Imagining Empty Spaces into Social Spaces

Submitted by Hannah Suarez on Wednesday, 28 October 20097 Comments

Han­nah Suarez from Bris­bane Cre­at­ive Indus­tries shares inspir­ing stor­ies of com­munit­ies and organ­isa­tions who have spot­ted empty spaces in their cit­ies — from aban­doned shop­fronts to car park­ing spaces — adop­ted and trans­formed them through creativity.

Part 1: Empty spaces becom­ing per­man­ent social spaces

In my first entry for Social Spaces theme, I focused on Forti­tude Val­ley and the move­ment of people, pro­jects and ideas into what was an inac­cess­ible, red-light dis­trict into a cre­at­ive indus­tries hub with vari­ous enter­tain­ment options.  Now, I want you to ima­gine an area in your city, an area that is empty and void of People, Pro­jects and Ideas and ima­gine what the area will look like if it was being shaken and renewed phys­ic­ally.  One of these areas in Bris­bane is Stone Corner which, in tour­ism mar­ket­ing copy, is cur­rently being pro­moted as one of the retail/factory out­let areas to visit and an altern­at­ive shop­ping dis­trict to areas such as the Bris­bane CBD:

“Fash­ion bar­gain hunters, this is the place for you.  Stones Corner fea­tures a wide range of brand name fact­ory out­lets, and you’ll always find a fant­astic deal or two. Out­lets include Cue, Just Jeans, Math­ers, Col­or­ado, Rock­mans, Table Eight and Strandbags…”

Source: Queens­land Hol­i­days (2009)

stonescornerbrisbane Imagining Empty Spaces into Social Spaces

But the loc­als can tell you that there is much to be desired with a descrip­tion of this type (Our­Bris­bane is a bit out­dated at the moment as well).  Des­pite being only ten minutes from the Bris­bane CBD, the emer­gence of mega fact­ory out­lets (DFO) and the effects of the global fin­an­cial crisis means many empty spaces in Stones Corner:

Stones Corner - empty shops

What can be done to help revital­ise these empty spaces into an actual place for the pub­lic, urban centres (for com­mer­cial and/or enter­tain­ment pur­poses), more meet­ing places for people to exchange and work on ideas?

These build­ings will even­tu­ally be redeveloped and occu­pied, but who will be the new ten­ants?  These new ten­ants will be one of the forces that could help reshape the image of Stones Corner – from being an area to go to for bar­gain shop­ping into the pos­sib­il­ity of some­thing else.  It is much bet­ter if that ‘some­thing else’ is to be pub­lic idea spaces, meet­ing places, mar­ket places, places for cre­at­ive indus­tries entre­pren­eurs, busi­nesses and organisations.

There are many examples of such indi­vidu­als who adop­ted a phys­ical space and ren­ov­ated it into their own vis­ion such as the story of The Space in Ken­more and 19Karen in the Gold Coast.  An example of a large scale idea that reju­ven­ated empty com­mer­cial prop­er­ties into spaces that can be loved and used by the pub­lic is Renew New­castle:

“Renew New­castle was foun­ded to help solve the prob­lem of Newcastle’s empty CBD. While the long term pro­spects for the redevel­op­ment of Newcastle’s CBD are good, in the mean­time many sites are boarded up, fall­ing apart, van­dal­ised or decay­ing because they are is no short term for use them and no one tak­ing respons­ib­il­ity for them.

Renew New­castle has been set up to clean up these build­ings and get the city act­ive and used again.”

Part 2:  Empty spaces becom­ing tem­por­ary social spaces

Brisbane's 2high Festival | Photo by Trent Barton

Brisbane’s 2high Fest­ival | Photo by Trent Barton

Let us move away from Stones Corner and explore how empty spaces, not neces­sar­ily abso­lutely empty but spaces void of people, ideas and pro­jects either all of the time or at cer­tain times. How can these areas be trans­formed into tem­por­ary and mixed-use spaces?

