Our City: Creative Canberra
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Art, culture and creativity are sparked by human interaction. And yet, many of Canberra’s cultural institutions have traditionally turned inward, away from people and our streets, and towards an internal space which we pass through.
In the last few years, however, a creativity renaissance has flowered throughout Canberra, and our city is no longer a place in which art only sits on the white walls of our cultural institutions. These places are now bringing art out to the community. As well, Canberra is now also very much a place to make your own art.
This art does not only take the form of Blue Poles, but of a hand-blown vase from the Canberra Glassworks, a delicate pastry from Silo or the chic interior styling of Hotel Hotel.
I love Lonsdale Street, not just because of its industrial-chic cafés and achingly-cool boutiques, but because it is a real-life demonstration of how a creative city needs more than ‘big picture plans’ and monolithic architecture.
Creative cities are born from bottom-up projects that are eclectic and personal.
Each time I visit florist Moxom & Whitney in Braddon, I feel as if I’m sneaking into a magical secret garden: wood-lined walls, a bare branch chandelier hanging from the ceiling, a riot of colours and flowers and glorious scent, and not a sprig of baby’s breath in sight. The fishbowls of green moss and ferns are worlds of their own. In Loulou and Belinda’s hands, even a carnation looks good. It’s a place that is unique to Canberra and, very likely, to much of Australia as well.
“We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us,” Winston Churchill once famously said.
And yet, people rarely stop to think about the connection between our creative expression and our buildings.
The built environment is both a catalyst and a central stage for creativity. Just look at the shipping container village being assembled on the banks of Lake Burley Griffin by the Stomping Grounds Collective. The retail space will help new start-up brands build a customer base, the entertainment space will support musicians and performers, while the roof-top bar and cafes will be perfect places to while away the hours.
The explosion of the handmade phenomenon – which has been led by the lovely ladies, Julie Nichols and Rachel Evagelou at Handmade Market – has reconnected us not only to local materials and craftspeople, but to our sense of community. In repurposing old furniture and fabrics, creating new things out of old, it reminded us that Canberrans are clever and creative, and that we can continue to make and remake our city as many times as we like.
Creative cities encourage more intensive use of space – and they open their doors to the ‘third space’ that is neither home nor office, but a room or a building, a street or a neighbourhood that captures the imagination. The reason why people love new precincts such as NewActon is because it serves so many purposes – attracting everyone from weekend visitors to office workers, residents to restaurant goers, cyclists to cinema buffs, old and young alike.
People come to work and play, buy and sell, interact and exchange ideas.
Creativity isn’t about art for art’s sake – it is a central plank of city-building. Economically successful cities are those that attract creative people. Canberra needs an ecosystem for entrepreneurs, incubation spaces for artists, and creative quarters for a myriad of mad ideas to flourish. We need this to ensure our cleverest citizens stay put rather than seek out fame and fortune elsewhere – or at least come back after their adventures abroad.
Canberra is no longer bland and boring – but it still has a long way to go before the pockets of vitality become a larger patchwork.
Other cities are turning their laneways inside out, breathing new life into worn-out CBDs with pop-up galleries and bespoke boutiques, paying ‘creative concierges’ to help visitors engage with the local arts’ scene, and working with the development industry to reinvent empty commercial offices as spaces for emerging artists and artisans. This is happening around the world – and it can happen here too.
So, what do you think? How can we make Canberra the creativity capital?
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