Leveraging popular music heritage as sustainable cultural infrastructure in small cities

ABSTRACT

Popular music and its heritage increasingly feature as a component of creative city strategies and urban regeneration agendas. However, local governments of small cities face challenges in replicating the cultural policies and strategies popularised by big cities. Focusing on two Australian small cities – Wollongong, New South Wales and Redcliffe, Queensland – this article draws on examples of popular music heritage activity including the Bee Gees Way and Steel City Sound. What emerges is a discussion of the different ways in which these small cities have leveraged their music histories as cultural infrastructure as well as the disparity of support between the two cases from respective local governments. The case studies demonstrate the need for local governments to adopt approaches that cut across the continuum of heritage practice – bringing together unauthorised, self-authorised and authorised discourses and activities that foster passion and support from a range of stakeholders of popular music’s past. The article highlights that capitalising on and sharing resources, expertise and networks, and a commitment to continued investment by local government and the wider community, is essential for creating sustainable cultural infrastructure in small cities.

KEYWORDS:

• Popular music heritage
• cultural infrastructure
• creative cities
• urban renewal
• small cities

Introduction

In the past decade, there has been a surge in the number of museums, archives, exhibitions and other heritage initiatives across the globe that are devoted to or feature popular music histories (Baker et al. 2018; Baker 2015; Cohen et al. 2015; Istvandity, Baker, and Cantillon 2019). At the same time, there has been growing interest in scholarly and policy discourses regarding the role that popular music and its heritage may play in economic development, city branding, tourism and urban revitalisation. Within cultural policy, this interest crystallised in the emergence of the ‘music cities’ construct (Ballico and Watson 2020a; Bennett 2020; Homan 2014). Music cities typically refer to places which have either capitalised on their ‘external mythologising’ (Ballico and Watson 2020b, 4) and famous musical legacies – for example, Nashville’s strong association with country music, or Liverpool’s notoriety as birthplace of the Beatles – or aligned themselves with ‘international development schemes’ like UNESCO’s City of Music network (Bennett 2020, 2). However, popular music and its heritage also increasingly feature as one component of many in broader creative city strategies, cultural infrastructure plans and urban regeneration agendas.

The focus in this article shifts away from a consideration of Australia’s major cities, particularly Melbourne (see e.g. Homan et al. 2022), as beacons of music innovation and heritage celebration. Instead, we explore how, alongside urban renewal agendas, small cities in Australia are also making visible their rich music heritage. This article considers popular music heritage initiatives in the deindustrialising steel city of Wollongong, New South Wales and the ageing seaside resort of Redcliffe, Queensland. While there is a significant body of work on cultural policy, creative industries and urban regeneration in a deindustrialising context (see Mommaas 2004; Mooney 2004; Waitt and Gibson 2009), limited scholarship has attended to these issues in resort cities. The article’s case studies therefore enable an interesting comparative analysis of approaches to urban renewal in small cities where decline resulted from different socio-economic processes.

Despite these differences, both cities have been the site of heritage initiatives focused on popular music. Such initiatives can be usefully framed in terms of Roberts and Cohen’s (2014) typology of popular music heritage, which sets out a continuum of heritage practice based on three forms of interrelated discourse: officially authorised, self-authorised and unauthorised. These refer in turn to heritage that is officially authorised by legitimising bodies such as governments and government-sponsored organisations; ‘DIY, localised or vernacular’ initiatives that are ‘self-validating’ and democratising (Roberts and Cohen 2014, 248–9); and ‘heritage-as-praxis’ – everyday practices of individual or collective memory that ‘does not draw attention to itself; indeed, for the most part it gets by without even an awareness that it is heritage’ (257, original emphasis). In a creative cities context, such a framework enables a consideration of heritage initiatives in small urban centres as situated, relational and contested (Roberts and Cohen 2014, 243).

Examining small cities can provide valuable insight into how global trends and processes manifest in local contexts that have different spatial, economic, cultural and social characteristics compared to large urban metropolises, which are more often the focus of scholarly analysis. Bell and Jayne (2009, 689) recommend smallness not be measured only in terms of ‘population size, density or growth’ but also ‘influence and reach’. In the Australian context, Wollongong and Redcliffe have smaller populations as compared to the country’s capital cities and other major urban areas, as well as being ‘less visible on the global scene’ and lacking the same resources, activities and networks as world cities (see Waitt and Gibson 2009; van Heur 2010). Existing work on small cities has called for more research into how they ‘are positioned and function within a worldwide system of economic competition and cooperation via cultural production, consumption and cultural policy’ (Jayne et al. 2010, 1414) and how they grapple with ‘the challenges of economic restructuring and positioning in a globalizing world’ given ‘they may lack the tangible resources and expertise’ to adopt the strategies of larger cities (Richards and Duif 2019, 1). Attempts to replicate creative city, or music city, strategies in the cultural and urban policies of small cities has been described as risky business (Jayne et al. 2010). In examining music heritage initiatives in Wollongong and Redcliffe, the article considers how music heritage may be used in small cities to build cultural infrastructure through capitalising on local specificity.

The article begins by summarising the links between popular music heritage and urban regeneration, followed by some details on data collection and analysis. After providing a brief background of Wollongong and Redcliffe, the article presents findings from the two case study cities. What emerges is a discussion of the extent to which each place has capitalised on music histories and the disparity of support between the two cases from their respective local governments. The article concludes by highlighting the challenges that small cities face in replicating successful examples of popular music heritage activity – even on a small scale – before suggesting what is needed for local governments to implement effective and sustainable approaches to developing popular music heritage as cultural infrastructure.

