Late night Library at Surry Hills, could it be the LibraryMuseum?

A hugely successful trial of late night live music, saucy storytelling and thought-provoking debates at Surry Hills Library has lead to the Late Night Library at Surry Hills Library becoming a permanent fixture….

Read the full article here…

A trial at Surry Hills Library of late night happenings has been successful as part of Sydney Council’s wider push to develop their Night Time City Policy.

 

Do you think something similar could work at Albury’s LibraryMuseum or Lavington’s Library?

What would you put on there if you had the chance?

 

Project Albury: Encouraging creative outlets in a regional setting

G’day how’s it going? My name is Tim Denshire-Key. Some of you might know me, most of you probably won’t. I grew up in Albury, and have been living in Melbourne for the last little while, studying. I’ve finally come to my last year of Industrial Design, and so a major project that will kick on for the whole year.

I’ve chosen Service Design as my focus area, and to use Albury as pilot site. Why do you ask? Well for a few reasons. Even though I left town around 5 years ago and have little chance of moving back anytime soon permanently, I can see a lot of potential in the town. Albury (and the surrounding area, even including Wodonga 🙂 ) is a place where there seems to be a lot of initiative. The amount of small businesses humming away, the sports teams and committees that go with them organising amongst themselves. The community groups banding together on various interests and causes. Albury and surrounds is definitely far from being a slow town. It may seem a bit quiet down Dean st on early Monday evening, but there’s no shortage of activity happening under the surface. This was only part of what brought me to focus on Albury however.

Albury’s darker side too was something that drew me to use it as the project’s focus. Since moving away there has been a steady stream of stories of increasing violence and brutality. There have been individual cases that when I heard of sickened and perplexed me how someone could act in such a disgusting manner towards someone else. When I was home I hadn’t seen this side of Albury and couldn’t understand why it was occurring.

This violence became the entry point into Project Albury (it’s name for now). Last semester I conducted around 15 interviews with various people from within the community. Young and old, health professionals, council members, publicans, patrons, security, teachers, students, parents journalists, business owners etc. I asked them about their perception of the violence in town. Why did they think it was happening? What do they think needs to change? The responses I got had some similar threads emerging. The violence was not seen as overly worse then other towns, but there had been some horrible attacks. The town seemed to be doing pretty well economically with plenty of work around if you wanted it. So people weren’t struggling so much economically.

Something that rose to the fore was the perception of young people in our community. While over 30% of the community is aged 25 and under (according to the 2006 Census) this third of the community is quite widely perceived as the causes of the problems, especially relating to violence. However the solutions put forward so far to solve especially the Dean st issues, seem to have been done with little consultation with this important stakeholder group. You lot. The lock out, extra security, push for CCTV might’ve have made a bit of a difference, but I don’t feel has addressed the roots of the problem. Part of this is that we’re bored. Don’t take offence to this, but that’s why I left.

So this semester I will be working on a service design proposal, targeted at young people to encourage more creative outlets and options for socialising, other then the pub. Don’t get me wrong, I like to go for a beer as much as anyone else, but it’s also good to have other options, bit of variety.

But I’d like to hear your thoughts on it? Do you think there’s enough to do around Albury? What would you like to see happen? Am I completely out of touch and should I just shut up and stay in Melbourne? What would you change/ start up if we really did take over the city?

I will be posting regularly my thoughts and plans for the project, and am looking to get your interest and feedback. Also would like you lot to get involved in events and happenings I plan to facilitate over the next 3 months.

The first thing you can do if you this sounds like it could be an interesting meander to go on, is to put down your thoughts and then pass the Facebook and blog details along to anyone else you think may be interested.

Let’s see where this will go…

Tim

Reflection on Albury visit

14-5-11

In the last few weeks I have been quite lost with the project. I’d done some interviews, bought a textbook, read through it, scoured the net a bit. But I was a bit lost with where to direct it from here. I had started at the beginning of the semester with a large-scale proposal that focused into a narrow aspect (urban violence) and now is beginning to bleed out again into different strands. Everyone I’ve had a reasonable conversation with in the last few months, I’ve had a go at explaining what I’m actually doing. It has always come back to

‘Yeh I’m doing Industrial Design. Ahh it relates cos its social design, you know applying design thinking to a social issue… yeh I know its bit hard to get you’re head around, I’m ahh still trying to work it out myself. It’s all quite vague atm…”

Thee vagaries (it’s now a word if it wasn’t before) have been playing on me. I ran away over Easter up the coast, round Sydney, down to Wollongong. The few weeks after that I did not a whole lot of much. I was planning a workshop, and in my defence, chasing some leads in Albury. Keeping busy, rustling some papers, but I didn’t feel I was really progressing so much.

