A
note by Rjn to introduce correspondence held with the shire council
at his last place of dwelling some years ago.
Ever
since I was introduced to the idea by the wonderfully pro active Gosford, NSW, city
cultural development officer Mr Elio Gatti, I have for
many years advocated the idea of Citizen's Cultural Exchanges.
Like a Stock Exchange or Money Exchange, a Cultural Exchange is a
place where people can exchange, share, buy or sell differing
cultural gifts of performance, of artifacts, of lifestyle or belief.
Simply put, these Exchanges encourage artists of every stripe
and hue to come together and create events where residents of an
area can enjoy an interchange of all forms of culture, be it visual,
kinetic, singing, drama, dance, poetry recital or even olfactory.
Such events would improve community connectivity, bolster social
inclusion (particularly for newcomers to an area), and give
interested participants and spectators access to art forms they may
only have heard about previously (or did not know existed at all).
People from all walks of life would converge and be given time to
showcase their talents and wares in a nurturing, sharing and
constructively critical environment.
When
I moved to Nhill in Western Victoria some three and a half years ago,
I thought it the ideal place (being a remote rural village located on
the main road between Adelaide and Melbourne) to institute such an
Exchange.
Accordingly, the Hindmarsh Shire Council, supposedly responsible for
the health and wellbeing of some 6000 residents (how else would you
describe the benefits of regular exposure to cultural events other
than as a marvellous fillip to one’s ‘health and wellbeing’?),
was sounded out about making its Community Memorial Hall available
for a regular series of such Exchanges. What I am writing now
testifies to the consequences of my overtures and serves as a brief
introduction to the correspondence exchanged with the Council.
As
you will see from the letters received from the Council and now
posted on this blog, I was met with ignorance, incredulity, hostility
and recalcitrance at every opportunity. I was accused of being rude,
my idea was flatly rejected for being unviable economically, the
Council refused my modest request for ‘funding’ to help
inaugurate the project, I was personally abused, discriminated against and psychologically
battered by a council supposedly there for the benefit of its citizens. I had tried to think locally for the global benefit
of mankind and give all and sundry a chance to tell their own
intrinsic stories through performance. I had tried to bring some sort
of renaissance to a town often mired in petty internecine political
squabbles, beset by the dislocations caused by ‘cliques’, ready
always to fund and promote sport (especially Australian Rules
Football) but averse to sponsoring anything else, insisting time and
time again that only old-fashioned, ‘time-honoured’ cultural
pursuits like tired musicals and operettas or Jazz festivals designed
more as a sly means of advertising a local industry than as a real
way to engage people with culture were what people in the village and
surrounding areas needed or wanted.
I was
refused access to the Memorial Hall, even though the ‘money’
required to hire it was available from the Council (they ultimately
own the building anyway, and so could easily afford to rent it to me
with ‘moneys’ that would simultaneously be received back into the council's bank account or
simply be effected by a book keeping contra-entry recording the "gift" to
the citizens). I was told
there weren’t enough people in the Hindmarsh Shire to justify such
an audacious programme. I was informed that my scheme would pressure
performers into producing works of little or no interest....
When
I rightly queried the basic ignorance and biases behind such a
response, I was accused of being rude and effectively silenced by the
Council. At no stage did I become pettily personal and name
wrongdoers in some sort of orgy of peevish retaliation. I merely
argued that such wrong-headed refusal to countenance my idea spoke to
the unsophisticated ignorance of a selfish cabal of high-powered
locals who have little interest in culture and no desire to support
it (especially not when it is being spearheaded by an alien of
foreign appearance, who had not ‘paid his dues’ in the shire).
What such people failed so spectacularly to realise, what UNESCO has
enshrined in its desire to engage all people with cultural activities
at a grass-roots level, is that culture need not only refer to the
reified artefacts and habits of the past. One does not need to go to an
opera
house or a museum or gallery to be exposed to ‘culture’. It is
all around us, everyday, everywhere, in the stories and skills all of
us have. Such stories and skills only need an environment in which
they are encouraged and allowed to be set free. This I tried to do and
in fact am now doing with this segment of the blog. Whether it be
defined as tragedy, comedy or drama I am do not know.
The results you will see in more detail below. I think you will agree
with me that it augurs very badly for the continued future of
cultural creation in Australia and the world at large if the attitude
of the Hindmarsh Shire Council is allowed to spread unchecked like
some kind of totalitarian virus stifling all creativity (whenever I
re-read the Council’s correspondence I am reminded of Joseph
Goebbels’ famous dictum: “whenever I hear the word culture, I
reach for my gun”)…..for the sake of our continued investment in
the future of this planet, we need to overcome the prejudices of
people like the Shire Clerk….though I am not by nature a man with
Utopian proclivities, who would dispute with me that culture of the
sort described above and nurtured by things like the Cultural
Exchange isn’t absolutely vital to our ongoing survival and
humanist development?©
2012 Rjn
Here is the correspondence:-
And the reply five months later :-
My Response to Mr Miller:-
Mr Miller's Christmas Eve Reply :-
And to this day the Shire's residents continue to be denied such benefits.