Popular music heritage and place-making

For decades, cities across the globe have been leveraging arts, culture and heritage for urban regeneration. In her work on the ‘symbolic economy’, Zukin (1995, 2) explains that

culture is more and more the business of cities – the basis of their tourist attractions and their unique, competitive edge. The growth of cultural consumption (of art, food, fashion, music, tourism) and the industries that cater to it fuels the city’s symbolic economy.

While the rise of the symbolic economy is often understood as a reaction to industrial decline (Zukin 1995), these trends have also been present in touristic resort cities in need of rejuvenation to enhance their competitiveness (Cantillon 2019). In policy discourses, this shift has been most evident in the rise of creative city strategies (e.g. Florida 2002; Landry 2000) whereby cities ‘shrug off’ their old identities ‘and adapt economic development policies that foster “creativity”, diversify local economies, create jobs, attract tourists, and appeal to a creative class of in-migrants’ (Warren and Gibson 2011, 2706). More recently, cultural production and consumption has been described as constituting the ‘cultural infrastructure’ of cities, states or regions. Cultural infrastructure usually refers to physical spaces such as museums, archives, galleries, libraries, theatres, cinemas, studios and rehearsal spaces, as well as digital spaces that support access to culture (see, e.g. NSW Government 2019; State of Western Australia 2020). In addition to this ‘hard’ infrastructure, however, cultural infrastructure also encompasses ‘soft’ elements – relations, engagements, knowledges, affects and practices that are intertwined with physical and digital spaces (see, e.g. Bryson 2007). Support for cultural infrastructure is typically predicated on its capacity to support ‘culture-led placemaking’ (Bingham-Hall and Kaasa 2017, 9) and economic development.

In this context, the value of popular music tends to be measured in economic terms and in its utility to enhance place-making strategies. Place-making has become a common phrase and concept within cultural policy discourses (see, e.g. Gadwa Nicodemus 2013; Stevenson and Blanche 2015). Lew (2017, 449) observes that there are two broad definitions of place-making often used in scholarly literature: 1) ‘how a culture group imprints its values, perceptions, memories, and traditions on a landscape and gives meaning to geographic space’ through ‘mostly organic, bottom-up processes’; 2) ‘a planned and often top-down professional design effort to influence people’s behavior and shape their perceptions of a place’. The latter is what can frequently be found in local government policy, although this can, of course, be intertwined with a community’s sense of place as captured in the first definition. In this article, we understand place as fluid and processual (Massey 2005) in that place identity is composed of multiple interconnecting elements involving complex dynamics between material, symbolic and lived qualities of urban spaces (Lefebvre 1991; Soja 1996). That is, urban regeneration efforts led by local governments are only one facet of what makes a place, and there are a multiplicity of other vernacular activities, efforts and expressions to consider.

Globally, governments and local authorities have turned to popular music as a resource for attracting new investment, creating jobs and marketing their cities and regions as attractive tourist destinations (Cohen and Roberts 2013; Frost 2008; Gibson and Connell 2007; Homan 2014). Heritage is one aspect of musical activity that can be drawn on in music city branding. These music heritage initiatives can encompass a wide range of practices, including the establishment of museums, archives and halls of fame; in situ interpretive markers (e.g. plaques, statues, signage); restoration of heritage sites (e.g. venues, homes) associated with well-known musicians, scenes and sounds; commemoration through festivals; and the redevelopment of spaces, precincts or trails which attempt to heritage the urban environment. In the context of country music, for example, Nashville, U.S.A and Tamworth, Australia (a big and small city respectively) capitalise on their long histories with the genre by accommodating many of the above-named practices across the urban environment. Additionally, they stake a claim on the ‘music city’ label for place-marketing purposes (Bennett 2020), with each naming themselves a ‘country music capital’ (Baker and Huber 2013a; Baker 2016). Beyond popular music heritage’s utility for city branding and place-marketing, it can also be drawn on for broader symbolic and material revitalisation purposes, including being the focus of projects aimed at promoting civic pride among local residents (see Baker et al. 2020).

There is little scholarly work that explores how popular music heritage might be leveraged in Australia for urban regeneration and cultural infrastructure goals. As Bennett and Rogers (2014, 303) note, ‘Australia has lagged behind in the movement towards recasting contemporary popular music as an aspect of late twentieth-century cultural heritage’. As a result, there are ‘few examples of popular music being officially celebrated’ as heritage across the nation (Strong, Cannizzo, and Rogers 2017, 83). Some notable exceptions include the presence of the Australian Music Vault in Melbourne and the City of Melbourne’s endorsement of renaming a Melbourne laneway ‘ACDC Lane’ (after the band AC/DC), as well as temporary exhibitions at mainstream heritage institutions such as Kylie: An Exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. Popular music heritage initiatives in Australia have usually been ‘relatively low-key, informal activities pursued by music fans’ (Bennett and Rogers 2014, 314), including community-based and do-it-yourself efforts to collect, preserve and celebrate popular music’s past (see, e.g. Cantillon and Baker 2020, 2022; Baker and Huber 2012; on the Australian Jazz Museum/Victorian Jazz Archive; Baker 2017 on the Australian Country Music Hall of Fame). In many cases, support of these initiatives by local governments is nominal.

