In today’s workshop, Georgia and I were joined by Tim who would also be in our group for our assignment on a specific sight. We drew on inspiration from our reading of Cresswell in our last class and discussed physical spaces that we believe would be the heart of communities, pondering what it is about them that provide such profound meaning for people. After a few suggestions and logistical discussions of each one, we decided as a group that the site we’d be exploring would be The Tote in Collingwood. We believed this would be a great site for exploring the sense of identity that had causational links to specific subcultures. As such, this decision was reached and informed by the fact that The Tote has immense reputation as a breeding ground of sorts for up and coming punk and heavy metal bands, and has played a significant part in the development of the Melbourne music community.
Georgia said that various connections she had to the place would mean it could potentially be possible to access the venue during daytime hours. This I think would be ideal as it would eliminate any biases we had of the place and how community and meaning is formed, as well as being less intrusive on patrons of the place. By exploring the site while empty we’re hoping we can explore the structures of the place in a way where it could help our understanding of the work that goes into creating a community but perhaps more importantly, to gain an understanding of why the place shutting down for a brief period in 2010 caused upwards of 20,000 people to protest against liquor licensing laws on live music venues such as The Tote.
We discussed prompts to take into our exploration of the site, and at this stage are looking at focusing on:
- Place as a means of connection to scene and identity
- Emptiness / Negative Space
- People / Place / Community
I think what was really positive about our discussions was the way in which we were all on the same page in trying to eliminate any biases we would have in terms of leading our research and as such how we would approach the task. I’m looking forward to meeting up with Tim and Georgia next Wednesday (provisionally) to see what we can find.