Whether it be the bygone days of brothels along a 1950’s Roe Street or the more recent media coverage marking the area as unsafe, Northbridge has always had a colourful past.
But it seems that those colours are shifting toward friendlier shades and more inviting tones as the entire area is revitalised, both physically and figuratively.
At a street level, East Perth Redevelopment Authority (EPRA) have begun a slow steady gentrification of the area with William Street, The Cultural Centre and The Northbridge Link on their list of things to re-do.
Outside of government enterprise, small businesses have successfully flourished in the area, with a succession of boutiques and small bars popping up along William Street.
In a figurative sense though, Northbridge’s makeover has been instigated in recent years through the work of such bodies as The OnWilliam Collective and The Northbridge History Project, both of whom have given a greater sense of culture to the area.
‘My feeling of it is that the worst is long gone,’ said Connections Nightclub owner and Northbridge advocate Tim Brown on the renaissance Northbridge is currently experiencing.
‘I think it’s scruffy and down heel but if you look at that in the context of the city and what cities are about, for me cities always have areas that are left to lie fallow and in the time that the rest of the city turns their back on it, creative people come in and do stuff that bubbles up through the cracks.’
And those bubbles have burst to reveal a wealth of new creative talent, all of them feeding into each other.
When concept retail space come gallery Keith + Lottie and cutting edge alternative fashion store Red Stripe Clothing opened in 2004, it marked a new creative epicentre for the district, one which galvanised itself into The OnWilliam Collective, a body of over a dozen business owners whose aim is to bring youth culture to the area.
‘OnWilliam is all about bringing people together, working together to achieve goals we all share,’ explained multi-award winning business owner Aimee Johns, former owner of Keith + Lottie and current owner of The Butcher Shop, a boutique specialising in urban art supplies.
‘OnWilliam has bought together not only the people and businesses within Northbridge, but a much wider network of supporters throughout Perth and beyond.
‘The OnWilliam community has been something that has happened very naturally and easily, it hasn’t been something that’s had to be forced on people – people want to be a part of it because its something positive, because we are actually doing stuff not just talking about the need to do stuff.’
The flow on effect has resulted in other artist collectives popping up, such as Last Chance Studios, home to some of Perth’s most innovative street artists like internationally acclaimed Kid Zoom.
These artists have been responsible for bringing the lowbrow to the streets, the presence of commissioned graffiti walls growing significantly to include pieces at Bar 399, Ezra Pound, the Cultural Centre, outside the new State Theatre on William Street, plus various vacant blocks along William.
More family orientated projects in Northbridge have included the completion of The Piazza – home to a large open-air cinema screen and Australia’s first public park equipped with 4G Wi-Fi – and the current $11 million regeneration of the Cultural Centre and William Street.
‘The revitalisation of the Perth Cultural Centre and William Street represents a rare opportunity for the State Government, through EPRA, to bring new life to what is both a commercially important inner-city precinct and a key State asset that has previously been under utilised and suffered from a negative public perception,’ explained EPRA CEO Tony Morgan.
‘EPRA is addressing the need to ensure the area is a safe place for the community and is working with the City of Perth, Nyoongar Patrol, The Public Transport Authority and the WA Police to do this.
‘EPRA is (also) working to improve the area’s amenity by attracting more events, entertainment and recreational activities such as FotoFreo and the water installation Appearing Rooms to the Centre. This in turn attracts more people into the area by day and night activating the space.’
Even along William Street, EPRA have engaged a leasing strategy that will negotiate ‘affordable agreements for the highly sought after creative spaces within William Street’, Mr Morgan assured, which will see the likes of Pigeonhole, New Edition Bookshop and Melbourne’s Outre Gallery move in at August.
For Mr Brown, the greatest opportunity the city has is not cross-pollination between the city and Northbridge, but rather between the east and west of Northbridge itself.
The east symbolises the high culture of the precinct, embodied in the Art Gallery of WA, the State Museum, State Library and PICA, while the west is the epitome of low culture, represented by the nightclubs, bars and arts organisation Artrage, who hope to bring a Fringe Festival to the area in the not too distant future.
‘Often nightclub districts sit right on the edge of the city, often the cultural centres sit right on the edge of the city, but it’s rare that the high culture and the pop culture have the ability to cross-pollinate,’ Mr Brown said.
Which is essentially the crux of Northbridge: the whole area hinges on culture, be it the assorted mix of racial cultures or variety of subcultures which all co-exist in the area, adding to its depth and variety.
‘This area is the one part of what is essentially a fairly bourgeois, suburban, comfortable city, it’s the one area with all those layers of culture that we could tie all those bits together.’
The result is the possibility of developing a cultural melting pot, richer than before, more inclusive than ever, and that our city can be proud to call its own.
Scott-Patrick Mitchell