What has been written on popular music heritage and urban regeneration in Australia tends to focus on larger cities where heritage is entangled in broader music strategies designed to capitalise on or develop reputations as music cities (Bennett and Rogers 2014; Darchen, Willsteed, and Browning 2022; Gibson and Homan 2004; Homan 2000, 2014; Strong, Cannizzo, and Rogers 2017). Indeed, in the last two decades, heritage has often not been named as such in creative city policies, with music strategy documents instead invoking references to ‘rich cultural history’ to emphasise long and deep contributions of a music industry to a city (see, e.g. City of Melbourne 2014). In the case of Melbourne, Homan et al. (2022) posit it is only recently that music heritage has shifted from the periphery of policy interest to be taken seriously as a strategy, in and of itself, for reimagining what a global music capital might look like. The Melbourne Music Plan 2018–21 (City of Melbourne 2018, 17) indicates that determining the ‘heritage significance’ of the city’s music venues is a priority. Further, while heritage has not always been mentioned in policy documents, outcomes from the focus on cultural histories has produced heritage outcomes like ‘Melbourne’s music walk’, a self-guided tour of the city’s prominent music venues (City of Melbourne n.d.).

Of course, as Connell and Gibson (2003, 243) attest, popular music heritage initiatives can emerge in places that are not ‘obvious centres of music fame’. It has been noted that city branding and cultural policies can capitalise on ‘tenuous connections’ that a place might have to popular music genres, artists and recordings from the past (Connell and Gibson 2003, 243; see also Brennan‐horley, Connell, and Gibson 2007). In such cases, the connections between music and place are ‘invented’ through ‘whatever resources and structures’ are available (Connell and Gibson 2003, 243). While drawing on tenuous links happens in cities of any size, initiatives of this type are perhaps most obvious in regional cities and smaller towns where the scope for globally-recognised or otherwise spectacular heritage resources may be limited. In this respect, Jayne et al. (2010, 1411) note how urban cultural policy can trickle down from capital cities into the regions ‘as small cities adopt a “me-too” approach to regeneration and re-imagining’, seeking to reap similar social, cultural and economic rewards.

Background to the research

This article draws on data from two projects on popular music heritage and urban transformations. The first of these projects focused on popular music heritage initiatives in three deindustrialising cities: Wollongong, Australia; Birmingham, UK; and Detroit, USA. The project explored how popular music heritage can reframe cultural narratives about place and produce cultural justice outcomes for communities impacted by industrial decline (see Cantillon, Baker, and Nowak 2021a). The second project examined a popular music heritage walk in Redcliffe, Australia, focusing on the Bee Gees Way and its capacity to produce social, cultural and economic changes for the small resort city.

In both projects, data was collected using qualitative methods. The fieldwork in Wollongong was undertaken from 8–13 October 2018, 15–20 June 2019 and 16–23 October 2019 and involved semi-structured interviews with 21 stakeholders (including local councillors, band managers, label owners, venue operators, heritage workers, documentary makers, music enthusiasts, journalists and public historians), observations and photographs of music and industrial heritage sites and contemporary music-making practices, and the hosting of a public panel at Wollongong Art Gallery. In Redcliffe, fieldwork was undertaken from 3–10 February 2020, with a return visit on 28 November 2020. Fieldwork involved observations and photographs of heritage sites, and semi-structured interviews with 13 stakeholders of Redcliffe heritage (including councillors, council employees, members of History Redcliffe, journalists, members of the Bee Gees Fan Club and a Bee Gees Way Ambassador) and 20 end-users of the Bee Gees Way (including residents and visitors). In this article, naming conventions for participants are guided by the ethics protocols of the individual projects. As such, some participants from Wollongong are named while others are anonymised and those from Redcliffe are either anonymised or identified via stakeholder status.

Analysis of the data from Wollongong and Redcliffe was underpinned by a concern for the different approaches taken to preserve and celebrate popular music’s past. Data was coded in NVivo by Lauren and audited by Sarah across two separate phases. The first phase of thematic analysis informed the article’s Findings section and ‘attend[ed] to the intricacies of [each] individual case’ study city (Filippucci 2009, 322). A second phase of thematic analysis subsequently informed the article’s Discussion section by taking a comparative approach attuned to patterns, regularities and differences in the data in relation to the processes, practices and policies of popular music heritage in Redcliffe and Wollongong. The two phase approach to analysis enabled the authors to document ‘diversity and variety’ across both case study cities and address ‘the reasons for variation or indeed for similarity’ in Wollongong and Redcliffe (Filippucci 2009, 322).

The small cities of our study

Wollongong

Located an hour’s drive south of Australia’s largest city (Sydney, New South Wales), Wollongong is a deindustrialising city with a population of more than 260,000 (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2016b). Wollongong sits between the mountainous Illawarra Escarpment to the west and the Pacific Ocean to the east, with its idyllic beachside landscape offset by the imposing architecture of the steelworks to the south. In the wake of European colonisation, the region’s growth throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was driven first by dairy farming and coal mining, and then overwhelmingly by steel manufacturing (Hagan and Lee 2002). The Port Kembla steelworks expanded significantly post-World War II (Barnes et al. 2006). By the mid 1970s, the BHP-operated steelworks employed 41 per cent of the city’s workforce (Schultz 1985; Watson 1991).

