See https://sturtstuffutopia.blogspot.com/2026/09/sturttopia.html
Monday, September 7, 2026
Saturday, August 29, 2026
MAKING NOW
For whatever intuitive and deeply personal reason in 1941 Winifred West embarked upon a social experiment devised and designed to meet the educational needs of local Mittagong children by providing further education in crafts, music, and drama. She is said to have harboured a concern in regard to local children's Primary School education alongside a need to provide creative outlets for adults.
In 1938 Winifred West retired at 60 as the headmistress of Frensham School and in January 1939 Frensham School sustained roughly £12,000 in damage – roughly $1.3 Million AUD$ in modern purchasing power – as a consequence of that year's wide ranging bushfires. Notably Frensham lost its new junior school building.
War broke out in Europe September 1939 and Australia sent its first major overseas army force to the Middle East in early 1940.
Backgrounded by all this STURT nonetheless rose Phoenix like from the ashes and the scorched earth in 1941 albeit that Japan was yet to bomb Pearl Harbour in December. Here we might pause to consider what it might be that drives change agents like Winifred West. She championed humanity's capacity to nurture miracles and at the same warned against humanity's sometimes need stifle miracle making.
Winifred West was an exemplary placemaker. Her and Frensham's motto, 'IN LOVE SERVE ONE ANOTHER' Is reflected her vision for STURT. Purposefulness focused as it was on community, empathy, and integrity fits that mindset.Yet, that was 'paused' and it is yet to be revived.
Can the STURT vision be resurrected and it is an open question as to whether THISplace's vision and purposefulness can be revived from the rubble of a corporatised fiscal rationale that did something more than pause the STURTvision. The wisdom in the ether tells us that the world will never give us a chance if we never take it.
In twisting the lion's tail STURT's Community of Ownership and Interest , the cognitive owners, provoked, challenged, and angered a large group of people. The formation of a standalone company limited by guarantee was realised but somehow to date that hasn't yet quelled the disquiet. What might, is the prospect that circumstances for miracle making, 21st C miracle making, being there.
.
Friday, August 28, 2026
THE STURT WEEKEND
|
Friday, June 19, 2026
LAST WORDS?
“… I do not know what it will turn into. That will depend upon the people who come and on changing conditions. I can foresee many possible developments. It might become a training school for teachers of arts and crafts. It might become an industrial concern. It might become a colony of artists and craftsmen, potters and printers… or of course, it may just go phut!” ... Winifred West, 1941 ... Well it seems for all intensions purposes "phut" Sturt has gone ... at least the purposeful PLACEmaking for makers where contestable ideas are tested and new understandings are sought. STURT was a 'purposeful musingplace' in all its machinations until it was "paused".
Winifred West operated on the premise that as humans beings we are incapable of miracle making but we are all capable creating the circumstances whereby they can happen. Alternatively, humans are quite capable of stifling those opportunities and all too often we do. That is how things go 'phut'!!
JUNE 16 2026
Sadly, the NEW STURT does not have a purposeful constitution with its 'purpose being' simply to EXIST. Again, sadly this is a syndrome that has become THEnorm in the corporate world and where operations manifest this it has much to do with the avoidance of governance being transparently accountable.
This is no surprise given that the NEW STURT constitution was OUTsourced and thus it is NOT the outcome of deliberation within the STURT COMMUNITY OF OWNERSHIP AND INTEREST (COI) … https://whatmightwinifredwestthink.blogspot.com/.../commu...
It is a somewhat extraordinary circumstance for an operation to seek the FREINDLYsupport of a community that has not been realistically and meaningfully engaged with when it was being constituted. Yes, some of the COI were surveyed and Winifred West Company members put in train the process that included a dedicated Sturt Review Committee.Nevertheless, in the end the ’NEW STURT' essentially exists under the egis of Winifred West Schools governance – AKA Frensham Schools.
STURT as an 'institution' evolved as a PLACE where MAKING MATTERED.
STURT, fundamentally, was "paused" because its governance deemed that 'money mattered more' and thus the MAKING was stopped. FISCALmatters cannot be ignored but 'purposefulness' need/should not be impinged upon this because once 'PURPOSE' becomes ambiguous it evaporates, it is lost. Henry Ford knew that a business that only existed to make a profit was a poor business.
It seems that little to no attention has been given the STURTcollection or the cultural and intellectual property invested in it. The silence here is palpable and concerning. Commitment is not what you say … Commitment is what you do. So when there is no clarity in an operation's purpose, the difference between an opportunity and a distraction are blurred.
