Tuggeranong Community Arts Association Open Day, Saturday September 1.
Maybe it seemed a gamble a decade or so ago to force the Canberra Casino to compensate the community for the privilege of profiteering from people's weakness in imagining winning an easy wealth from blackjack.
Political imagination worked wonders a year or two later to split the ACT into 3 electorates before the money was pigeonholed, so it became politically correct to spend some in Belconnen (Murranji Theatre at Hawker College), some at CIT Woden (recording studio) and most in Nappy Valley: the Tuggeranong Arts Centre.
It wasn't Black Jack but Domenic Mico, the now famous Festival Director, who had become Tuggeranong's Community Arts Officer in 1992 - with the gall to follow through the construction of an oddly exciting building by architect May Flannery in pursuit of a brilliant vision of community and professional arts working together, despite rumblings from many that the money should have gone to Civic.
Mico moved on to one festival after another and back again, and Evol McLeod became the General Manager who has made the vision brighter in reality than anyone could imagine when the angles and planes of architecture were bare of technical equipment. But the art of the architect worked to create light and air, with stunning lakeside views, which have stimulated excitement in the artists, the administrators, the Tuggeranong community and especially the young people - no longer in nappies but finishing college, like the cast of Lockie Leonard Scumbuster, adapted by Messengers Project Officer Garry Fry from the novel by Tim Winton.
The Messengers Project is just one of many at TCA. It's about helping young people to be resilient in the face of the pressures of hormones and society which lead so many to depression and even suicide. Josh Broomfield, Elizabeth Fitzgerald, Tess MacDonald and Matt Friend - all previous Drama students with Fry at Lake Tuggeranong College - have stayed together after Year 12 to perform Winton's vigorous take on environmental pollution, with resilience as its theme, in primary and high schools. The show is an energetic piece of theatre-in-education which works at both the intellectual level on the environment issue, while middle school students especially also pick up on how Lockie's friend Egg's problems affect him. In post-show discussion they find themselves focussed invariably on positive suggestions for resolution. Winton/Fry's art and the youth of these performers works well indeed.
Open Day saw some 16 activities, among which were the Pet Parade judged by ALP MP Annette Ellis (Most Theatrical Pet was a ferret) and the Official Opening of the Shorelines Public Art Project by Lib ACT Minister for the Arts and Other Things, Brendan Smyth. Shorelines is a mosaic footpath with street banners and flags by the lake, leading to the Arts Centre, aiming to reflect the cultural identity of Tuggeranong. The Minister claimed to be a local identity and thanked all the dozens of people involved in the project, including the Australia Council and ACT Urban Services for funds and construction work.
ALP MLA Bill Wood, who hopes to be Minister for Education after the October 20 election, was there and says he will want the Arts in his portfolio rather than with Other Things. Domenic Mico couldn't not be there especially since he seeks election as a Democrat with a strong arts agenda: he is rethinking the way the Arts should be placed as the key to cultural and community renewal.
Just the buzz on Open Day was enough to justify that decade-old gamble. Imagination is certainly a winner at the TCA.
©Frank McKone, Canberra
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