Letter to the STURT Community of Ownership and Interest

Link

 

Subject: The new Sturt!



Sturt Gallery and Studios Limited has now been officially established as a Company Limited by Guarantee. Interested people in the community have been encouraged to become members so as to be eligible to vote at the Sturt EGM, February 7, 2026. This is an important step for the future of Sturt.

 

Friends of Sturt invite you to a morning tea at Sturt Cottage, Friday 9th January, 2026 at 10.30 am. 

 

You may have many questions about the structure of the Company and the way forward.  Come along to hear how Sturt is taking its first steps toward becoming an independent organisation, and learn about the upcoming milestones, including the Sturt EGM and the election of Directors.

 

If you have not already done so, please consider applying for membership here

Jenny Clift

Secretary

PS;  Presumably members unable bto nbe present atvte EGM will be able to appoint a proxy 

Friends of Sturt 

To all concerned,

This message comes to me in the context of what is promised to be an end to STURT’s “pausing” and an event that came apparently from nowhere and for reasons that have not yet been entirely explained.  

For me at the time Niccolò Machiavelli's quote “Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.” resonated in so much as I just could not reconcile this ‘pausing’ with anything Winifred West might countenance. I say this because I am one of the few still alive to remember Winifred West and to have mused upon her aspirations for STURT, and other things, one on one – albeit for too short a time prior to her passing.

I’ve participated in the review process albeit from afar and I've dung deep into my experiences as a maker, and as an administrator, and as a teacher, and as a researcher who latterly has been focused on cultural geography – and with my focus being on 'placedness’.  

The deeper I dug the more I became aware of Winifred Wests’ omnipresence in my subconsciousness whenever trying to explain placedness and placemaking. Winifred West is an exemplar of the quintessential peacemaker. It is tempting to claim HEROstatus for her but that would be a mistake. She was quite simply someone who spent a life making places in order to achieve outcomes – and she was an achiever albeit that it seems that today , sadly, that all too often that is not acknowledged in context. Winifred West lived a purposeful life!

What has come out of the STURT REVIEW PROCSS is what it is. As Lenard Cohon entreats us to forget about perfect offerings, given that there is a crack everything and that's how the light gets in. And with Kelly and Carmody, telling us that from ‘little things big things grow’ there is/was space within the pausing’s outcome for renewal of placemaking and moreover for that renewal to be expansive IF STURT’s Community of Ownership & Interest can be engaged with and meaningfully.

A renewed STURT, or we might imagine something like STURTunlimited (Su) as an entity is, if anything at all, is in gestation and its destiny may well be that it might never come about as any kind of entity. In itself it is unlikely to be in anyway miracle like, but it may well be a circumstance within which some miraculous outcomes might come to be if fostered and harboured – albeit in some subliminal cum subconscious way within daily living. …. STURTunlimited (Su) as a standalone renewed entity and STURT GALLAERY AND STUDIOS Ltd (SGS) as a corporate entity should in no way be in competition with each other as there is a need for both and a need for both entities to be working collaboratively and cooperatively purposefully towards enabling makers and making. For context, one could be imagined as existing within the framework of LAW and the other to do with the cultural sensibilities understandable in the context of LORE in a cultura landsape. … Read more here

Given my PLACEmaking research and my consciousness of the need to unambiguously articulate ‘purposefulness’ I have prepared a speculative draft for the consideration of whoever . I did this as I struggled to see anything within the proposed STURT GALLAERY AND STUDIOS Ltd (SGS) constitution that is articulated clearly in a  PLACEmaking cum cultural context and within which this 'corporate entity’ that might offer a reference – a key performance indicator – for purposefulness and that contributes to 'making making matter' in a 21C context – and better and expansive contemporaneous understandings of cultural production, making.

It is what it is, and the process is ongoing and there is much to consider for those who have a layer of ‘ownership and interest’ in what we might think of as the STURTconcept going forward. STURT’s COI collectively – makers et al – have a great deal invested in STURT’s placedness; its DEEPhistories; its purposefulness; and now is a time to bring that into focus or as Winifred West mused at STURT's beginning … "or of course, it may just go phut!”.  Whatever lies ahead conceptually and culturally will have little to nothing to do with the SGSconstitution but everything to do with STURT’s communities' of ownership and interest in ‘making’ and their involvement in ‘Making , Making, Matter' – Link.

Since I will not be able to be in Mittagong one Jan 9 I simply ask those who are able to be there to please give some thought to what I have mused upon to myself since STURT’s pausing. I will become a member of  SGS Ltd and I stand ready to assist in any useful that I might assist in there being a STURTunlimited should there be an interest in such an entity coming to be. 

NOthing is impossible and an impossibility … a zen ZINGmantra … 

Regards,

Ray Norman

STURTalumni