The geographic coordinates for Sturt Gallery & Studios in Mittagong, New South Wales, are Sturt Gallery & Studios in Mittagong, NSW, is located at the corner of Range Road and Waverley Parade (2575), with coordinates approximately -34.46° latitude and 150.45° longitude. It is a premier Australian center for contemporary craft, design, and woodwork.

Key Details for Sturt,

1. Mittagong: Address: Cnr Range Road & Waverley Parade, Mittagong NSW 2575.
2. Focus: Contemporary craft, galleries, and school for wood.

MMMMMmmm GOOGLE often offers layers of meaning…STORYtree a metaphor . Even if the tree is no longer alive it has coordinates thanks to a COMMUNITY OF OWNERSHIP & INTEREST.

https://www.instagram.com/sturtgalleryandstudios/?hl=en

https://www.instagram.com/p/CSMKpHanKj3/?

hl=enhttps://www.instagram.com/p/BvdK92XA163/?hl=en

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bl69N0fgliL/?hl=en

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bl69N0fgliL/?hl=en

https://www.instagram.com/p/CUkEhTaFBGL/?hl=en&img_index=1

https://www.instagram.com/p/CUL928aD0SS/?hl=en

https://www.instagram.com/p/CTEkRw0nCRY/?hl=en

https://www.instagram.com/p/CSMKpHanKj3/?hl=en

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bs65xoLAG9p/?hl=en&img_index=1

 

DYSTOPIAN PLACEDNESS

"Our problem right now is that we're so specialised that if the lights go out, there are a huge number of people who are not going to know what to do. But within every dystopia there's a little utopia". ... Margaret Atwood 

It was HIGHsummer in 1970 and Winifred West was encountered in the STURTgarden in the early morning, and she was watering a mature camellia tree that she had planted near STURTcottage in STURT's early days.

She had decided that this tree needed to removed to another place. Later on was for her never the time to do things. If one is going to do it do it, do it, but in this case later might well have been better.

When she was asked if she thought that the tree would survive she replied in her Inimitable way ... Humans cannot perform miracles but we can create the circumstances in which they can happen ... and one did. So far as anyone knows that camellia that tree still lives. If the circumstance have been created, a sensibility that it was a part of, its placedness and its shared sense of being in the world, somewhat miraculously and metaphorically all that might survive too.

In our searches for wisdom we might well find that dystopia's beauty might well be that it lets us vicariously experience future worlds albeit that we might yet have the power and inclination to change ... here ... and right now.

AND there is this to ponder ... The geographic coordinates for Sturt Gallery & Studios in Mittagong, New South Wales, Sturt Gallery & Studios in Mittagong, NSW, is located at the corner of Range Road and Waverley Parade (2575), with coordinates approximately -34.46° latitude and 150.45° longitude. It is a premier Australian center for contemporary craft, design, and woodwork. 

Key Details for Sturt, Mittagong: 

• Address: Cnr Range Road & Waverley Parade, Mittagong NSW 2575.
• Coordinates: Approximately
  

  ${34.46}^{\circ }S,{150.45}^{\circ }E$
  (listed as
  

  $-34.46$
  North,
  

  $150.45$
  West in some reports, likely indicating
  

  ${34}^{\circ }{27}^{\prime }{36}^{\prime \prime }S$
  

  ${150}^{\circ }{27}^{\prime }{00}^{\prime \prime }E$
  ).
• Focus: Contemporary craft, galleries, and school for wood. 

LINK

LETTER TO STURT

To whom it may concern,

Thank you for this response it is appreciated. However, the question still hanging is:

Does/Will STURT actually exist as an independent, self-funded, standalone operation where its membership can determine the operation's 'PURPOSE, OBJECTIVES, RATIONALES AND STRATEGIC PRIORITIES' OR do those things require the endorsement OR approval of WWS as STURT's landlord and/or underwriter of an operation located on the Cnr Waverly Pd & Range Rd Mittagong or indeed anywhere else?

Yours sincerely,

Ray Norman 

Sturt Alumni,

Dear Ray,

Thank you for your email.

Membership application forms can be found here - 
https://sturtgalleryandstudios.com.au/sturt-membership#sturt-membership

At present, we are in the initial establishment phase of the company. 
Once appointed, the new Board will begin its own formation period, 
during which it will take responsibility for setting the strategic and 
financial direction of Sturt Gallery and Studios and making key 
operational decisions.

While it is an exciting moment for Sturt, this work will take time, and 
the founding Board will need to determine the business and fundraising 
model and set priorities accordingly.

I encourage you to stay connected through our website to receive updates 
as Sturt progresses.

