The worlds smallest continent doesn’t mean small ideas

The development of the arts is what defines our history. It’s about us. What we feel, how we express ourselves how we define our values and our future. So are the arts are vitally important to us.

Traditional history has been defined by wars or conflict. We say history ends with conflict but the journey is where the arts story begins. It reflects the way we thought and think about things, our aspirations, what we believed in and believe in, and how these things are reflected with the means available to us at the time.

So expression and discovery of self and humanity is what makes us human. It’s what reflects our history and what guides our future.

Sydney is a global city and fits into one of the top 10 liveable cities in the world. But, unlike the other global cities, Sydney does not have an art zone to reflect the yearnings and desires of ‘us’ nor a place which gives us an insight of what sort of world of ideas exists today, from within and without.

Can you imagine a home of creativity, ever changing, evolving, expressing us and what we do or what we think. Ideas of today and tomorrow, ideas of the world, of cultures, of technology. Imagine a place free of government intervention and control. Free of vested interests and manipulation. Free for expression of how we feel. Free for all those who to participate in all things creative, meaningful.

A dream?

Imagine, in one of the world’s greatest democracies we don’t have a place to reach out to the world to express how it could be. How we believe in our self, our ideas, our planet, our home.

The world’s smallest continent does not mean keeping small ideas.

The NSW government (that’s us) owns 50 hectares of harbour land right in the heart of Sydney. We can be part of working out for us what should be done with this remarkable asset.

SAZ wants:

• A place for creativity at the White Bay Power Station as part of the Bays Precinct;
• 10 hectares of land to make Sydney a true global city;
• Rozelle, Balmain and the community to embrace this idea;
• To extend the vision well outside the land controlled by government.

There are precedents. MONA, Tasmania, the Tate Modern and South Bank London, 798 Beijing.

We know what happened at MONA in Hobart. It took a visionary gambler to do this and it worked because he had the passion.

Tate Modern in London started as a museum and metamorphosed into something much bigger. It grew into a contemporary arts centre swallowing South Bank and became the world’s most popular art zone. It evolved because of the yearning for freedom of expression from people.

798 Beijing was an accident. Some old land near the Olympic site in 2008 that the Chinese Government thought was a dumb idea. It now rivals the summer palace as a destination in Beijing. Not bad!

It’s our turn.

It’s Australia’s turn to say we can do better. We have a place. Let’s embrace our humanity our creativity our freedom. Let’s have SAZ.