Anne Dunn Facilitator

Participants

Musgrave Park is in Brisbane's inner suburb of South Brisbane. The South Brisbane area has been the site of major gentrification and urban renewal over recent decades. In pre-European times the South Brisbane area was a traditional neutral meeting place for indigenous people. Musgrave Park, in the heart of South Brisbane has continued to be an important meeting place and focal point for indigenous people from Queensland and interstate.

Within Musgrave Park leases are currently held by a swimming pool, tennis court, croquet club, a former bowling club, and a band practice room. The Park is directly bounded by a State High School, the Greek Community Centre, residential land and businesses.

The campaign for an Aboriginal cultural centre in Brisbane's Musgrave Park has gone on for more than a decade, raising issues including the relationship between local government planning processes and priorities for Brisbane and Murri history and culture; between the business community and Brisbane's Aboriginal community in the context of urban renewal and gentrification, between property developers and Brisbane's Aboriginal community; between the tourism and convention industry and Brisbane's Aboriginal community; and between all cultural and community users of Musgrave Park.

Communication between parties with an interest in the park, and therefore in the cultural centre proposal, has been limited and often confused or misinformed.

Feral Arts have established a reputation in Queensland for applying the theories of community cultural development in new ways to resolve conflicts over public space. In 1994 the Department of Family Services contracted Feral Arts to work with on the South Bank redevelopment site where conflict between young people, security guards and other parklands users had heightened. Their work in negotiating with all stakeholders and on the issue of inclusiveness of public space was considered a success.

Based on this reputation, and on the relationship Ferals had established with Brisbane's Aboriginal community, the Musgrave Park steering committee approached Feral Arts to assist them in progressing the cultural centre proposal. In the months leading up to the symposium Ferals worked with the steering committee to negotiate agreement from all parties to participate in the symposium. They identified Anne Dunn as a facilitator with the necessary experience and understanding of community cultural development to gain the participants trust and to make it work.

The Musgrave Park symposium was the first time so many of the key stakeholders had come together to discuss the cultural centre proposal.

Anne Dunn

That's not exclusively true. In fact, in November 1996 the Council approved a lease of a piece of land, but that approval needs to be endorsed by the state government Minister. Late in 1996 the state government Minister rejected that proposal but is currently reconsidering it. We are at a critical time. Like most community generated projects, this proposal has mixed responses and reactions in the community. There are people who oppose the proposal completely; people who have concerns about it; people who are confused; people who are supporters and people who are indifferent."

"At the same time, this session is included in the conference not only as a real issue for the participants involved, but as an example of current community arts practice. You are therefore invited, not only to attend to the content of this discussion, but to consider the process and method and its appropriateness and success as contemporary community arts practice."

Participants discussed and debated the progress of the proposal over 15 years, the preferred site as opposed to secondary sites within the park, misinformation and that had derailed the proposal in the past, including racial stereotypes, conflicts between parties and their interests and the complexities of dealing simultaneously with so many diverse government agencies.

The key issues requiring action as summarised by the facilitator included:

"Trying to approach the Greek community centre and see whether some discussion can be had and more broadly, some of us with that committee trying to set up some conciliation process with that community?

Secondly, there's the broader issue of public education, the proposal about producing a fact sheet which actually could be used for lobbying of ministers but also with the broader community looking at those issues of people's fears and trying to engage the community more broadly in support.

Thirdly, there's the topic of lobbying the minister or ministers dealing directly with the government and trying to encourage them back into plan A, the tennis courts, and to move at a reasonable space in time. There was an earlier suggestion from Tim I think that in fact everybody could either write to the minister or use their own system to try and get some support in, but it does look to me as if a little group of people ought to be working with the committee to say, 'How can we now therefore go into some direct communication with the ministers?'

The fourth topic, which we haven't had time to explore, is really the topic about how is this thing going to be funded when we've got the lease, because having got the land, there then is going to need to be something that happens to make that occur..."