Wollongong’s steelworks and associated industries declined in the 1980s and 1990s, producing significant economic hardship in the city which was further compounded by the 2008/2009 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). The GFC ‘froze the global demand for steel’, resulting ‘in thousands of job losses’ at the Wollongong plant (Gibson 2013, 68). Subsequently, the city has been compelled to rethink its reliance on steel manufacturing and diversify its economy. Since the 1980s, Wollongong’s local government has invested in successive campaigns to revitalise the city’s image, distancing itself from associations with poverty, pollution, crime and decay. In the 1980s, the city branded itself as the ‘Leisure Coast’ in an attempt to capitalise on its potential as a tourism destination (Barnes et al. 2006). In the 1990s, it was temporarily branded as the ‘City of Diversity’ before quickly changing to the ‘City of Innovation’ in 1999, a label which it retains to this day (Barnes et al. 2006). A separate campaign entitled ‘We Love the Gong’ was launched in 2010 to appeal to tourists and ‘address negative attitudes towards Wollongong, particularly those held by its residents’ following a 2008 corruption scandal which resulted in the entire city council being dismissed and replaced by administrators appointed by the state government (Kerr, Dombkins, and Jelley 2012, 275).

According to Waitt and Gibson (2009, 1232), Wollongong was one of the first Australian cities to implement a creative cities agenda, ‘intended both to regenerate employment and to (re)image the metropolitan spaces of a 20th-century working port and steel mill into a vibrant, 21st-century city of the “new” globalising, post-Fordist, metropolitan economy’. Today, Wollongong’s main industries of employment are health, aged care, higher education, retail; while much smaller than it once was, the metal manufacturing industry continues to employ several thousand people in the city (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2016b). Waitt and Gibson (2009, 1243) argue that the ‘legacies of manufacturing, engineering and science’ in Wollongong has resulted in creative city strategies that are ‘not about actively promoting the arts or cultural industries’ but rather about ‘regional innovations in science and the manufacturing sector’.

Redcliffe

With a population of 50,000 (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2016a), Redcliffe is a small coastal suburb of Queensland’s Moreton Bay Region, located approximately a 45 minute drive north of the state capital, Brisbane. Since the 1880s, Redcliffe has been a popular seaside city for visitors from Brisbane attracted by its pleasant beaches, provision of beach-front boarding houses and holiday cottages, and perceived ‘charm’ due to its relative isolation (Jones 1988). However, from the mid-20th century, Redcliffe was overshadowed as a popular seaside destination by the comparatively sophisticated tourism infrastructure and integrated transport networks of the nearby Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast – larger urban resort centres also located in southeast Queensland (see Prideaux 2000). Following a period of decline as a resort town, Redcliffe colloquially became referred to as ‘Deadcliffe’. In 2008, the then-City of Redcliffe was subsumed in the newly-formed Moreton Bay Regional Council. Since the amalgamation, Redcliffe is now managed as part of broader economic and cultural development strategies whereby place-making and branding have a regional, rather than city-specific, focus, with a view to supporting cultural activities in ways that will diversify the local economy, create jobs, attract tourism and increase the profile of the amalgamated region.

As part of one of Australia’s fastest growing regions (Moreton Bay Regional Council n.d.b), Redcliffe has recently experienced change characterised by influxes of new residents and the development of residential and commercial complexes, including an array of new businesses. The area has, in turn, seen a revival of its tourism economy, with the Moreton Bay Regional Council (2019) reporting significant increases in tourism numbers over the last decade, receiving 3.6 million visitors in 2018. Existing hard cultural infrastructure in the area includes the Redcliffe Entertainment Centre, Redcliffe City Art Gallery and Redcliffe Museum. According to the Council’s official reporting, the implementation and maintenance of cultural facilities is recognised for generating substantial tourism and economic benefits for the region (Moreton Bay Regional Council 2015). Interest in supporting cultural activities for tourism purposes is also demonstrated in Council initiatives such as a recent collaboration with Redcliffe Historical Society to create a series of self-guided, digital heritage trails, including the ‘Convict Trail’ and ‘Esplanade Walk’.

Findings

‘Fuck council’: the precarity of popular music heritage in the city of innovation

Wollongong has a rich history of music-making, particularly grunge, punk, garage and surf rock. Some of the city’s most iconic local bands include Tumbleweed – who famously supported Nirvana on their 1992 Australian tour – and, more recently, Hockey Dad, who have built a strong fan base both in Australia and overseas. Wollongong is also home to the Yours & Owls annual music festival, the Farmer & The Owl record label (whose first signed band was Hockey Dad), and a number of live music venues and small bars. In addition to these entrepreneurial, DIY efforts, our interviewees indicate that the Wollongong City Council has become marginally more supportive of fostering the city’s music industry in the last decade. For instance, in 2014 a Live Music Taskforce was established, and the action plan they produced was successfully adopted by the council as part of their cultural policy plan (see Wollongong City Council 2014).

At the same time that live music production and consumption has been growing in Wollongong, a small number of grassroots, DIY initiatives commemorating the city’s popular music histories emerged. These included, for example, The Occy: A Doco (Burling 2012), an amateur documentary which focused on the history and memories of the Oxford Tavern, a prominent live music venue in the city; and Friday Night at the Oxford (Humphries 2018), a book comprising a collection of stories about local bands and performances at the Oxford Tavern. Perhaps the most visible DIY initiative, however, was Steel City Sound.

