Proposed Community Arts Centre at Yerongpilly
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- Category: News
- Published on Wednesday, 25 January 2012 20:19
- Written by Linda Back
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Fusions is one of a list of 21 arts groups which recently joined together to form a cooperative community named 'Brisbane Visual Arts Community'(BVAC) This initiative was driven by Lena Tisdall who, together with Fusions' member Judy Hamilton, has been for the past year or more actively pursuing the idea of creating a Community Arts Centre in Brisbane.
The aim is to provide a central location to house a number of community arts groups which currently have no home base, or are struggling to cover the costs of renting or maintaining property in Brisbane - a situation in which Fusions now finds itself. A community arts centre would allow the sharing of facilities such as office space, storage, library, gallery, shop, workshops etc, as well as fostering and enhancing networking between individual artists and art groups.
This vision has been given a huge boost in the last couple of months when their application to the State Government to establish such a centre at the Yerongpilly transit oriented development (TOD) met with strong support from local member,Simon Finn MP, member for Tennyson.
The Yerongpilly TOD is a joint partnership between the State Government and the Brisbane City Council and is a site of 14 hectares of land alongside the Brisbane River which was formerly an animal research centre. More information can be found at the Queensland Government local area planning website.
There are four heritage buildings on site, two suitable for clean workshops, meeting rooms, storage and gallery spaces, and the other two for dirty spaces - including one with hosable concrete floor which was identified as 'perfect for a ceramic studio' (quote Simon Finn). None of the buildings were flood affected.
The site is still subject to the flood commission of inquiry, but has effectively been ruled out for residential development. With support already expressed from representatives of the State Government and Brisbane City Council, it looks like a community arts centre is definitely a possibility and could be a great opportunity for Fusions, so we will give them all the support we can. With elections coming up for both State and Local governments, nothing will be decided for a while yet, but meanwhile BVAC is busy setting up the processes to give the proposal the best chance possible.