Winifred West, the quintessential PLACEmaker, envisaged STURT as a place where making mattered – and purposefully so. She also set about creating the circumstances whereby miraculous things might happen and a community of supporters purposefully gathered around STURT towards the achievement of miraculous things through ‘making'. She was cognisant of the fact that miraculous things could be either nurtured or stifled.
It turns out that in pausing STURT, governance stifled the entity and operation and its purposefulness has likewise been suppressed.
Sadly, I CANNOT be friendly towards an operation that quite deliberately lacks purposefulness, that gives FISCALmatters precedence, and that no longer aspires to make making matter within a CULTURALlandsacape within which it belongs.
People belong to places, places never really belong to the people that inhabit and exploit them. The question hanging here is 'What Might Winifred Think’ ?! ... https://whatmightwinifredwestthink.blogspot.com/
...................
Having been denied 'membership' and with Colin Levy being denied twice as well, this missive out of the blue leaves me incredulous and disappointed. Having spent a life aiming to MAKE MAKING MATTER and over the past two or so years watching on as to discover Winifred West Schools transmogrify into FRENSHAM SCHOOL, well it has been bewildering to say the least. .... On April 20 I said VALE to Sturt when I was told that "STURT was closed and that there was nobody available to speak to. Then I noted that a wondrous idea that has passed.... Given all that has passed and with the newSTURT having 'no purpose' except to exist, and to be invited 'personally' to pay $50 pa to be 'friendly' towards an corporatised entity that seems not to know what its purpose is or why exists beyond being 'profitable', that's an insult to one's intelligence .... Henry Ford said that any business that existed only to make a 'profit' was a poor business. SO, the patronising disingenuousness embedded in my invitation 'to be a friend' of an operation that clearly has lost its moral compass, and so, so sadly so, well then the embedded insult is palpable. ..... Winifred West shared a life changing idea with me not long after arriving at STURT. She pointed out that human beings could not perform miracles BUT they were able to create the circumstances whereby they might happen OR alternatively they could stifle their chances. She was a miraculous PLACEmaker and on the evidence to hand the circumstances for miracles at STURT currently, well they are being stifled – and sadly so.... Chris Deeprose, Ian Frew, Greg Healey, John Edye, Noeline Brown, Noel Frankham, Carl Bjorklund, Brian Parkes, Grace Cochrane, Julie Ewington, Pat Hoffie, Kevin Murray, Mary Hackett, Mary Machen, Lola Greeno, Toru Mori, Alice Whish, Valerie Odewahn, Mark Bishop, Joe Eisenberg, Helmut Lueckenhausen, Paul Brennan, Cedar Prest,et al
.................................
RECEIVED & NOTED
A further response in due course
Regards,
Ray Norman
Polemicist, Cultural Producer, Cultural Geographer, Researcher
zingHOUSEunlimited
The lifestyle design enterprise and research network
PH: *** *** 376
eMAIL: raynorman7250@gmail.com
Delamere Cres Trevallyn 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
………………………………………………………...
From: contact@sturtgalleryandstudios.com.au <contact@sturtgalleryandstudios.com.au>
Date: Friday, 12 June 2026 at 3:38 pm
To: Ray Norman <raynorman7250@gmail.com>
Subject: Friends of Sturt
Dear Ray,
We hope this email finds you well.
While we did not receive a formal subscription request from you to join
the new Sturt community, we know from your emails that you were
interested in joining. As you know, it has taken some time to relaunch
Sturt in its independent form, and with our new Board we are still in
the establishment phase. While the structure of membership has evolved
since we first announced the new entity last year, we are pleased to
formally relaunch Friends of Sturt as a recognised supporter community,
ratified within Sturt’s constitution.
We would like to invite you to become a Friend of Sturt. You can find
out more and sign up using this link:
We are also very aware of your extraordinary contribution to Sturt,
having established Sturt Metal in 1969, and led the studio until 1985.
Your training and mentorship of so many silversmiths and jewellers is an
incredible legacy.
Kind regards,
Sturt Gallery and Studios
Cnr Range Road & Waverly Parade
Mittagong NSW 2575
ABN: 77 692 376 426
See less
Monday, April 20, 2026
MISSIVE TO Mr STUBBY
NB: Draft at the time STURT was paused and posted now for the record
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 is 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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
-
. Sturt Gallery & Studios Dear Ray, Thank you for your patience and support during the establishment of Sturt Gallery and Studios Limite... -
"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 whom it may concern, Thank you for this response it is appreciated. However, the question still hanging is: Does/Will STURT actually exis...