Cultural Development Analysis - Penrith City Council - NSW ...

Cultural Development Analysis – Penrith CBD and St Marys Town Centre
There may be a need to upgrade existing and develop new facilities, but the
purpose of cultural regeneration is not to support the building industry. Being
a consumer of the cultural products of others is enriching, but it is overvalued
when compared to the benefits of active participation in creative activity.
Mayfield in Newcastle typifies the social and structural changes taking place
in that city. Adjacent to the recently closed BHP, the suburb has a low- socioeconomic
base and suffers from the perception of an undesirable place to be.
It has relatively low-cost housing stock, and a number of boarding house style
accommodation catering for people with intellectual disabilities and mental
health issues.
With the BHP closure and low-cost housing stock Mayfield also began a
phase of rapid gentrification. As a consequence there was increasing
community anxiety about the changes taking place in their neighbourhood. A
Social Plan for the area was developed with the community and
recommended some cultural development initiatives. The program which was
developed with the local community included:
• An oral history project in partnership with the University’s
communication students who undertook the interviews with people
identified as “Mayfield treasures” through the consultations – the Uni
also developed and maintained a web-site for the duration of the
project;
• The establishment of a community choir of people with intellectual
disabilities and mental health issues who wrote a song-scape about
their experience living in Mayfield;
• An Aboriginal performance piece that told the indigenous history of the
area;
• A visual arts program with local school children that made a series of
large scale puppets telling the local stories and urban myths of the area
– including the story of May after whom the suburb was named;
• The final Celebratory Event was a twilight picnic on Saturday night held
in a park notorious for anti-social activities. The picnic was the
culmination of the culmination of the project and premier of the works
developed over the year.
This extensive cultural program provided opportunities for the diverse
components of the Mayfield community to come together and formulate their
own cultural development activities to begin the process to re-define a new
sense of identity, foster integration and interaction as well as celebrate the
unique spirit and identity of Mayfield – ‘soul, guts, spirit’!
Shop top Housing and Live Sites, Newcastle City. As the population
growth of Newcastle moved out of the city centre and retail become focussed
in the large shopping malls on the City’s periphery, Newcastle CBD began to
die. A range of strategies to encourage residents to move back into the inner
city have been developed, including the Shop Top Housing Policy, and these
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