I atten­ded the Metro Arts forum (part of Bris­bane Fest­ival’s Under the Radar fringe theatre pro­gram) in which one of the suggestions/ideas was to bring Under the Radar out­side of the CBD hub of Metro Arts, a build­ing which holds and a num­ber ten­ants, and into other areas includ­ing empty stores and space.  Other examples within Bris­bane have largely drawn from events where cre­at­ive uses of empty spaces have trans­formed it into some­thing else:

  • Straight Out of Bris­bane fest­ival in 2006 trans­formed empty spaces into meet­ing and social spaces such as Ann’s Street Party.
  • Bris­bane Festival’s Under the Radar pro­gram included Street Feats which allowed fringe theatre and per­form­ance to occupy the Bris­bane CBD.  Cer­tain areas of Brisbane’s key shop­ping centre, the Queen Street Mall, was trans­formed tem­por­ar­ily to hold a performance/installation into another world (Nok Cha Cafe) and a mul­ti­me­dia pro­jec­tion, Giants Among Us, reminds the pub­lic on the import­ance of tak­ing chil­dren into account dur­ing the devel­op­ment of a new pub­lic urban space.
  • Bris­bane will soon be hold­ing an inde­pend­ent fringe event across four ven­ues around Bris­bane called bitsF.
  • Bris­bane PARK­ing Day have leg­ally trans­formed urban pub­lic spaces (park­ing areas) into spaces occu­pied and used in cre­at­ive ways such as 2high Festival’s park­ing spot (see below for photo by Trent Barton)
PARKing Day at 2high Festival | Photo by Trent Barton

PARK­ing Day at 2high Fest­ival | Photo by Trent Barton

The value of bring­ing new ideas and pro­jects into spaces nor­mally not con­sidered to be ‘home’ for these pro­jects, there­fore empty spaces, is an oppor­tun­ity to bring in and inter­act with new audi­ences.  How­ever, there are also the oper­a­tional and logist­ical con­cerns of this such as the cost of pub­lic liab­il­ity insur­ance and the risks asso­ci­ated in mov­ing away from an estab­lished venue and even estab­lished cre­at­ive clusters.  How­ever, there are suc­cess­ful examples of per­man­ent and tem­por­ary use of spaces.  Indi­vidu­als and groups have nav­ig­ated the dif­fi­culties and chal­lenges of trans­form­ing empty spaces into some­thing that mani­fests a vis­ion that adds value, cre­ates new oppor­tun­it­ies, inspires the com­munity, and cre­ates a new iden­tity for the space.

Are there empty spaces being trans­formed in your city? Which spaces are ripe for trans­form­a­tion? Share your thoughts in the com­ments sec­tion below to join the conversation.

7 Comments »

  • Kerryanne said:

    The idea of Stones Corner has poten­tial. I think artist inhab­it­ing spaces is an excit­ing idea that has suc­cess­ful pre­ced­ence, how­ever I think it requires fur­ther sup­port to be sus­tain­able. For the revital­isa­tion of a sub­urb such as Stones Corner I would offer that coupled with afford­able accom­mod­a­tion would see artist live and work in a sub­urb. I offered this idea at a work­shop run by Bris­bane City Council’s Cre­at­ive Com­munit­ies team at the Young People and the Arts Queens­land Youth Arts Mar­ket 19–21 Octo­ber. Per­haps even if hous­ing and shop­front pack­ages (e.g. is there accom avail­able above some vacant shop fronts) then the idea becomes more sus­tain­able. Coupled with busi­ness ment­or­ing to run sus­tain­able arts busi­nesses in com­mer­cial basis. Other non-commercial arts prac­tice in the area might still be offered sub­sid­ised accom on the basis of the artists pro­du­cing pub­lic art works and per­form­ance for the area. If a sys­tem was set up like hous­ing com­mis­sion where the artist could own their accom­mod­a­tion for the com­mis­sion — artist commission!

    28 October 2009 at 21:35
  • Hannah Suarez (author) said:

    Hi Kerry­anne
    I atten­ded one of the YPAA events too! What was the name of the work­shop that you conducted?

    29 October 2009 at 04:32
  • peter boyle said:

    Han­nah and Kerryanne

    I have a great interest in the inser­tion of cre­at­ive endeav­ours into spaces made redund­ant or vacant as a res­ult of pending devel­op­ment, eco­nomic cir­cum­stance or other influ­ences that cre­ate a stasis or iner­tia in places.

