Brown, J. (2002). “ARTzone: environmental rehabilitation, aesthetic activism & community empowerment”, Cultural Geographies, University of London, 2002, 9, 467-471. (journal)

ARTzone: environmental rehabilitation, aesthetic
activism and community empowerment

Jenny Brown, University of Newcastle, New South Wales

Figure 1 Dixon Park, Newcastle - the proposed site for ARTzone

For over two years I have been working with a group of sculptors, community workers, horticulturalists, academics and over 30 organisations to develop an environmental sculpture park in Dixon Park, a 4.6 ha site, adjacent to the most popular stretch of beach in Newcastle, Australia. The aim of this project, ARTzone, is to provide a unique opportunity for the people of Newcastle to participate fully in celebrating the centenary of Federation by creating a viable and lively national tourism destination that will provide many benefits for the residents of Newcastle as the northern gateway to the Great North Walk that stretches to Sydney, 200 km south. At least this is how the project is presented in one of the most recent of many letters to Newcastle City Council, who have until recently stalled its development. Though ARTzone has received state and federal government funding, local government has been able to block the project as the beachside park is on council-managed land. The intention to promote cultural tourism is part of a wider strategy to challenge and change borders and power relationships in the community. This is central to our community art projects with marginalized groups. My own work has involved projects with people with a disability, Indigenous people, people from a non-English speaking background and steelworkers on the point of losing their jobs as the local steelworks closed.

ARTzone seeks to transform a large highly degraded and underused beachside park into a site-specific integrated environmental art installation through collaborative aesthetic activism (see Figure 1). The project is based on collective community ownership of the project, wide and active participation, the sharing of skills and energy, the creation of a sense of solidarity and self-worth for people from disadvantaging backgrounds and the empowerment of those who are alienated from work, society and themselves. Like our other projects, ARTzone is about making a work that is attempting to be valueless in the conventional economies of art practice and taking the artwork more boldly to a non-art audience, to involve them and equally value their participation.

Planning and design
The subtlety and simplicity of the major focus of ARTzone is creating an adult learning experience of environmental rehabilitation by reintroducing the topography and vegetation that was lost to the housing suburb with the white invasion. People will gain an understanding of restoration, and of why environmentalism is valuable through exploring ideas around co-existence, presence and absence. Through the emulation of natural processes, the planting and design contributions will form part of the integrated stone artworks appearing as natural pre-existing elements that have evolved over time. The use of soft land management techniques will create forms that echo the shapes of the pre-existing sand dunes, and the pre-1750 vegetation mapping work of the Lower Hunter Central Coast Bio-Diversity Strategy Project will determine plant species to be incorporated. ARTzone will provide greater biodiversity of coastal flora, adding to the urban bushland corridor for fauna species, as well as being a trial strategy for larger scale coastal rehabilitation projects. The use of swail techniques and the installation of an underground gravity-fed irrigation system using the top car park as a catchment area to water the dune-like tracts will provide the region with a best practice example of water conservation.

Stone carvers working with people with a disability will create sandstone works that respond to the site and unify the landscaping, providing a process for inclusive cultural expression. ARTzone’s planted dune-like tracts with artworks will provide a protected area from the harsh southerly winds for social and recreational activities where the warm winter sun to the north and northwest can be enjoyed. Signage will provide educational information on geological, astronomical, environmental, Indigenous, colonial, surfing, lifesaving and other matters.

Process
People with a disability will participate in workshops where their ideas and two-dimensional and three-dimensional works will be used to inform sculptors� carved stonework designs. Sculptors with disabilities as well as workshop participants will carve works with the assistance of stone-carving sculptors. ARTzone will be dedicated to the specific access needs of people with a disability, with Braille and signage and sculptures taking into account physical access issues. People with a disability unable to work in sandstone will be involved with other stone material works, using three tones of Permian fossil siltstone that has been kiln fired for durability.

ARTzone sought permission from the Awabakal people to use Dixon Park, and through this first ever conciliation initiative the local Indigenous people have responded by offering to become involved through the Awabakal Cooperative, Umilliko Indigenous Research Centre at the University of Newcastle (University), and Worimi Local Aboriginal Land Council. Trees in Newcastle, an ARTzone in-kind partner and landless Landcare group, will have access to council-managed land for the first time where they are committed to maintaining the planted vegetation after regeneration. ARTzone�s in-kind support involves the Department of Housing providing an ongoing meeting place and involvement of their tenants in horticulture activities, as well as their grounds opposite the park. This will be a pilot programme for the region as the Department moves from a practice of lawnmowing to more sustainable management techniques.

