While everyone is isolating and thinking about what is really important in life (family, friends & community), we thought we would put together a little presentation in words and pictures to remind locals of the journey to create The Substation and the community that made it happen…… please enjoy and share with friends in Hobsons Bay.
We will keep working until we achieve our aim of restoring community membership at The Substation.
Best wishes,
The Save Our Substation Team
I’m sending you a few pages from the Williamstown Community Arts Council 1992 annual report. You’ll see that we had been paying insurance and Council’s legal fees at what we called ‘The Junction’ from May 1991. There’s also quite a history prior to our fight for the substation as we had been searching for a home for a community arts centre for quite a while. When you originally contacted me about the building I assumed David passed this all on to you. There’s some photos and information about activities held in the building and despite it being unrenovated we still managed to run many fun events and workshops. We had put in a couple of years working our butts off with huge community involvement. There were ‘work for the dole’ teams helping with clean ups. From memory we also got help from TAFE and local businesses. Civil engineering plans were drawn up. Many skip loads of rubbish were filled by volunteers. Despite exploring every avenue the only funding we got was a $20,000 grant for a community consultation which we could not use until the lease was signed. We had to organise fund raising events just to pay the overheads. After a couple of years, and as a working mum, I was burnt out and you’ll see in my report I did not renominate as chairperson of the WCAC. It was not long after this that we regretfully decided that we could not see any hope of gaining funding, gave up on the project and returned the funding we had received despite having started the community consultation. When you and Nigel took up the challenge it was a relief and we hoped you’d be successful. You did a great job. I must admit many of us were surprised at newspaper articles stating no one had been in the building or that it was a new idea to use it as a community arts facility. So you can imagine that, like those that followed, a lot of people felt forgotten, unappreciated and eventually disconnected. I’ve lost contact with most of them but it would be wonderful if there could be some acknowledgment of the very long community struggle for a community arts space in the history of the substation. When I came across this report I thought I should show it to you. I’m sorry your efforts to reinsert the community as part of the substation have been unsuccessful. I know how frustrated you must be. There are so many grassroots movements the suffer the same fate. Regards, Dee (can’t find a way to send photos)
Bring it back for community use