    Kerry­anne, your interest in Stones Corner is par­tic­u­larly per­tin­ent as our com­pany, Verge, is loc­ated there. We are a firm of land­scape archi­tects who, amongst many other things, look at the activ­a­tion of urban (and non-urban) places through cre­at­ive mech­an­isms — par­tic­u­larly those avail­able loc­ally. Since early this year, we have been for­mu­lat­ing a plan of attack for Stones Corner based on the use of vacant shop­fronts, in par­tic­u­lar, to accom­mod­ate install­a­tion art from emer­ging artists to assist in activ­at­ing the centre and gen­er­at­ing a bit of a spark with the loc­als — com­munity mem­bers, traders and prop­erty own­ers alike.

    This is not a new idea by any means, but an achiev­able one in the con­text of this par­tic­u­lar place. Since pulling together a pro­posal earlier this year, we have been liais­ing with the Stones Corner Com­munity & Devel­op­ment Asso­ci­ation (SCCEDA) to get the pro­ject up and going. Lauren Hadler, a former employee and a Mas­ters stu­dent at QUT Cre­at­ive Indus­tries has been instru­mental in giv­ing the endeav­our — “Cre­at­ive Out­lets” (a work­ing title) some cur­at­orial back­bone and lin­ing up a num­ber of emer­ging artists for a pilot launch early in Decem­ber — hopefully!

    Bris­bane City Coun­cil are keen to part­ner with SCCEDA to get the pilot pro­ject going and we envis­age at least a six month dur­a­tion of cyc­ling exhib­i­tions in at least some of the more long­stand­ing vacant shop­fronts. Jeremy and Athol from BCC Com­munity Ser­vices have been instru­mental in this endeav­our and con­tinue to con­trib­ute some great ideas as well as some fin­an­cial sup­port to start the ball rolling — at least. Lauren is work­ing on grant fund­ing and Verge will be work­ing with SCCEDA to get fin­an­cial and in-kind sup­port from loc­als and who­ever we can. I hope it’s obvi­ous, but our com­pany is doing this for the local com­munity and to pro­mote an arts/creative cul­ture loc­ally — our input and time on this pro­ject is at no cost to any­one but ourselves!

    There are other “pay-offs” as well and these relate dir­ectly to the devel­op­ment of a pro­act­ive SCCEDA and to cre­ate some inter­est­ing dia­logue to move the centre for­ward at a time when a lot of change is pro­posed loc­ally with infra­struc­ture and development.

    It would be great to occupy vacant build­ings with cre­taive ‘busi­nesses’ to gen­er­ate new and dif­fer­ent enter­prise in the area as per “Renew New­castle” — and this may pos­sible to a small extent — but the emphasis at the moment is on activ­a­tion and cre­at­ive inser­tion. It’s a start and a spark to ignite some local interest and think­ing about “what could be…”.

    Kerry­anne — let me know if you or your net­work would like to look at some sort of ‘inser­tion’ at Stones Corner. I can set you up with Lauren and Jeremy to explore some pos­sib­il­it­ies there.

    Han­nah, we saw your present­a­tion at ‘Cre­at­ive Drinks’ a couple of months ago. Deb Rob­bins and I presen­ted at the fol­low­ing and most recent one — small world!

    Cheers
    Peter

    29 October 2009 at 10:33
  • Hannah Suarez (author) said:

    Hi Peter,

    Thanks so much for for­ward­ing the art­icle on to your col­leagues (I was actu­ally in the Val­ley last week and ran into your col­league, Jeremy, who men­tioned your post too).

    You (and the rest of the read­ers of Cre­at­ive Cit­ies) may be inter­ested in this blog post which roun­ded up a forum dis­cus­sion last month “Cre­at­ing a viable future for a cre­at­ive Bris­bane) at http://www.briscreativeindustries.com/blog/2009/11/3/creating-a-viable-future-for-a-creative-brisbane-guest-post.html

    3 November 2009 at 07:42

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