Until now. Wednesday came up to Albury for an AOD forum and that seems to have sparked it. I think I’m learning about my design practice. I fire up for a bit at the beginning, and then it all goes into hibernation for a while. It isn’t until I immerse myself in what ever the project relates to in some way that things start sparking up again. For this it has been human interaction. Seeing the community in action, beginning to see how things happen here, how decisions are made. And I’m not really happy with the process. However as well as seeing things that irritate me, I’ve been uncovering people and things that I’m beginning to see connections between, or possible relationships forming. Last night I went to Midnight Basketball, a PCYC held event to get kids off the streets and keep them busy on a Friday night. It was an insight into one of my possible user groups and has given me a more realistic picture of what types of motivators, ways of pitching how the project progresses I need to keep in mind. I can’t quite translate all of this into words, but there’s something forming. I held a co-creation workshop this morning, which didn’t unfold as I expected but there was something there. I think the main thing is I don’ know what to expect or how this will run, but I need to keep pushing it, chasing leads, ideas, talking them through with people. Drawing tangents together into some sort of vaguely plausible mess and then seeing if I can sculpt them into something solid. Or go the opposite, and take them to some absurd end, that then part of can be chipped off as the seed for another tangent.

I keep saying to people when I tell them my ideas, ‘don’t think of the realities, plausibility, logistics of it just yet. More just think, fuck it’d be cool to do this!” If there’s an energy there that forms, and you get that, then you know it’s worth exploring a bit. Or leaving in the back to ferment a bit. Or just getting down on paper to get it out, and make room.

The problem of drawing my ideas is still an issue though. I think that has been part of the blockage. I feel I should push myself to express myself in this way, as it’s a weak area and I should practice it. But then instead I’ve stagnated and not written anything either. Rediscovering writing again however I have really enjoyed. It is something I enjoyed a lot at school and I find a great way to clarify my ideas. However with design, the written word (in my studies so far anyhow) are looked on as last resort or exotic activity. Give a 2^nd year class 1000 words to write by the next week and they’ll freak out! Give them 10pages to sketch and some will be quietly freaking out, but the others will be in their comfort zone. I need to push myself out of this comfort zone in a number of senses. Expand my communication capabilities, mainly drawing so I can sketch without hesitation, not to master level, but comfortable. Also I think I should try not to focus on the fact I’m studying my hometown. It is good as I know it quite well, have a network of people already to expand upon etc. But also there is the idea in the back of my head that the outcome (which I’m keen to try in the practice) will have my name attached to it, will effect the community in someway, and I suppose I’m worried it could be negative. But I think I’m getting ahead of myself here to think it will have that much of an impact. I’m going to work towards what comes too, and deal with the repercussions (positive or negative) later on if or when they happen.

 

I have a good feeling that what ever this is, is starting to spread and grow, but won’t be revealing itself quite yet…. Stay tuned

(and look I’ve nearly written 1000 words…)

Wollongong Wanderings

30-4-11

For the last week or so, over the Easter break, I have been on a bit of an experiment, shall we say. I have repeatedly consumed quantities of alcohol, been out in a public setting, and enjoyed myself. I have repeated this experiment three nights in a row within inner city Melbourne, two nights in inner city Sydney and one night in Wollongong. So far there has been no noticeable violence or aggression, apart from an irate housemate (who hadn’t put the pieces together, and wondered why the strange shirtless man that he had seen laid out on his couch this morning, was still laying there, despite giving him a days grace to move, before questioning his motives for being there.) I’ve been to pubs, bars, houses, parties, concerts, restaurants, but no violence was incited.

I’ve been speaking with a lot of people about this project. Trying to explain what it is, how it is developing and what it will be. What it is? Well looking into the perceptions of violence within a regional city. What people think of violence, why they think it’s happening, if they think it’s a problem, where its happening, who’s causing it, what needs to change/be done about it, what isn’t being done about it.