Kind regards,
Sturt Gallery and Studios

sturtgalleryandstudios.com.au
Cnr Range Road & Waverly Parade
Mittagong NSW 2575

ABN: 77 692 376 426

On 2025-12-15 00:48, Ray Norman wrote:
To whoever it may concern,

Having expressed an interest in being a STURTmember and having not
received any acknowledgement of that or my response to the
constitution and it being just10 days away from Christmas I’m
wondering if I’m not being considered for membership.

Given the onset of the holiday season, I’m also wondering if WWS is
taking any action to encourage people, those who I think of as
STURT’S Community of Ownership and Interest [1] becoming members
given that they have diverse backgrounds relative to STURT and are
located in diverse locations, and with myself being in Tasmania.

There is much about this apparent initiative to re-invent STURT as an

independent operation that raises questions to do with STURT’S 

ongoing viability and indeed its independence relative to its
histories and not to mention its purpose for being that in the
CONSTITUTION offered by WWS that is ambiguous.

I’m assuming that the CONSTITUTION offered by WWS is not up for
discussion and perhaps not even by WWS Company members and certainly,
it seems, not by intending members of STURT GALLERY & STUDIOS Ltd but
I could be misguided in reaching this understanding.

I’ would appreciate anything that will go some way towards
clarifying the issues to do with STURT’S:

* Intended Purpose For Being; and
* Ongoing independence; and
* The ‘operation’s’ intended financial independence short term,

 medium term and long term; and
*  Geographic location short term, medium term and long term; with
*. A proposed timeline for STURT becoming a standalone operation either
as a satellite WWS operation OR as a self-governing operation.

An acknowledgement of my request by COB Mon Dec 15 would be
appreciated.

Yours sincerely,
Ray Norman
Sturt Alumni, Polemicist, __Cultural Producer,  _
Cultural Geographer,_ _Researcher_

LETTER TO STURT

 

For whatever reason Niccolò Machiavelli springs to mind and especially him quoted as saying .... “Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.”

Watch this space!! Since the Sturt operation was "paused" the evidence seems to consistently point to asset stripping and for whatever purpose. The dystopia is palpable and........

STURT GALLERY & STUDIOS LIMITED ANNOUNCED ... Company Limited by Guarantee

 

LINK ... https://sturtgalleryandstudios.com.au/

EMAIL TO THE GOVERNORS ET AL

Good evening,

Noting that it is mid-May already and that it is some months since the ‘FRENSHAMgovernors' sent out a missive telling us that they were actively considering Sturt’s future and that we would be hearing from them soon etc. etc. The silence is deafening.

Clearly, the FRENSHAMlawyers are picking over what’s left of Sturt’s legacy/ies (the bones and the carrion?) in the hope of gleaning something and heading off anything that might be taken as a resurrected ‘Sturt’ given all the implications – philosophically and financially. Moreover,  recent developments relative to the national CULTURALlandscape are quite probably a concern as well.

The ‘institution’ that Winifred West founded and built, Winifred West Schools Ltd, for all its promise has changed.  Notwithstanding, the intended ‘schools’ purpose for being has transmogrified, and the Sturt idea has become something that would give Winifred West cause to despair – a dream held, a miracle realised, a legacy left, and an endowment squandered and lost.  

The Frensham motto "In Love Serve One Another”, on the evidence, has been sullied, and sadly, it remains as hollow rhetoric and a kind of window dressing.

The ‘pausing’ of Sturt is something the adherents to the status quo put to work in a CULTURALmindset  where the likes of Machiavelli preside as HIGHpriests. It was, and remains, a dastardly act, unforeseen as it was and delivered without anything vaguely resembling GOODwill. It was as if someone had read of Winifred West's musing in 1940s on the prospect of Sturt “going phutt”  and said under their breath, ‘ now that’s a thought’.  

Sturt was an experiment, and it was for many illuminating for all of that. The FRENSHANgovernors  have shut all that down and euphemistically they’ve turned off the lights at the switch and then cut the power and water.

For so many Winifred West made a place where ‘making mattered’ albeit in the language of her time she used different words. In her memory we might ‘make something’ on say the second Saturday in October and do it with friends and especially with children. Making ‘stuff’ is what makes us human, and the making could be sharpening a stick, creating a bowl, fashioning a seat, or making something quite grand. Interestingly, no matter where we are social media allows us to share our making and to muse on making and how it matters. 

We might all give a thought to those who were enlisted on what now looks for all the world like a cynical charade and a process set up to fail.

So, in the memory of an ideal, a concept, a life well lived, a place made and more still we might be together making something and keeping something alive through the sharing of our making. Wherever we happen to be and in making something we might need, something we might be able to ‘make’,  we honour memories, and the makers in lives – and simply being in the world. One wonders just who among THEgovernors might value ‘making’ given where we are at!