Launched as an online archive by local music enthusiast Warren Wheeler in 2010, Steel City Sound featured an extensive collection of blog posts capturing some of Wollongong’s best-known venues, bands and other musical histories. Beyond merely documenting popular music pursuits, Wheeler (2013) explained that the archive ‘paints the story of Wollongong and our surrounds. It celebrates the creative spirit that the region cultivates and aims to ensure that the product of that spirit is preserved for future generations’. Wheeler identified a gap in the city’s collecting practices, sparking a realisation that ‘this stuff needs to be documented somewhere, someone needs to do something’ (12 October 2018) so that Wollongong’s musical past would not be forgotten.

Wheeler’s efforts were recognised by the Director of the Wollongong Art Gallery, John Monteleone, who invited Wheeler to work as a visiting curator to develop a popular music-themed exhibition. This culminated in the Steel City Sound exhibition, which ran from late 2014 to early 2015. Building on the content of the online archive, the exhibition drew connections between Wollongong’s popular music history and broader characteristics and shifts within the city, including ‘working class and migrant populations, issues with youth unemployment, and the rise of digital technologies’ (Cantillon, Baker, and Nowak 2021b, 108). Monteleone noted that the exhibition was very popular during its run, and many of our other interviewees also reported that the exhibition was considered a great success (see Cantillon, Baker, and Nowak 2021b).

The Wollongong Art Gallery is administered by Wollongong City Council with financial assistance from the NSW Government. Besides the Wollongong Art Gallery’s support for the temporary Steel City Sound exhibit, interviewees expressed that they felt there had been little effort from the council to support music heritage activities in the city, let alone initiate them. Indeed, Wheeler explained he had attempted to secure a grant from the local government to support his archive, but to no avail. As one local archivist described: ‘It was hard enough getting them [the Council] to support an art gallery, let alone getting them to go that next step and support having a responsibility for preserving pop culture heritage’ (Joseph, 10 October 2018). After the exhibition, the Steel City Sound website was only scarcely updated as Wheeler no longer had the time or capacity to regularly maintain it. In 2019, the domain name for Steel City Sound expired; the website is no longer accessible, except via internet archive platforms like The Way Back Machine or the superseded WordPress prototype of the archive (see Wheeler 2010).

A heritage officer highlighted that the Wollongong City Council’s policies fail to adequately acknowledge and protect the more intangible qualities of heritage that constitute cultural practices like popular music. Although the Council has measures in place to preserve built heritage, there are shortfalls in its approach to fostering the city’s hard and soft cultural infrastructure. The heritage officer described how tangible and intangible heritage intersect in their attempt to protect a site in the Wollongong CBD called Langs Corner which, at the time of our interview, housed a prominent live music venue, Rad Bar (see Figure 1), and was the former site of the Yours & Owls cafe/bar (a precursor to the successful local Yours & Owls music festival):

I honestly think that we are losing a lot of what has made Wollongong so special to a lot of people. … I tried to nominate the building [Langs Corners] as a social heritage [site]. … losing another space where young people can have this sort of experience is a real problem in the CBD because once we lose them, we don’t seem to get anyone willing to house that sort of activity. So, what ended up happening was the actual Langs Corner building was assessed as significant, so now they’re going to build the tower and keep the façade, which isn’t really a great outcome for anyone. It doesn’t solve any of the problems I raised with the social significance of the site, or what are council’s options to facilitate … [Rad Bar being] moved elsewhere in the CBD. Basically, it’s not going to be. (Belinda, 9 October 2018)

Figure 1. Exterior of rad bar, October 2018. Photograph by Zelmarie Cantillon.

Here, the interviewee describes how they fought for recognition of the venue’s meaning and significance as an important space of cultural production and consumption, but that getting the council to understand this value was ‘notoriously difficult’. They went on to explain that residents contributed hundreds of formal submissions to council opposing the development, but with no success. In this interview from 2018, we had discussed how Rad Bar was at risk of being closed, with the council continuing to privilege the interests of developers over the cultural and historical significance of this site to popular music’s recent past. A year later, during our next fieldwork trip, Rad Bar had closed (see Figure 2). Inside and outside the building, the venue’s supporters had written messages like ‘fuck council’, ‘RIP Rad’ and ‘long live Rad’ (see Figure 3). This example illustrates, on one hand, contestations in how heritage values are assessed. On the other hand, it highlights how the potential heritage value of spaces like music venues can be recognised by some groups (fans, patrons, enthusiasts) in the present, but are not permitted to operate long enough to be considered worthy of celebration or protection by the local government, nor understood as being of value to the city’s hard and soft infrastructure offerings. The failure to protect these sites therefore limits what is available for heritage interpretation and remembrance into the future.

Figure 2. Exterior of langs corner with ‘BYE’ spray painted, October 2019. Photograph by Zelmarie Cantillon.

Figure 3. Interior of rad bar with graffiti messages, October 2019. Photograph by Zelmarie Cantillon.

Staying alive: centring popular music heritage in the council-led revitalisation of redcliffe

Unlike Wollongong, Redcliffe does not have a strong or notable history of music production. However, it has capitalised on its connection to internationally-acclaimed group the Bee Gees. Having moved to the coastal town from Manchester, England, in the late 1950s, brothers Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb spent their childhood frequenting the Redcliffe Jetty and local Woolworths grocery store being ‘rascally kids’ (End User Resident P1, 7 February 2020). Redcliffe residents recall details of the boys diving underneath the ‘halfway house on the Jetty’ in search of coins that would ‘fall out of [tourists’] hands and go through the cracks in the [jetty] floor’ into the water below (Councillor P2, 7 February 2020). The brothers went on to form the Bee Gees and played their first gig at the Redcliffe Speedway in 1959 (O’Grady 2017). They signed their first music contract on their kitchen table at the family home in Redcliffe (Moreton Bay Regional Council n.d.a), later performing in the Brisbane and Sydney areas for several years before moving back to England in 1967 to further their career. The band became an international success, selling ‘more than 220 million records worldwide’ (Universal Music Group 2016). O’Grady (2017, 33) notes that despite the band members living in Australia for a relatively brief period of time, their Australian experience was significant in terms of the Bee Gees’ development as professional musicians. Their personal memories of growing up amid the coastal beaches of Redcliffe are invoked in the Bee Gees’ live performances and song lyrics (O’Grady 2017).

