Harbinger Consultants
Creative Sustainability :: Place, People, Product, Potential, Partnership + Pollinating2012 | A creative, promising and memorable year
We hope that 2012 is a creative, promising and memorable year for all our colleagues and clients.
With our Creative Sustainability approach, we ring in the new year with a diverse project load including:
- Commencement of cultural planning for the Torres Strait Regional Authority, in partnership with Nguin Warrup (Black Drum)
- Public art masterplanning and project development with Translink and Urban Land Development Authority
- Research for several Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Assessments for Connect for Effect
- Cultural Tourism initiative with Blackall-Tambo Regional Council
- Content and editorial with Aboriginal Business Magazine
- A speculative studio project, Enabling Suburbs, working with an interdisciplinary team to explore design futures for suburbs
- Several facilitations for organisations and community groups
We also maintain our involvements in Regional Development Australia Brisbane and the South East Queensland Indigenous Chamber of Commerce.
JM John Armstrong & Linda Carroli
Harbinger Consultants
Creative Sustainability :: People, Place, Product, Potential, Partnership + Pollinating
PROJECT | Torres Strait Community Cultural Plan
We end the year with very good news. A partnership of Nguin Warrup (Black Drum) and Harbinger Consultants has successfully tendered to develop a pilot community cultural plan for the Torres Strait Islands to support the cultural maintenance and development of Torres Strait communities. The plan will have a high degree of community ownership and engagement. Planning will ensure community management of cultural heritage, identify demographic composition and cultural resources, identify community aspirations, skills and opportunities, and skill interested community members in monitoring their cultural plan. The project is commissioned by the Torres Strait Regional Authority.
APPROACH | Interpretation as Value
Place-based projects often require interpretive approaches: we need to read and interpret the cultural and natural landscape. Our cultural heritage, placemaking and public art work involves aspects of interpretation and interpretive planning to provide ways of understanding sites, buildings, landscapes and objects. James Carter defines “interpretation as helping people appreciate something that you feel is special.” It is a kind of sensemaking and storytelling process that allows people (usually visitors) to find their bearings in a story that may not be their own. Because interpretive planning is a significant part of public programming, communication and engagement is at its core. Interpretive approaches are also embedded in Harbinger’s public art projects, through John’s innovative curatorial and masterplanning work, to convey an understanding or expression of place.
Our work with the Tambo community is focused on the relocation of a disused farm building to a new site. However, it’s more than that – it’s about the sense of pride the community has in its history as well as the desire to share its rural heritage with visitors. The building symbolises something greater than itself. Moving a building can change it and its relationships to place, so we need to work on approaches to ensure that the story can be communicated in its regional and local context. This is driven by the community itself and we have conducted several community conversations to outline the project. Interpretive planning is foundational for visitor experience planning. As a cultural tourism initiative, there is a need to ensure a quality visitor experience within the new facility as well as throughout the whole town.
While cultural heritage assessments aren’t focused on interpretive planning, they can help establish the significance of a place. This can be the precursor to other interpretive activities. Connect for Effect’s Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Assessments, with research support by Harbinger, a hidden history is being revealed for the purposes of protecting it from inappropriate development and to create greater awareness of the cultural significance of places. Freeman Tilden (quoted by Carter) said that “interpretation not only tells people what is interesting about a place, it aims to convince people of its value, and encourage them to want to conserve it.” Connect for Effect works closely with communities to find the right balance between archival documentation and community voice. In the longer term, oral history initiatives will be established within these communities. In assuring the preservation of these places and recognition of their significance, traditional owners are enabled to assert stewardship and develop interpretive and conservation plans for these areas.
DIARY | Creative Clusters in China
by Sarah Pragnell
The unexpected growth in the creative industries has led to a resurgence in investment and exploration. New players have begun to take on the established giants as each battles to claim the next Big Idea or Big Trend in the global domain. Despite its industrial beginnings, China has begun to emerge as one of these new contestants. On a recent trip to Qingdao and Shanghai, I witnessed how new regulatory policies are enabling the establishment of creative clusters: a concept that sees a myriad of creative businesses banding together in a singular location for the benefit of economic stability, inspiration and locational prestige. Yet, the formula remains incomplete and little has been done to explain why some of these creative clusters succeed whilst others fail. Here at Harbinger Consultants, my QUT Mentor – John Armstrong – has agreed to allow me to share my findings in this downloadable reflective diary piece and my portfolio of creative works at www.sarahpragnell.com.au.
Over the past semester, John participated in the QUT Mentoring Program as mentor for Sarah Pragnell, a Creative Industries student.
PROJECTS | With a bang!
At this time of year, business tends to slow down, but we are ending 2011 on an upward swing with a healthy mix of community, learning and project commitments. Recently, we’ve enjoyed participating in and supporting a range of community and learning initiatives including Chairing a session at QUThinking 2011 where postgraduate architecture and urban planning students presented their research to their peer, and attendance at an NBN briefing session about broadband and the Brisbane rollout, for which Aspley is the pilot. Tomorrow, on behalf of RDA Brisbane, Linda is chairing a business breakfast to discuss opportunities for small business in the digital economy. The event is focused on ensuring engagement with the digital economy to enhance business process and performance. We also attended a One Just World panel discussion on Rebuilding after Disasters, which presented a range of perspectives on disaster response. The discussants all affirmed that people are the priority in disaster situations and that is vital to listen and learn from local communities. Linda is attending an Arts Queensland forum, Creative Capital: Where next for arts and culture in Queensland?, next month to discuss strategic directions for arts and culture in Queensland.
We’ve also just returned from Tambo in central western Queensland where we’ve commenced the second stage of our work on a cultural heritage tourism facility in the locality. During our visit, we undertook further consultations, townscape investigation and a site visit, and further refined the concept and vision with local stakeholders. The development of this facility is drawing on local knowledge, enthusiasm and identity to design a relevant, engaging and unique visitor experience; it is also grounded in ideas about living local economies and regional development with a view to enhancing the outback tourism offer. Architect, Jason Haigh (cloud-dwellers) is working with us to prepare site plans and indicative designs as part of the project. John’s work on public art masterplanning for Translink’s Browns Plains project has also commenced. John is also contributing, as editor and writer, to the ABM (Aboriginal Business Magazine) with the first issue now out. John has interviewed and profiled several inspiring entrepreneurs for this issue. Linda continues to work with a colleague on several Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Assessments. Other projects are also on the go and in the pipeline including cultural development, stakeholder engagement, research, strategic planning and facilitation.
Our studio work bubbles away with the Enabling Suburbs project now having published a Q&A with each of the participating creatives (Jason Haigh, Chiara Camponeschi and us) and plans in development for a collaborative venture in the near future.
