Blue Mountains Cultural Centre Don McGregor

In the late 1990s, the council started a process called a charrette to upgrade Katoomba and meet the needs of residents. This led to the creation of the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, which included an art gallery, library, and other facilities. The development was complex and controversial, but there was extensive consultation with the community. The Cultural Centre has had a transformative effect on the arts and cultural life of the Blue Mountains. It has become a focal point for artists and the community, with features like a water garden and a viewing platform. The development of the Cultural Centre is part of a larger cultural revolution in the area, and there are ongoing plans for further redevelopment and environmental protection initiatives. Overall, the Cultural Centre has been a valuable asset for the community, providing opportunities for expression and community engagement. Don, can you tell the listeners about the process that led up to the eventual completion of the building that houses the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre? Yes, as you say, it was an interesting process. It came about in the early, or the late 1990s, Council began a process called a charrette about how to upgrade Katoomba and meet some of the needs of residents in the area. Katoomba at that time was pretty run down, it didn't have an art gallery, it had a library and most of the art, most of the people who were artists gathered in sort of local township ones like Blacklea Art Society and those sorts of things, so there was no city-wide art gallery. One of the things the charrette came up with was having an art gallery and in the general scheme of improvements to the city, for instance, they created the Carrington area and the Carrington Gardens where communities can meet. That was just purely a part of the Carrington, it was privately owned and they've got some sort of lease agreement with the owners of Carrington. So that was another aspect of that, but there was, at the time, if I could just expand on it a bit, the late 90s and the early 2000s were quite an exciting time in the mountains. We had, the council was developing its LEP, which is quite a revolutionary one, very much concentrated on protecting the environment. The World Heritage Listing was granted by UNESCO in the early 2000s, 2001 I think, and there was the declaration of the gully as an Aboriginal place in about 2002 I think. So around that time there was a lot of transformation going on in the city and it was being led by people of good faith. Jim Angel was the mayor, Bob Dee was the state member, and Kerry Bartlett, a Liberal, was the Liberal federal member, but also very committed to community values and those sorts of things. So it worked very well and we had the Carr Labor government which was obsessed with environmental protection and expanding national parks and those sorts of things. So a very exciting time and the Charrette happened right in the middle of that and developed these plans for Katoomba. Right, very interesting. The fact that it was a building that incorporated the shopping centre below it with coals, that seems like a pretty revolutionary idea. Revolutionary? Well yeah, people will call it revolutionary. It was a sort of, if I produce a word, it was a sort of bastardised public-private partnership really, but one that was kind of necessary because it was the only way it was possible. The council wasn't sitting on all this money. No, the council wasn't sitting on all the money, they didn't have the money, they didn't have the land. Yeah, okay. The land they got from the education department, it was the old Katoomba High School site and parts of the shopping centre area that they owned. They got the money from the federal and state government and from coals. On the basis that council would get a strata title to the top floor of the thing and part of the parking would be designated as council parking. Okay, that would have been pretty complex. It was very complex and quite contentious in the community. Katoomba particularly has always been a pretty political, labour kind of area and still is. Public-private partnerships at the time and privatisation was very unpopular because state governments were trying to offload the electricity grid and everything was being flogged off as fast as you could. Wow, wow. Yeah, there was quite a bit of contention and some of that rolled over into the design of the place. Some quite valid criticisms like, it's a very hard place to find. Once you've found it, you always go back. Especially visitors. Yeah, yeah. And it's not that easy to access. Yeah. You've got to go upstairs and laneways and those sorts of things. But council is planning on addressing that. But yeah, so there was, poor old Jim Angel took a fair bit of flack because of the nature of the development. Yeah. Was there consultation around it? There was huge consultation. Was there? Not just simply about the art gallery, but about the whole town, how it presented, parking, all those sorts of things. Traffic controls, all those sorts of things were addressed in this charrette process. It took a couple of years and there were public meetings all the time. There was open to submissions and they got some very long winded ones. And how do you spell charrette? Look, it's C-H-A-R-R-E-T-T-E, I think. Okay. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. I think it just simply means consultation. Consultation. Yeah. Yeah. A nice artistic sort of... Sound. Yeah, it does. It has a bit of a flair to it, doesn't it, that word? Yeah. What we have now is a complex that provides the Blue Mountains community with a number of facilities and lots of opportunities for different activities to take place there. What do you think really shines for you with the facilities? For me it was a total package. It was like a mini cultural revolution. They've got the library there that came a little later, but it was at the time quite a unique design for a library. It was cognizant of the fact that young people up here didn't have access to the internet, and all of them didn't. For sure. It was a very poor area, and it had little nooks and stuff where kids could meet and talk, and they could go out and get a coffee in the coffee shop. It had the art gallery itself, and divided by that beautiful open space with a magnificent view of the Externa Valley, a water garden there to recycle. You were talking about the water garden, which I'm not really aware of, so I'll have to have a look at that. Is it still there? Yes. As you go up onto the viewing platform, it's on the right, and it recycles water from the runoff and goes through the toilet system and those sorts of things. Yes, that's right. A little bit coloured or murky, which is wonderful. Yes. What about the art gallery, Don? I think you were saying that had a major effect on the arts. The art gallery, yes, the art gallery has really transformed the cultural life of the Blue Mountains. I don't think that's too strong a word. It coincided with quite a demographic change in the Blue Mountains with younger people coming up here. They were certainly lots younger than I was. I am, I mean. A lot of them were artists in the city. It made a focal point for art, people interested in the arts. In combination with the library and the cafe, the viewing platform became a community meeting place. It had the World Heritage Interpretive Centre there, which was good not only for visitors but for locals to familiarise themselves with the broader country that they lived on. Yes, it really has transformed the mountains as a complex of things. That, of course, has been added to by the Blue Mountains Theatre down in Thurrub in Springwood, which has met that need for a theatre space, which was originally part of the plan, I think, for the Cultural Centre, but there was no room. Okay, yes. There was no room left. It's kind of interesting in this development of the arts and culture in the Blue Mountains following on from the Charrette and the World Heritage listing. Currently, there's a consultation process going on around Katoomba redevelopment or renewing Katoomba and the planetary health initiative out at the golf course, which is brought together National Parks, the World Heritage Institute and Council, plus a whole series of universities, you know, bent on protecting our fragile environment. Yes, so the last 20 years have been quite a revolution in the mountains and I think it's set for another one with the World Heritage Institute and universities taking an active interest in it. So I think, you know, the revolution's got a way to go yet. Thanks very much, Don. It's been really interesting reflecting on the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre and, yeah, when you create a space like that, it just opens so many opportunities for the community and for people to express themselves and do all sorts of wonderful things. So it's a really big asset. Yeah. Thanks, Don. Thank you.