Redcliffe’s connection to the Bee Gees has been commemorated through the Bee Gees Way. First unveiled in 2013 and expanded in 2015, the Bee Gees Way is a 70-metre outdoor walkway located off Redcliffe Parade, sitting between the main street and seafront (see Figure 4). The walkway details how it was in Redcliffe that the Gibb brothers became the Bee Gees. As one council employee explained it: ‘that’s our claim to fame’ (P3, 6 February 2020). The walkway captures key moments in the Bee Gees’ career in addition to childhood memories in Redcliffe. The narrative is supported by clips of recorded music, video and audio interviews – interpreted by text-based information panels written from the first-person perspective of Barry Gibb – as well as murals and life-size statues of the Gibb brothers. To increase engagement with the site beyond daylight hours, the walkway also features a program of evening light shows. In 2020, a series of essential maintenance works, infrastructural upgrades and new features were introduced to the walkway, supported by funding from the Moreton Bay Regional Council, demonstrating ongoing investment in this heritage initiative (Moreton Bay Regional Council 2020a, 2020b; Powell 2020).

Figure 4. Bee Gees Way looking toward Redcliffe Parade and foreshore. Photograph by Bob Buttigieg.

Interviewees expressed a ‘number of motivators’ leading to the development of the Bee Gees Way, which were succinctly captured by one councillor as: (1) ‘an opportunity [for the new council] to promote the Moreton Bay region [and] create this new identity [at a time when] we were trying to create the region’; (2) ‘honouring people who have had a significant contribution’; and (3) ‘economic development’ (P4, 5 February 2020). The Council already had plans to create a thoroughfare between the seafront and the local businesses and car park situated on the backstreet. The theming of this thoroughfare in relation to the Bee Gees was facilitated by then-mayor Allan Sutherland’s recently established relationship with Barry Gibb (Journalist P5, 8 February 2020), which enabled the Council’s extensive access to materials pertaining to the personal and professional lives of the band members. Events including the death of band member Robin in 2012 and Barry’s world tour in 2013 (O’Grady 2017) also contributed to the timeliness for developing a Bee Gees-themed walkway.

The emergence of the Bee Gees Way ‘grew out of opportunity’ (Council Employee P3, 6 February 2020) rather than being directly influenced or inspired by local or state level policies – ‘it was just “hey, what a great idea” and the majority of councillors got behind it’ (Councillor P2, 7 February 2020). Nonetheless, the creation of this popular music heritage attraction resonates with the strategic priorities of the Moreton Bay Regional Council to expand cultural facilities and activities, improve the visitor economy and enhance the lifestyles of local residents:

Every cent that was spent [by Council] on Bee Gees Way was worthwhile … it’s put Redcliffe on the map … I believe it did a lot of change for Redcliffe in the way of … bringing more people here, tourism-wise … a lot of businesses sometimes struggle. But I think having the Bee Gees Way, and having people come to have a look … it brings more people and they go and talk to other people. I think that is a really unique way of trying to encourage people to come to Redcliffe. (Councillor P6, 6 February 2020)

Locals were also identified as an important part of the equation, with a councillor noting ‘if you want something to succeed, the locals … need to embrace it and engage with it’ (Councillor P4, 5 February 2020). Some locals spoke of incidental interactions with the walkway (‘it gives access to the public toilet from the main street’ [End User Resident P7, 7 February 2020]), while others specifically noted their purposeful incorporation of the walkway into daily routines. One resident described how ‘it’s the first place I always take [friends visiting from out of town] and they love it’ (History Redcliffe P8, 5 February 2020). Another highlighted that they use the walkway as a meeting point whenever they have visitors, adding that ‘the music enlivens you and sets you in the mood’ (History Redcliffe P9, 5 February 2020). Interviews with locals highlight their appreciation for how the Bee Gees Way contributes to the vibrant atmosphere of the main street. One interviewee explained that ‘even when I’m driving … I put the window down as I’m going past in the evening because I can hear the music and it’s an atmosphere. … I just want to take it in’ (End User Resident P10, 9 February 2020); another claimed that ‘it’s just nice to have a walk along and listen to some good music’ when visiting nearby restaurants and businesses (End User Resident P11, 9 February 2020). The general consensus from interviewees with long associations with the area is that the Bee Gees Way has brought Redcliffe alive. In the words of one councillor, for locals and tourists ‘it’s a reminder that Redcliffe was not just a discarded place’ (P2, 7 February 2020).

