Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This podcast is proudly presented by the Australian Institute of Architects, the voice for Australia's built environment and the designers who shape it. Hello, I'm Kevin MacLeod and welcome to Tim and Kev's Big Design Adventure. Hi Tim.
Oh yeah, hello Kev. I'm Tim Ross. It's great to be here. Another episode, another adventure. They are adventures. Sometimes I think we forget to tell everyone that although it's on the tin, as they say, but we take you with us on design adventures.
Yeah, I think particularly today, because this is actually an experience and a whole day of interviewing and meeting people, which I came to almost cold. You've been very kind to host me in Australia. And Tim and I sort of, it's fair to say that we sort of take it in turns.
You come over to the UK and, you know, I kind of organize a few bits and bobs and then I come over to you and then, you know, you've got this super slick schedule organized. And we went to Fremantle, which I've never been to before.
So for me, the entire day was a set of experiences which I found utterly beguiling to the extent that I thought, oh, hang on, if I could live in Australia, maybe I'd come and live here and all these people would be my friends.
Yeah.
That's exactly the way I feel about Fremantle. Port City, south of Perth. But it has this great energy about it. There's this mixture of the old and the new, a creative community. And then you've got other layers of immigration, particularly Italians that came over time and that created great food culture there as well. The music, everything.
It's beautiful streets, great restaurants, wonderful people, and friendly, I think. They will take you along for the ride. And I thought it was a really great way to start your experience. Cause you flew into Perth. I said, well, let's go down to Fremantle and, um, why don't we hang out with someone who I think really understands the spirit of Fremantle in so many different ways.
And that's why today we're going to meet Kate Hewlett, who is an extraordinary person. I think part of this story, she's a person who sort of fell into running for parliament, not once, but twice. Once for the state government, once federally, and narrowly missed out twice in a very safe Labor seat, which is running as an independent. This is about how she loves her community.
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Chapter 2: How does Kate Hulett contribute to her community in Fremantle?
I think now it's something like double that. It's like 70,000 trees have been planted, but they're all planted by children. And the most interesting thing about getting kids to plant is that if they plant up a little bit of a park near their school or their school grounds with some trees and they're seven, by the time they get to 13 or 16 and they see... And cut them down? No.
No, of course not. It's the opposite.
So they see other kids trying to damage the trees and they say, oi, get off. That's mine. No, we did this. This is ours. You don't do that to that tree. Through this program of...
teaching people to invest, as it were, a bit of time into the public realm, particularly kids, you get a completely different view about, different respect for it, different kind of understanding of a sense of ownership and connection.
Speaking of community, Kate's pure sunshine. You're going to love this chat. I say that every time, but the truth is you will. Here we go.
Thank you for inviting us into your home.
Well, thanks for coming.
Were you nervous? Did you clean up?
I thought we were going to be meeting in another location, so I must admit I didn't expect so many men in my home today.
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Chapter 3: What challenges does Kate face in advocating for better public spaces?
Okay. Gentlemen visitors. Yeah. But I'm thrilled you're here.
Yeah.
It feels like having a couple of old pals over. I mean, not that I normally speak into microphones with friends, but, you know, things can change.
That's a nice way of putting it, isn't it?
Yeah.
I guess it's off to a good start.
We're here in your wonderful home, which is a warehouse conversion in Fremantle. I've always been very fond of Fremantle from the very first time that I came here in the mid-90s. It's got a really extraordinary energy and a big art scene and it's just a fabulous place to be full of fabulous people. Why is it special to you? What's the draw?
Hmm. I have, I guess, lived here for about 13 years. And prior to that, I was living in the UK for a long time. And I had my business over there and lived in the centre of London. And so I was really used to kind of living in that centre space. And then when I came back to Australia, I imagined living in a house with a block and a tree.
And that's why I really wanted to move back because I wanted that Australian dream, you know. And I started working in Fremantle at that point. And I, again, hadn't intended to just the way things kind of panned out. I started my shop here in Fremantle and I completely fell in love with it. And as a child, when we used to come to Fremantle, I lived about an hour away.
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Chapter 4: How does Kate's background influence her political views?
Yeah.
Absolutely. It's just feels great to be here, you know, and I think having that historic, the buildings and the warehouses almost allows that more than you don't get that so much as in new build, you know, that vibe.
Yeah. Now, in a new build, you get the zoning issue, which is like the housing's over here and the workshops are over here and the businesses are over there. But actually you can, as artists, you need something a bit more. Yeah.
And we still certainly battle with that. And that's something that we've been talking a lot about. It's really hard to have the live work models anymore. You know, you've got a shop or a studio downstairs and you can live upstairs. That's almost designed out of our towns, which actually would completely transform them for the good.
But we've definitely had a progressive kind of bent whereby we got political will that can help shape some things. You know, for example, when I opened my shop, it was in an empty old mired apartment store, four stories, and we were able to fill the ground floor with small businesses and makers on the first and second level, had a bar on the roof, the biggest artist-run gallery in the basement.
And that was because the mayor at the time enabled it, facilitated it, threw a bit of money at it. And then this was an incredible space for new businesses and new creatives to start and try and experiment.
It's a creative department store, I remember it very fondly. I mean, how long did that last for and what came out of that?
In that space, we were there for three years, so it was in kind of pre-development. So, you know, obviously the developers were sympathetic as well and they allowed it and I guess that's where... We struggled often with people who landlock properties and they just say it's easy for us to keep it closed and open it up. But with the developers and the mayor, we were able to access it.
And so many fantastic artists and businesses started there and many of which are still, you know, practising or operating now. It was really, you know, in hindsight I think people look back so fondly because kids would love it. They could run around on the carpet. There were great bathrooms and change rooms for, you know, babies.
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of civic engagement in Fremantle?
But I think there's still a place that you need incubation that then those people can move out into the workplace, the commercial sector. But then you need to backfill it. It's succession planning, isn't it? And people need the opportunity to try something and fail without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars setting something up.
And I think that's where government policy and legislation could be.
Yeah, and you described your local mayor and you used two words there which I found really interesting. One was facilitate and I think the other was allowed. But it was the idea that... The mayor wasn't going to direct this. He wasn't going to control this. They'd finance a little bit. They'd put a little bit of money in, some seed, yeah?
But actually it was allowing it and giving you the physical space to do this incubation, as you say.
It's interesting. I think about that with grants that people apply for, and there has to be a very specific outcome. But what we need is funding for people to trial and fail and explore and just ā tinker around and test the boundaries of ideas and not expect everything to have a brilliant outcome.
And I think when the Americans were trying to get to the moon, there was a lot of funding for that. That's where the internet came out of that kind of period. And We are so bound on like, well, if I give you money, I need either to have my name on it as naming rights or something, or I need to have some economic, direct economic benefit.
But actually those things you can't really measure because you're You can't quantify vibe and the fact that lots of people want to move here or come and visit here because there's these great things to see and experience. And we need to be better at that kind of measurement of the heart and soul and happiness and attractiveness.
Don't you think there's a misunderstanding of how, a bit like when they talk about where our food comes from or... We don't understand how our culture is nurtured. So today in Fremantle where we are around the corner where people are in some warehouse having a great time in a bar, that comes because a whole bunch of people did interesting things here. How do we tell that story?
What we're actually talking about is a devaluation of the arts.
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