From The Australian:

August 18, 2006

Perth in the market for some personality

AFTER three exciting years working and studying film-making in London, New York and Melbourne, Kate Beverley has come back to boring old Perth: Dullsville, Backwaterland, the town at the end of the Nullarbor.

Perth has had its share of bucketing as the remote capital where nothing’s allowed. No poker machines, no daylight saving, no Sunday trading, no outdoor food stalls without permits. No fun, according to a recent national poll that rated Perth as the least interesting capital city in Australia.

Except that Beverley, 26, doesn’t see it that way. “I don’t think it’s a dull place at all and coming back I’ve noticed a huge amount of energy,” says Beverley, who has shown her short films at Cannes and St Tropez film festivals and who now works at the state’s film funding body, Screenwest. She nominates beach life, great pubs and a lively local music scene as reasons that creative people – including the John Butler Trio and hit band Eskimo Joe, who live on the west coast – don’t die of boredom.

How to turn Perth into a creative capital has become a popular topic these days and wealth is one of the reasons. The China-driven resources boom has delivered the state Government its highest budget surplus ($2billion) and a gold-plated credit rating. West Australians have more cars and boats, more expensive real estate and more job options than most other Australians.

But in a city largely devoid of world-class architecture, with few decent performing arts and sporting venues and a lamentable lack of city night-life, people are beginning to ask: what should we usefully be doing with our wealth to make Perth less dull?

One strategy is to adopt the approach of former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett’s government, which set out to attract cultural and sporting events and invested heavily in infrastructure. A Committee for Perth has been formed, a business-based focus group funded by resource giants Rio Tinto and BHP, Alinta Gas and the state Government. The group aims to generate activities that will make Perth “more vibrant, more creative, more diverse and more innovative”.

Another initiative is Creative Capital, a series of discussions launched last year by the state’s craft and design body Form. The first speaker was US academic Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, who gave his views on why some cities thrive and others fail to attract cultural industries. Recently, 100 prominent West Australians – Governor Ken Michael, former Wesfarmers chief Michael Chaney and Salvation Army leaders among them – were invited to record their views on Perth’s strengths.

In November, at Form’s invitation, British cultural planning expert Charles Landry will build on those views to draw up an audit of “the opportunities and obstacles facing the city”. The hope is that Landry, who has worked on revitalising ailing cities in 35 countries, will help map out a plan for metropolitan Perth.

Lynda Dorrington, Form’s chief executive and architect of the Creative Capital series, says she envisages a bold, physical facelift for the city. Perth’s cultural precinct in Northbridge – including the art gallery, museum, library, pubs with live bands, multicultural shops and restaurants – has suffered badly from being cut off from the central business district, she says, and a plan to partially sink the railway line that divides them needs to be expanded. “The scar railway line has to go. Once that happens, the massive cultural repository of Northbridge could be linked to the business sector on the other side.”

Although artists, academics, government and business people welcome the debate Creative Capital is generating, nobody’s sure how useful such vision statements will be. Chaney, for example, recorded his observation that Perth’s isolation is its strength: “Real creativity is allowed to flow when you are distanced from a constant barrage of external influences.”

But this proudly isolationist view of WA doesn’t resonate with Beverley’s generation, who grew up with the internet and an impulse to travel. “There’s no isolation these days, you just jump on a plane,” she says.

Others argue the biggest barriers to creativity have been known for years: fear of new ideas, over-regulation and a failure by state and local government to invest substantially in cultural infrastructure.

Businesswoman Janet Holmes a Court, chairwoman of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, says she is grateful the orchestra has at last been promised a new $12million office and rehearsal space. “But the Brisbane City Council has allocated $55million alone to build a pedestrian and bus bridge,” says Holmes a Court, whose construction company John Holland is building the bridge. “The comparison (in sums spent) is irksome.”

Urban planner Ruth Durack says she found little change in Perth’s dull urban fabric when, after two decades overseas, she returned home three years ago to set up the Urban Design Centre at the University of Western Australia.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to manufacture (debate about) creativity?” Durack says. “Essentially this is a very conservative population, with an easy life in many ways, and they’re anxious about changing it.”

Durack says a perfect example of that conservatism is the controversy over a 17,000sqm extension to the historic Treasury Buildings in Perth’s CBD. An irate Lord Mayor Peter Nattrass was recently pictured on a public footpath arguing with architect Geoff Warn that his jagged-edged, ultra-modern glass and steel design – which is supported by the Heritage Council – would ruin an “iconic” old building.

Warn says he’s optimistic that Nattrass’s no vote will be outnumbered next month when Perth’s central city planning committee meets to make its final decision. “I feel it’s a pivotal project that signals a willingness to take a risk,” he says. It would also be a symbolic breakthrough: the revamped building is likely to become the new home of the WA premier, treasurer and state cabinet.

There are other favourable signs. Bassist Paul Bodlovich is head of the West Australian Music Industry Association and he’s happy to reel off a long list of successful bands that formed in Perth or Fremantle back sheds: the John Butler Trio, Eskimo Joe, Little Birdie, the Waifs, Gyroscope, End of Fashion. “The consensus is that not only are a lot of bands coming out of WA, but they are genuinely good ones. And the state Government has had the sense to fund this organisation to ensure it continues.”

What interests Bodlovich are bold ideas, such as renaming Perth the Music Capital of Australia. The idea is borrowed from Live Music Capital of the World Austin, Texas, where on any given day visitors stepping off a plane are greeted by performing bands. Another idea is that top record producers “from cold and miserable places like Birmingham” could be invited to sunny Perth to work with WAMI’s 900 listed bands.

“It makes far greater impact to have Eskimo Joe coming out of Fremantle than any seminar about Creative Capital,” Bodlovich says. “It’s about cities walking the walk, not just talking the talk.”