Discussion

Popular music heritage has clearly emerged in Wollongong and Redcliffe in very different ways. Wollongong was an early adopter of creative city strategies, but there was very little local government support for heritage aspects of the city’s popular music offer. The Steel City Sound archive was a DIY initiative with no council support beyond the Wollongong Art Gallery’s collaboration in creating a temporary exhibition. With a lack of resources, the archive had limited potential for sustainability. Ongoing urban development in the city saw the closure of venues which local residents believed may have had future heritage potential due to their role in Wollongong’s contemporary music scenes. So, despite the city’s emphasis on creative city strategies, the heritage examples that emerged in our fieldwork – the Steel City Sound archive and exhibition, and Rad Bar – are no longer available for residents or visitors to engage with. Redcliffe, on the other hand, had little in the way of a creative city strategy. Rather, the Bee Gees Way emerged as an ad-hoc project arising from the personal interests and connections of Redcliffe councillors. Despite, or perhaps because of, the Bee Gees Way development as a passion project within the Council, popular music heritage now has an ongoing visible presence in Redcliffe which can be readily engaged with by locals and visitors to the area.

Through the lens of Roberts and Cohen’s (2014) continuum of heritage discourse, the activity in Redcliffe would be considered as officially authorised due to being government-sponsored and supported by the consecrated artists. In Wollongong, on the other hand, an initiative like Steel City Sound online archive is self-authorised popular music heritage in that it is a ‘DIY institution’ (Baker and Huber 2013b). The archive’s ‘legitimacy’ (from the perspective of the authorised heritage discourse, see Smith 2006) was enhanced by engagement with the Wollongong Art Gallery, though validation of its legitimacy was not the core motivational objective. Rather, the priority was democratisation, vernacular heritage discourse and making the city’s popular music history more accessible and visible to the community (see Cantillon, Baker, and Nowak 2021b). The collaboration between the archive and the gallery took into account unauthorised discourse, crowdsourcing materials from everyday heritage practice (e.g. personal collections) and emphasising individual and collective memory. Although it is clear to see in the Wollongong example how a grassroots initiative moves along the continuum in both directions, drawing together authorised, self-authorised and unauthorised discourses, this is also evident in Redcliffe, which, while seemingly a very clearcut example of authorised heritage, emerged in an ad-hoc, grassroots manner despite the connections to councillors.

It is striking that Wollongong City Council, given its policy interest in creative city strategies, has not capitalised on its well-regarded music scenes to create authorised music heritage initiatives. One of the failings of creative city strategies in Wollongong may have been the lack of attention paid to fostering the culture and creativity that already existed within the community. The Steel City Sound online archive is a prime example of this lack of recognition and without support from Council, the endeavour was ultimately unsustainable. One of our interviewees remarked that the Council ‘should be facilitators’ to enable creative and cultural activities already developing on the ground (David, 11 October 2018). Another interviewee, reflecting on their experience as the co-founder of a popular music festival in Wollongong, noted the importance of the council recognising existing innovative cultural initiatives and working collaboratively with the individuals who have instigated them:

council likes to take credit for everybody’s work, but really it comes from individuals … there’s definitely been key people in council who we’ve worked with and, you know, help[ed] them develop these policies or this or that to make it a little bit easier. In terms of the drive, it’s coming from the individuals first and then [council is] kind of going alright, there’s a thing here, we should try to help to make this happen. (Aaron, 9 October 2018).

Such comments reflect observations by Waitt and Gibson (2009, 1243) that ‘creative regeneration in Wollongong had little to do with official planning schemes’ and instead emerged more organically from the ‘vernacular pursuits of grassroots artists, musicians, writers and documentary makers’ who moved to the region in search of a particular lifestyle.

Meanwhile, Redcliffe’s local government, with no explicit positioning in local policy as a creative city, has built an enduring music heritage initiative. As Richards and Duif (2019, 2) remark, small cities regenerate themselves when they ‘mobilize the tangible and intangible resources they do have, link to networks, [and] use their small scale creatively’. With the development of the Bee Gees Way, Redcliffe has capitalised on its local specificity to cultivate a stronger symbolic economy. Seeing the impacts of the Bee Gees Way on Redcliffe, the Moreton Bay Regional Council considered how music heritage could be drawn on in other places in the region. Based on the success of the Bee Gees Way, one councillor indicated the Council has considered ‘mak[ing] this a music sort of region’ (P2, 7 February 2020). Another councillor spoke of a link between internationally renowned country music artist Keith Urban and Caboolture, a small city in the Moreton Bay Region: ‘we certainly made attempts to contact Keith Urban … with the concept of doing a statue’ (P4, 7 February 2020). At the time of the interview, the statue had not eventuated, and the councillor went on to note that ‘there’s a certain chemistry around what has been done here [in Redcliffe], that is probably very difficult to replicate’ within the region. The interviews indicate that this is because the development of the Bee Gees Way was dependent on the strong relationships created with Barry Gibb and his management, as well as Gibb’s willingness to become deeply invested in all aspects of the walkway’s creation.

What both Redcliffe and Wollongong had in common was a recognition and desire for a shift in or regeneration of place-based identity, but they approached this differently. The director of the Wollongong Art Gallery described how the Council turned to Melbourne for inspiration:

one of the Council visions for the future is that Wollongong is a liveable city … there has been a real push to try and make the laneways in the city interesting, like Melbourne, having little cafes and activities, art in the laneways and so on … Wollongong, in a way, is trying to shape itself … like Melbourne – have a café culture, have a nightlife, have things for young people to come and do in the city. (John Monteleone, 11 October 2018)

While Wollongong looked outward to a major city for inspiration regarding renewal of its place identity and increasing its cultural offer, Redcliffe’s Moreton Bay Regional Council were, as a result of amalgamation, in a moment of introspection to determine how its various place identities coalesce. Both the Steel City Sound archive and the Bee Gees Way were passion projects or labours of love (Long et al. 2017); the key difference in their sustainability to date has been that, in Redcliffe, the affective investment in the project was held by a key group of people attached to the Council.