Materials and resource in their realities plus,  and in placemaking plus, imagination and need has given us many useful, and sometimes wondrous things. Imagination without skill gives us astounding things too but it is the making that matters most.

Consider what might be done yet, but let us honour the making.

Ray Norman

Sturt alumni , Cultural Producer, 

Cultural Geographer, Researcher

STURT REVIEW OUTCOME

 

Please click on an image to enlarge

Please click on image to enlarge

OPEN LETTER TO WWS GOVERNORS

Dear Mr Stubby and whoever this may concern,

Again, I am bound to remind you that if this communication can in any way be characterised as a missive from a rather angry old man that would be because it is. Moreover, I make no apologies for it being so. In the course of my life, I’ve come to know that, like Woody Allen, there is something out there watching us. All too often it is the government. Thus, one must be mindful of ‘the three truths’ … The Sun … The Moon … The Truth … and the fact that none of them have a secure place to hide. 

As you should already understand for whatever reason I regard myself as a member of the “Sturt Community” and I have been in communication with not only the Sturt Review Committee, and yourself based on that premise. However, this letter to “Sturt Community Members” came to me via a third party who knew all that. So, for whatever reason this letter is not actually addressed to me and as likely as not to the many others also who might well figure in the 340 and 70 souls referred to in your letter.

It is what it is, and the letter is what it is too. 

In fact, your letter is more conspicuous for what it doesn’t say than anything that it does. Moreover, what it does say comes with concerning undertones of Machiavellian manoeuvring. If anyone has spent any time engaged in the corporatisation of public institutions where ‘confidentiality’ is front and centre, sirens sound if accountability and transparency are not unambiguously evident.

It turns out serially and somewhat surreally that time in the hands of the malevolent is a dastardly tool. 

Clearly, your letter to your intended and select audience attempts to put fears to rest. However, far from doing so its language compounds many of the fears those among us have for ‘ideas’ that have seemingly gone astray for a purpose that defies credulity. 

What is at stake here are ideas, ideas that have burgeoned in time, ideas that are quintessentially at the core of cultural landscapes across cultural realities. 

Our aspirations become clearer when we are prompted to look deeply into just what we have invested in what. Looking outside ourselves, we might harbour dreams, however when we look inward, we engage with our realities. 

For the many ‘Sturt supporters’ locally, nationally, and internationally it has been an exasperating wait for news and here we are still on the drip feed and pain killers – and conceivably in palliative care. 

So, will anything of moment happen in 2025 that is the question hanging? While the construction and implementation of a refurbished entity dedicated to making, and making matter more, might well seem to be a possibility – is it really? 

Clearly, the devil is in the detail. It is an imperative that there is a devilish amount of detail to get sorted if there is any Machiavellian manoeuvring to be thwarted. 

Without question, the Sturt Review Committee did what was asked of them and in the most professional way possible. Moreover, they adhered to their brief with utmost integrity. Nonetheless, there is a question hanging … what was the brief’s unspoken, unwritten subtext? Everybody should know that the perfect joke is the one where the setup and punch line are identical. 

Shakespeare tells us that a fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool. 

The clear message coming to me, and others thus far comes as a question. “Is Sturt being set up to fail?” Thinking on it, we might well ask questions like, 

•   Where is the security of tenure to be found for a standalone independent entity? 

•   With what fiscal security can it rely upon? 

•   And just what inheritance is bankable and freely available to Sturt as a standalone independent entity?  

These and other questions are ever likely to be dodged and characterised as untenable, audacious, rude even, as the main game gets played out with the prospect of a stacked deck of cards ever present. Not to put too fine a point on it, the Sturt Community of Ownership and Interest is being invited to gamble in a TWOup game in a ring with a spinner who has Taswegian Pennies – coins with two heads – on his kip. 

There are those among us who question what has been reported as coming from the Extraordinary General Meeting of Winifred West Schools Ltd. (WWS Ltd) That meeting held great promise, and it is said to have delivered.  

Nonetheless, it now seems that was/is an illusion. For instance, did that meeting actually empower the WWS Governors to assert that Sturt would remain under the continued control and ownership of WWS Ltd. Apparently, some in attendance seem to think not. 

Likewise, it is concerning that this might be advocated away from the meeting especially when you assert that Frensham Schools is the WWS Ltd’s core business and additionally that Frensham Schools will continue to utilise Sturt as a facility. 

Some time ago I came to an understanding regarding 21st C cultural institutions. The need for them to have ‘a’ geography is debatable if they are to do with cultural production in contemporaneous context in an increasingly interconnected world. 