"There was the proposal about what does it look like and getting people to feel more secure about it, that it doesn't have a liquor licence so it's not about people lying around drinking and whatnot. That needs to be picked up I think in the public education campaign as part of the fact sheets, so I think we can do with that.

There was another proposal about having a community celebration that both got the minister or ministers involved in the place but also gave the broader community the opportunity to come along and demonstrate support and let the government see the huge volume of support that there is for the project rather than only hearing at the negative end about the opposition. I suspect that that ought to be a project to be picked up with that group that's going to look at how to lobby the ministers. So I'm really asking you to kind of look at these four areas: negotiating with the Greek community, public education more generally with the community, the direct approach to government and lobbying of the ministers, and how the project will be funded when we've got the land."

In conclusion the facilitator stated

So my summary to the committee and Feral Arts and QCAN is that this meeting overwhelmingly supports your efforts to achieve a cultural centre in Musgrave Park; that the people who are sitting at this table will do everything within their power to help you to achieve that and they've made some quite specific commitments about things that they will do ...."

"It does seem to me that even if those efforts are rejected, that the Minister must be impressed by your community's constant efforts at building those bridges and that reconciliation is yet again being generated by - moves towards it by indigenous people. It seems to me that we've come a long way since where we started at 10 o'clock this morning..."

Participants added

"I'd just like to say that we've walked the walk and we've talked the talk and I would really like to see you come together with us on this and help us get our cultural centre up and running. Like you say, you've got the fears .... but all I'm asking is for us to stay together on this and make it happen because it is a necessity.

"Looking at these people that have been here and participated in the forum today, you have kind of given your word or yourself to this struggle. I hope you don't walk out the door and that's going to be the end of it; I mean to say, because that has happened before. I just need to know that we can get together... and make something happen.

"It was excellent seeing everybody turn up today. A lot of good things have been said and I'm sure the outcome is going to be really positive. I'm sure there are heaps of points that we could have responded to, you know, like funding and things, but we have run out of time. It's great to see everybody, it's terrific."

"I just sense this whole problem, you know, of problems in communication and I think that the responsibility for dealing with that has always fallen back, in general, on the Aboriginal community and, in the case of this project, on this committee, and I think it's time that started to change. I think it's time that government and other cultural arts, whatever, organisations started to take on some responsibility for making serious attempts to deal with those problems.

"This has actually been good, it's the first time we've sat down together as so many different peoples from different places with different ideas. A lot of knowledge I'm sure, has been learnt today. From what we've done, you know, since the last 15, 12 years, we probably know all the avenues we can go to seek funds, we've spoken to quite a few ministers, we've spoken to city councils, we've spoken to local members, we've spoken to bureaucrats ... but the thing is that we've really been trying to get across is where we're coming from....

We have been trying to get our point across for years. This is the first and only kind of conference, a forum like this, where we have sat down and you have actually listened to where we're coming from. Hopefully, if you all believe and support this issue then, by us coming here just to educate you fellas the little bit we have, surely you can pass that on to the people you work with, the people you represent, your families, whomever, and that's all we're asking you. You can help us by helping you educate yourselves about us. We're the only ones who can educate you about us. If you are going to follow it up, you have got our support and we have got your support as much as you will have ours."

Anne Dunn

Finally, could we, the non-indigenous people in this room, thank all of those indigenous people who are here for trusting us to have the discussions, for taking the risk that the outcome would be good, for sharing constantly and endlessly with us, for your patience with our inaction, for your frustration that will kick us along to do so something else? Truly in these meetings we do have the opportunity to make a better Australia but, in fact, these meetings would not happen without you. We, as yet, non-indigenous people, do not know how to initiate reconciliation. Could we, please, thank the indigenous people?"

Immediately following the symposium and in the weeks following the Conference, a number of people took action as they had made a commitment to during the symposium. The proposal for a cultural centre in Musgrave Park continues to progress.