Lynette GURR
The study will look at interpretation and adaptive re-use of industrial sites. A brief theoretical study will examine issues associated with conserving and managing industrial sites. World heritage listed industrial sites are seen as bench marks. However, post-industrial places with local heritage significance often have limited financial resources to interpret their significance.
The study identifies successful overseas and Australian best-practice examples that have successfully interpreted heritage significant manufacturing places – Ironbridge Gorge (UK), Emscher Park (Germany), Landschaftspark, Duisburg Nord, Germany and Cockatoo Island.
Three case studies of post-industrial manufacturing sites in NSW are explored. The author has first-hand experience providing heritage management of these sites. The three sites differ in size, complexity and manufacturing output. The first site, Pasminco Cockle Creek Smelter, is a former heavy-industrial lead, zinc and sulphur smelter outside Newcastle; the second is a cement works at Portland, near Lithgow; and the third is a former engineering components manufacturing factory workshop in the Sydney suburb of Artarmon.
Issues referred to in the theoretical study will be explored with respect to each case study and will refer specifically to heritage interpretation of the manufacturing sites. Issues associated with interpretation will include:
- Reading and interpreting the industrial landscape
- What to conserve and appropriate adaptive re-use
- Community response to industrial heritage and interpretation
- Post-industrial towns and its impact of the community
- Establishing tourism routes, trails and routes (eg "European Routes of Industrial Heritage") including the associated township and industrial site
- Oral history programmes and memories of industrial heritage
- Public art as interpretation
- Women and industrial heritage
- Contamination, environmental protection and the law - from brownfield site to heritage place