Providing marginalized people with opportunities to participate in mainstream cultural activities is extremely important for their empowerment in finding their voices and creating a public presence; however, the institutionalization of this in community art pathologises these subgroups and perpetuates their stigmatization. As my community artwork has developed over the past five years, the emphasis has focused on exploring these issues within the group to use our energy as a tool to further the group�s aspirations in the wider community. Ghettoization had been partly dealt with by creating quality work for high-profile places, such as an exhibition of photographic works by people from a non-English speaking background with a psychiatric disability at Newcastle Region Art Gallery, a float by Indigenous visual and performing artists working with gay people living with HIV / Aids for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, and a Newcastle colonial Bicentenary tile panel project by 99 people with a disability on a railway station adjacent to Newcastle�s cultural and business precincts. Part of the tile project�s success was embarrassing CityRail into providing the station with a large accessible ramp, which had been a major lobby aim for the disability community over the preceding 10 years. ARTzone developed as a wider response to these issues, avoiding notions of �special therapy� as the disability, environmental and Indigenous communities� efforts would create a mainstream, high-profile community resource.

Council has blocked ARTzone because it involves the community building up a grass-roots design and collaborative process rather than a local government initiative. The council has not embraced the project�s momentum that it could ultimately claim as its own, but instead has trodden a well-worn path of providing conflicting information, and remaining passively and aggressively disengaged. Meetings with council staff focus on legislated procedural matters relating to design control even though council initiated projects have been known to bypass these. In Newcastle the point of design control is salient. After a long battle to convince the council that people would visit the foreshore if given the opportunity, a national landscape design competition was held in 1980. This was seen as the only strategy for the community to gain any control of the design outcomes. ARTzone strikes a chord deeper than the territorial claims of key council staff; it is a democratic healing process that threatens the council�s colonialist approach to the distribution of power and hope in the wider community.

ARTnode
The steering committee have recently decided to make a prototype project at the University named ARTnode that will be a site-specific environmental art installation using the processes and collaborators of ARTzone. ARTnode adds an accessible footpath to the water slowing and directing spur of the embankment adjacent to the School of Fine Art, creating an opportunity for the placement of large sandstone blocks on the gentle slope that opens up links to the new Indigenous Centre and Chancellery. To link ARTnode with the Indigenous precinct, Georgina Moran, an Indigenous artist working with her mother, Virginia, who has a disability, will carve her design into a large sandstone slab assisted by a stone carver. I have been involved with this family for over two years in my role as course tutor to Virginia, who is studying by correspondence, and I have seen the creative work these women produce as gifts in their strong community networks of family and friends. The recent move back to the bush onto her family�s land has provided Georgina with an opportunity to connect to a more traditional lifestyle that includes the pursuit of her artwork.

Echoing some of the policy issues of working with council staff, the move to the university has seen different types of influences challenge the inclusive community process. ARTnode has been streamlined and commodified into a more traditional public art project. ARTnode will however, provide artists with disabilities with an opportunity to extend and develop their professional practice. Several will be employed on this project, and many people with disabilities from the community will work on sculptural and planting components. One sculptor will run a workshop where the group, comprising people recently diagnosed with dementia, give a Polynesian-style decorative maze appearance to the work by carving the group�s selected words over the sculpture. A design by an artist with a disability will be made into a sculptural stone work, where there will be the opportunity to learn new skills in stone carving. Planting and horticulture workshops involving people with a disability will continue to be held on the site, and the plant types will be stratified to echo the fossils in the siltstone reminder of geological time that will become one of the sculptural works.

Looking forward
During 2001, ARTzone was legislated in the council�s plan of management, and the Lord Mayor recently offered $30,000 to re-initiate the project at the beachside park. The Steering Committee is aware of what has been lost and stolen in the efforts of trying to work with council staff, and has been frustrated at the lack of collaborative activity. Yet, the current hiatus gives us time to reflect and hopefully find a renewed energy that could motivate the wider community to pursue goals such at the creation of ARTzone, and to participate in critical thinking and problem solving concerning social and environmental issues.