Conclusion

The case studies of Redcliffe and Wollongong provide insight into how popular music heritage materialises and can be leveraged – or not – by local governments for urban regeneration and cultural infrastructure purposes. It is well-established in scholarly work on urban cultural policy that there is a danger in small cities simply replicating a big city approach to urban renewal and creative city strategies. This article illustrates that small cities can similarly find it difficult to replicate the creative strategies of other small cities; and as the case of Redcliffe demonstrates in reference to a proposed celebration of Keith Urban in neighbouring Caboolture, it is not always straightforward to reproduce strategies that have already proved successful within a single local government area. To overcome such challenges, the case studies highlight the need for approaches that cut across the continuum of heritage practice – drawing together unauthorised, self-authorised and authorised discourses and practices that foster passion and support from a range of stakeholders. Vital to the success of such initiatives is enthusiasm within the community, involvement of the musicians themselves, and the advocacy of champions working within the local government authority involved, as clearly demonstrated in Redcliffe’s development and expansion of the Bee Gees Way.

Examples from the two cities suggest that there are opportunities for local governments to not only identify histories that can be mobilised for heritagisation (Redcliffe), but also to support existing DIY heritage initiatives already underway (Wollongong). Local governments in Australia and elsewhere often struggle with limited financial resources to pursue ambitious economic and cultural policy objectives, making it difficult to invest in costly hard infrastructure developments. These challenges have been amplified by neoliberalism’s social, cultural, political and economic impacts – including austerity governance, fiscal conservatism and the culture wars. However, attending to everyday histories and grassroots heritage activities reveals the rich soft cultural infrastructure that constitutes and can further cultivate cultural vitality in small cities. There was a missed opportunity in Wollongong, for example, to partner with the Steel City Sound online archive (a form of vernacular hard cultural infrastructure intrinsically linked to expansive soft skills, networks and knowledges) in ways that would have produced a sustainable initiative that celebrates the local specificities of place. Such a partnership could have provided the council with a tangible link to an accessible, visible tool to draw on for urban reimaging and community engagement. Demonstrations of support do not always need to involve significant financial investments to reap mutually beneficial outcomes for local governments and the communities they serve. Even something as simple as paying for the domain name for Steel City Sound would have gone a long way to ensure that this was a resource that local government could draw on at a time that it was ready to do so.

If culture is the ‘fourth pillar’ of sustainable development (see, e.g. Hawkes 2001) then the cultural policies and place-making strategies of small cities’ local governments need to take into consideration the sustainability of popular music heritage initiatives as cultural infrastructure. A lack of ongoing support by local governments for self-authorised initiatives represents a significant missed opportunity to have a meaningful stake in community-led storying of their small urban area’s cultural histories. The sustainability of the community heritage sector, in Australia and elsewhere, is recognised to be especially fragile (see Baker and Cantillon 2020; Baker and Collins 2017), with many of these initiatives eventually facing decline. At that point, they must rely on support from authorised institutions or otherwise dissolve (Sheffield 2017). A report from Museums Australia’s Victoria branch (Owens 2016, 31), for example, calls on local governments to ‘support the sustainability of community collecting groups’, noting that self-authorised initiatives focused on the collection of local history are highly likely to request assistance from local governments at key moments of strain in these organisations’ life-cycle transitions. A focus on approaching cultural policy and place-making in ways that embrace heritage initiatives which cut across the continuum of authorisation is therefore imperative for creating vibrant, sustainable cultural infrastructure in small cities. The examples from Wollongong and Redcliffe ultimately highlight that capitalising on and sharing resources, expertise and networks, and a commitment to continued investment by local government and the wider community, is essential for creating sustainable cultural infrastructure that reflects and speaks to the creative histories of place and economic and cultural policy imperatives of the present.

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge two colleagues who were involved in data collection for this project: Dr Bob Buttigieg, who conducted fieldwork in Redcliffe, and Dr Raphaël Nowak, who undertook fieldwork in Wollongong.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zelmarie Cantillon

Zelmarie Cantillon is a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow in the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, where she co-leads the Cultural Infrastructure research program. Her work focuses on the intersections of heritage, cultural policy, urban transformations and tourism, with a particular focus on cultural justice. She is author of Resort Spatiality: Reimagining Sites of Mass Tourism (Routledge 2019) and co-editor of The Routledge Companion Popular Music History and Heritage (Routledge 2018).

Sarah Baker

Sarah Baker is Professor of Cultural Sociology at Griffith University, Australia. Her work explores the connections between heritage and well-being, the sustainability of the community heritage sector and the relations between heritage and the pursuit of cultural justice for local communities. Her books including Community Custodians of Popular Music’s Past: A DIY Approach to Heritage (Routledge 2017) and Curating Pop: Exhibiting Popular Music in the Museum (Bloomsbury 2019).

Lauren Chalk

Lauren Chalk is a PhD candidate in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University, Australia, researching heritage practices related to the popular music genre, reggaeton. Lauren’s project, ‘Representing Reggaeton’, includes the voices of people who have created grassroots platforms and online archives, as well as individuals working within institutional spaces, to explore how reggaeton is represented and practised as cultural heritage.