By Bryce Ives
Since writing about Creative West in last month’s Westsider, I have had plenty of people approach me with similar concerns. I have also spent more time with Council’s 75-page community engagement report, and one thing is clear: Creative West has not suffered from a lack of extensive consultation.
Maribyrnong City Council has surveyed, workshopped, co-designed, surveyed again, advertised, popped up, and workshopped again.
It is quite the campaign, given that Council had already endorsed a concept, appointed a design team, and secured federal funding for the business case and design of a precinct, including a 500-seat performance venue, a contemporary library, and public space.
Council says this latest engagement is not about ‘starting again’ but about checking that Creative West remains on the right track. That would be reasonable if the question for Footscray had stayed the same. It has not.
Footscray has been through a turbulent few years. Concerns about safety and public drug use, vacant shops, pressure on traders, the night-time economy and the condition of the CBD have become highly visible and often bitterly contested. There is real disagreement about what has gone wrong, who is responsible and what Council should do about it.
The context should change the test. But instead, much of the engagement still asks very simple questions about what people want from the venue, the library, and the public space.
The answers are hardly surprising: affordable performances, local and multicultural artists, rehearsal spaces, live music, greenery, accessibility and somewhere safe and welcoming.
I want those things too, but asking people what they want inside a new cultural precinct is not the same as asking whether a $148 million project is the best bet for Footscray right now.
It does not tell us what people think when the costs, alternatives and trade-offs are put in front of them, and the $148 million construction cost is only the beginning.
A 500-seat theatre needs staff, technicians, utilities, programming, marketing, maintenance and equipment replacement. The 518-seat Drum Theatre in Greater Dandenong is Council-owned and operated. More than a decade ago, Council was subsidising it by more than $700,000 a year ongoing. Adjusted for inflation, that is roughly $950,000 today, before major capital renewal.
What is not clear is: if Council eventually spends around $1 million or more each year operating it, will that be new money for culture? Or will it squeeze grants, festivals, partnerships, independent artists and organisations such as Footscray Community Arts and Kindred Studios?
Before Creative West creates a permanent claim on Council’s budget, we should know what that means for everything else. Council confirmed last year that SGS Economics and Planning had prepared an investment case with forecasts for expenditure, revenue and visitation. When asked to release it, Council said it was not public. Council also said the full operating cost had not been determined and the operating model was still being finalised.
I have worked as a consultant on comparable projects. At this stage, the likely operating model and indicative annual cost should be developed sufficiently to be shared publicly. Doing this would build confidence and trust in the process.
There is another assumption worth testing: does Council need to operate the venue itself?
Councils in Melbourne already have different models. In Stonnington, Chapel Off Chapel’s net annual cost has been put at around $1 million with Council fully running the venue. Port Phillip owns Gasworks but funds an independent organisation to operate it. Hobsons Bay supports The Substation through a funding agreement, while The Substation also attracts state, federal and philanthropic investment.
These differences determine who carries the risk, how flexible the venue can be, and what Council spends each year. Maribyrnong should test them before locking one in.
And that leads to an even bigger question: does public cultural investment have to mean Council ownership of Creative West at all?
Consider Kindred Studios in Yarraville. Kindred has operated since 2005 and already provides rehearsal rooms, studios, co-working space, film and photography facilities, dance space and performance venues. Day and night, Kindred is buzzing to the brim with creative activity. Much of that resembles the creative infrastructure Creative West says it wants to provide.
Council could invest in public outcomes through spaces it does not currently own: affordable rehearsal hours, artist development, performances, community access, or technical upgrades tied to public use.
The real question is whether Maribyrnong will create more cultural value by building and running a new institution from scratch, or by investing in the organisations, artists and spaces already doing the work.
The real test should be which option delivers the most cultural value per public dollar.
The Council’s own engagement report suggests this question needs to be asked –creative-sector participants wanted affordable rehearsal, studio and production facilities, not simply another auditorium. They disagreed over venue size and raised concerns about affordability and the impact on smaller venues. Those concerns go to the heart of whether Creative West is the right project, at the right scale, in the right form.
There is also a broader problem with the consultation itself. Council’s report says the engagement both informs the design and “supports ongoing advocacy for the funding required to deliver the project”.
Those are two very different purposes.
Council has a $10 million planning, engagement and design program. The lead Architectus contract alone is worth about $3.58 million. That leaves more than $6 million across other design work, consultants, project management, engagement, communications and advocacy.
Council should show us clearly where that money is going right now. Imagine what Footscray Community Arts, Snuff Puppets, Women’s Circus or Kindred could do with $1.5 million each right now: commission bold new work, employ artists and leverage investment from elsewhere.
What I’m beginning to realise is there is a contradiction at the heart of this process. Council is advertising that “Creative West is coming”. But like Godot, Creative West may still not arrive after Council has spent this $10 million.
The deeper I have dug into the project, the less this has looked like consultation and the more it has looked like a campaign. But a campaign for whom?
Is Council trying to convince a cash-strapped Victorian Government to fund it? The Federal Government to put in more? Or the people of Maribyrnong that Creative West is already inevitable?
At times, it feels like an episode of Utopia: the posters are printed, the slogan is locked in, the consultation is underway, and somewhere in the background someone is still trying to work out how the thing will be funded and operated.
Council is consulting, advocating, and promoting Creative West as something that is “coming”, while the project remains unfunded, its operating model unresolved, and the final decision supposedly open.
If Creative West is still a choice, we should treat it like one.