How it’s developing. Well I’ve interviewed a lot of people, got a lot of raw data. But I don’t exactly know what to do with it. I’ve pulled out some themes and ideas that I think seem to be strong within it. But I don’t have the research confidence yet to be able to take it and run. I have had no real teaching in research methods apart from reading a designerly book on service design, that seems to be a mixed bag collection of pre existing research methods re- badged. There is a struggle between how academic the project is/has to be and how practical/immediate/free/non self-explaining it can/is allowed to be. Is it a design project? Is it a social work project? Is it a research project?

Tonight I had an unexpected experience of one of the emerging themes. Walking home in Wollongong from the bowling club to my sister’s house, I passed through the city centre. I’m a fast walker, and ended up surrounded by a mass of little kids. They seemed tiny, 12-15 at the most I reckon (I overheard one saying someone was turning 15 soon) They where all dressed up in quasi grown up clothes, not in a sophisticated way, more clubby trashy way. While walking into this mass, I had the feeling of swimming through a school of fish. I was passing through, and they were relatively oblivious to me. No real acknowledgement, and just passed around me. I had a flight mentality though. To get out of there as quick as possible. I felt in danger, as though any minute they could become aware of my presence and turn. This was all irrational though. They had not acted in anyway to provoke me to think this way. For all I knew they where as scared of this strange bearded man holding a large umbrella in tattered jeans, as I was of them. I realised that there was no foundation to my fears and so slowed my pace to normal walking and moved with the mass of youngsters. I don’t know what the event was, or if this was a regular occurrence, but my next danger signals came from a group of four men in their 20-30s including one guy with a security tag and appearance. They said something about following where the kids went. They seemed a bit suss, either could be watching that the kids don’t cause any trouble, or up to cause some of their own. The crowd went a different direction to me and so I walked on leaving them in the distance.

This irrational fear, and lack of knowledge is something I think needs to be addressed as part of the project. If I was a different person, I may have felt that danger and responded in a different way. Maybe ask why the kids where out so late, call the police, tell them off for swearing. There are many paths the situation could have taken with different mixes. But now it is time for bed.

Reflections on initial interviews

18-4-11

Prior to the first round of interviews my insight into the perception of violence in Albury was primarily the Border Mail (local paper). They were the ones focusing heavily on Dean st and the state it had become. After conducting the first round I had a broader picture of what was happening. Dean st was still seen as an issue, but the prevalence of drug use was seen as a major contributing factor. The focus for the cause of the violence was primarily on excessive consumption of alcohol. However from my interviews drug use was seen as a major contributing factor that was not being looked at or acknowledged openly. There was also the issue of how sincere the efforts by the media to publicise the problem, as well how sincere venues initiatives to address it, were.  These actions where viewed as more business decisions rather then out of genuine care for the community.  There was a feeling also that the violence had always been there and always will. What had changed was our expectation that it shouldn’t happen.

Through my interviews with school and council contacts especially, the prevalence of violence effecting young people was raised. There was a belief that kids who dropped out of education early are more prevalent to becoming involved in violence. A number of reasons where given. Family upbringing and environment, boredom, not feeling connected, lack of opportunity etc. Programs created address these issues weren’t seen as reliable as they didn’t receive sustained funding, even when the program itself may be achieving good results. This has created a distrust of government departments/services. This was especially noted for programs aimed at Aboriginal youth.

Another strong theme to emerge was the lack of creative/cultural outlets that are accessible and welcoming to the mainstream of the community. Those existing were viewed as middle class and not very approachable. There was a lack of flexible spaces and free/cheap opportunities for young people and the community in general to express themselves. This fed into the Dean st issue too, with the lack of alternative venues that didn’t revolve around alcohol consumption.

The lack of sustained support for cultural events was viewed as an issue too.

Domestic violence was frequently raised as an issue as well.

From these initial interviews it has broadened the scope of the areas I’m looking at. There’s Dean st, young people at risk, and the overarching theme of lack of cultural options. Next I’d like to talk to some venues, to get their point of view. I’d also like to talk to some young people viewed to be at risk. There is also a disconnect between the old and young, that I think needs exploring.