Dear Sturt Board Members and STURTsupporters,
I write as a STURTulumni, maker, educator and cultural researcher who has maintained an interest in ‘STURT’ given its histories and its ‘placedness’ within the Australian CULTURAL landscape. At the outset I believe that I need to restate what I asserted during the review of the STURT entity after the Winifred West Governors “paused STURT” – an unprecedented and highly questionable act. Given my research as an independent cultural geographer, I along with a network of social researchers, interrogated the notion of ‘places’ having layers of ‘cognitive owners’ and by extension having multi-layered, multi-dimensional COMMUNITIES OF OWNERSHIP AND INTEREST - COI. I believe that STURT’s COI asserted its existence and that your membership of what I understand is the STURT BOARD is tasked with the governance of Sturt Gallery and Studios Limited a Company Limited by Guarantee (SGS Ltd.).
Against that background I submit that the Winifred West Schools' governance handed you, as SGS’s governing body, a constitution that for whatever reason lacks an appropriate ’statement of purpose’. That is to say SGS Ltd.’s purpose is quite simply to exist albeit that there may be objectives. Moreover, I believe that the observation made by some members of STURT’s COI, that the “revived STURT” was being set up to either falter or fail had merit at the time and currently it seems to have veracity.
Moreover, arguably, ultimately SGS Ltd. exists at the discretion WWS Ltd (AKA Frensham) given WWS Ltd.'s status as landlord. This I believe compromises SGS Ltd’s independence and fundamentally so. Also, your membership is designed to give WWS Ltd. disproportionate representation. It needs to be said and it is what it is!
My interest in all this was peaked when I thought about Col Levy’s recent passing given that he and I were refused ’STURT MEMBERSHIP’, Col Levy twice and myself only the once. Then there was my notification that there would be a STURT WEEKEND in 2026 despite SGS Ltd not being operational and without there being personnel to speak to one-on-one. This seems to me to be evidence of there being no support for whatever reason for STURT to be presenting itself to the world as a functional entity.
Against this backgrounding I have been researching the ways in which ‘makers’ might establish‘coalitions of the willing’ and/or entities that they can be a part of – belong to – that does not involve incorporating an entity in some kind of pyramidal TOPdown model such as exists within ‘Frensham'. I have ‘operated’ within such a ‘horizontal' entity for over 20 years and increasingly that entity has become increasingly ‘rhizomatic’. Indeed, it was by example that Winifred West who alerted me to innovative ways to imagine the structure of cultural such entities – LINK.
Also, I have an interest in there being some kind of security afforded the STURTcollection given that so far as I can tell WWS Ltd has/retains property rights in the collected cultural production. However, the makers of the work within it have INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY invested in the collection. Concerningly, the silence in regard to this is deafening. In my case that ‘PROPERTY’,will persist until 70 years after my death.
Indeed, it was Winifred West, paraphrased, who introduced me to the idea that as mere humans we cannot perform miracles, albeit that we might well create the circumstances within which they might happen. Indeed, as she said, we might either nurture or stifle those opportunities. At STURT she was a MIRACLEnurturer!
Interestingly, there are very few of us now alive who can claim to have had a one-on-one conversation with Winifred West, one is a member of your Board.
Despite the purposeless constitution the SGS Ltd has been handed, it is open to your Board to say auspice a MAKERSbank that might well be a standalone element within a ‘rhizometic entity’ made up of such ‘banks’. I submit that such banks/funds/trusts/foundations might well exist to 'lend' the money 'makers’ may need to accomplish projects they may not be contemplating, unlikely to contemplate, or unable to contemplate. Once realised there is the prospect that their practice, and by extension our social cum cultural wellbeing will benefit – possibly change fundamentally.
There is a place for grants but Muhammad Yunus via his social enterprise bank – the Grameen Bank – demonstrated that a social enterprise built on trust can achieve more over and above what other endeavours haven’t. Indeed, Muhammad Yunus’ bank has been credited with over four million people being lifted out of poverty.
STURT has (had?) a rather large Community of Ownership and Interest (COI) and arguably STURTis well placed to provide much needed leadership in this space as academic institutions and governments retreat from the arena, thus leaving makers and making without much of the patronage they once had. ‘Making’ and material cultural production is fundamental to humanity’s purposeful wellbeing.
Entities and places such as STURT can make, making, matter, more. Indeed, I go so far as to say that STURT’s ‘purpose for being’ could be to MAKE, MAKING, MATTER in the current and emerging cultural landscape. Given the increasing significance of 'Rhizomatic Learning’ – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizomatic_learning. – and rhizomatics in governance I submit that there is a somewhat compelling case for STURT to strategically embrace rhizomatics.
Arguably Winifred West was well across rhizomatics long before Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattariarticulated their philosophy. She was an unprecedented placemaker and educator not to mention her achievements as a cultural producer.
Should you engage with STURT’s COI rhizomatically I submit that STURT may well survive its pausing and become a sustainable and vibrant 21st C entity in the Australian cultural landscape. I also submit that if SGS Ltd were to auspice say a standalone STURTunlimited , SGS Ltd could well be a part of what is emerging in cultural landscape in Australia and beyond. Moreover, I suggest that by doing do SGS Ltd could well become a part of a network of networks again rather than a business with a client base given the constitution the WWS Ltd governors have put in place for you operate within.
Speaking for myself, I have no appetite for being a part of any cultural entity that operates as a hierarchic entity in the 21st C given the opportunities that are opening up for the governed to be proactively involved in, and engaged with operations they belong to and that belongs to them.
I look forward with interest to any response that you may feel that you can offer at this time and especially so under the current circumstances. In particular, I would be interested in being engaged in the evolution of a makersBANK , a newSTURT and a new rhizomatic entity at STURT in whatever time I have left.
Yours sincerely, .... Ray Norman 9 -11-2026
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