as a result of a freedom of information request shows that on 22 August 2008 Megalo wrote to the former Chief Minister and Minister for the Arts. It is an interesting letter. It is an extraordinary appeal to the former Chief Minister’s vanity. The Chief Minister wrote a handwritten note on the letter—and he made it six days after the letter was written to him—saying: “This is a persuasive and very tempting proposition. Advice and response please.” In a moment I will seek leave to table the letter. As I said, this appealed to Mr Stanhope’s vanity.
The Fitters Workshop put forward a claim as to why moving Megalo to Kingston Foreshore was a good one:
We support your goal of establishing a critical mass of cultural activity on the Kingston Foreshore.
No-one disputes that. Then they say that they are writing to request a tenancy for Megalo at the Fitters Workshop. The letter talks about how there are synergies with the glassworks. It talks about how printmaking is one of the pre-eminent visual mediums in the capital. It talks about Megalo’s outstanding and longstanding history, which no-one would dispute. It is very interesting that it concludes with this:
While others may advance claims to the Fitters’ Workshop, we believe the case for Megalo’s occupancy is compelling. Creation of a world class cultural precinct at the Kingston Foreshore would be immeasurably enhanced, not to mention accelerated, by a decision to allow Megalo to occupy the Fitters’ Workshop.
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