For instance, universities and musingplaces sometime in the mid 1980s cease to be ‘the keepers of knowledge’. It was the Nobel Laureate Prof. Brian Smidt who made that observation. Some assert that this function moved to the likes of Wikipedia but not so. Wikipedia has become a quintessential DATAstore and data is not knowledge – knowledge is to do with understanding. Similarly, musingplaces no longer have a teaching purpose albeit that they are places for learning. Quite simply it is not their purpose to teach anything. That is best done elsewhere. 

Whatever, there are gaps to be filled if 'making' is to continue to matter and contribute to our cultural realities in meaningful ways as cultural landscapes reconfigure themselves. 

If Sturt in its new reality is to do all you say and imply, just where is the entity's independence? True freedom is the capacity to act according to one's own true character, to be altogether oneself, to be self-aware and self-determined and not subject to any kind of outside coercion or pre-set agendas. 

To be plain, what I see before me is a Machiavellian mirage masquerading as utopia albeit that an Orwellian dystopia seems to hover just over the horizon on the ready and ever alert to manifest itself. .

Well might we be anxious if we imagine that we might have skin in the game. As Machiavelli tells us … It is a sign of intelligence to be aware of one’s own ignorance. 

We, that is those yet to be acknowledged as members of THE STURT COMMUNITY, await further information in order that we can invest whatever in the enterprise that has apparently been embarked upon. 

Yours sincerely, 

Ray Norman 

Sturt Alumni, Cultural Producer, 

Cultural Geographer & Researcher

https://www.sturtreview.com/Latest-News

Please click on image to enlarge

MY RESPONSE

To whoever,

 

For whatever reason I regard myself as a member of the “Sturt Community” and I have been in communication with not only the Sturt Review Committee and the Governors based on that premise. However, this letter came to me from a third party who knew all that. So, for whatever reason this letter is not actually addressed to me and as likely as not to the many others also who might well figure in the 340and 70 souls referred to in it. It is what it is, and the letter is what it is too.

 

Indeed, this letter is more conspicuous for what it doesn’t say than anything that it does. Moreover, what it does say comes with undertones of Machiavellian manoeuvring if you have spent any time engaged in the corporatisation of public institutions where ‘confidentiality’ is front and centre when and where transparent accountability might well be found in the hands of honest brokers. 

 

Clearly, this letter attempts to put fears to rest but far from doing so its language compounds many of the fears those among us have for ‘ideas’ that have seemingly gone astray.

 

Our aspirations become clear only when we can and when we are prompted to look deeply into just what we have invested in what. Looking outside ourselves, we might harbour dreams, however when we look inward, we engage with our realities.

 

For the many ‘Sturt supporters’ locally, nationally, and internationally it has been exasperating wait for news and here we are still on the drip feed and pain killers. So will anything of moment happen in 2025 that is the question?  While the construction and implementation of a refurbished entity dedicated to making, and making matter more, seems a possibility, the devil is in the detail. 

 

It is an imperative that there is a devilish amount of detail to get sorted if there is any Machiavellian manoeuvring to be thwarted.

 

The Sturt Review Committee did what was asked of them in the most professional way possible and they adhered to their brief with utmost integrity. Nonetheless, the question hanging … what was the brief’s unspoken, unwritten subtext?   Everybody should know that the perfect joke is the one where the setup and punch line are identical.

 

The clear message coming to me thus far comes as a question. “Is Sturt being set up to fail?”  Thinking on it, we might well ask! Like, where is the security of tenure to be found along with the fiscal security; and just what inheritance is bankable. These and other questions are ever likely to be dodged and characterized as untenable, rude even, as the main game gets played out with a stacked deck of cards quite probably.

 

Well might we be anxious if we imagine that we have skin in the game. As Machiavelli tells us … It is a sign of intelligence to be aware of one’s own ignorance.

 

Regards,

 

Ray

 

Ray Norman

Sturt Alumni, Cultural Producer, Cultural Geographer & Researcher

<zingHOUSEunlimited>

The lifestyle design enterprise and research network

PH: 03-6334 2176 … 0431 070 450

eMAIL:  raynorman7250@gmail.com

40 Delamere Crescent Trevally TAS 7250

WEBsites:http://www.raynorman7250.blogspot.com

“A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.” Thomas Paine

“The standard you walk past is the standard you accept” David Morrison

Postscript ... To another respondent

Albeit being at the end of my piece of string I have no problem at all with optimism just so long as it comes with a goodly dose of realism. 

 

Yes, yes there are some serious negotiations to be had and the news coming to me today suggest a yawning gap or two between what transpired at THE WWS COMPANY MEETING and the missive I got to get in the end. Be alert if not alarmed.

 

Whatever, be circumspect about the Machiavellian manoeuvring that needs to be thwarted. Yes, there is a pathway forward but be aware that TIME is the hammer that Machiavellians play/work with. Knowing what is in the toolbox and just what is at stake is all important.

 

I look forward to a chat soonish!?