In 2018, Salamanca Arts Centre received funding
through the Dr Edward Hall Environment Grant,
to activate one of its external public spaces
as a green pocket garden.
Salamanca Arts Centre’s Seed Garden project is a collaborative urban design project that will utilise and improve the concrete chessboard area (adjacent to Salamanca Square). The project aims to create an inviting meeting place that is adaptable, refreshing and innovative.
This project will enhance environmental, social, economic and aesthetic components of the space and its surrounds. The design of the space will be subtle and contemporary and create an ideal shared area for visitors and locals to relax and enjoy the heritage buildings in the vicinity. The space will encourage people to be present and still, to remain longer, in an otherwise concreted thoroughfare.
Salamanca Arts Centre is pleased to announce Bec Stevens and Kris Schaffer (Artists/Designers and Indigenous Horticulturalist) will be engaged for this project. Their application illustrated a fitting response to site, with their proposed design informed by research of each historical layer, a previously active section of coastline with indigenous coastal plants, inhabited by the muwinina people; followed by a busy working hub and quarry in early colonial times; to its present use.
We expect this project to be completed by the end of August 2019, for launch in September 2019. Installation should have minimal impact on the daily use of the square.
We see this as a wonderful opportunity for a local landscape design team to collaborate with SAC, responding to a prominent site within the main Arts and cultural hub of Hobart, within Salamanca Square. This project is part of a larger, ambitious vision for Salamanca Arts Centre over the coming years.
Should you have any queries or concerns regarding this, please contact Administration: info@sac.org.au
We look forward to sharing and unveiling this garden with you.
[rev_slider seed-garden]
About the Artists
Bec Stevens
Bec Stevens is an artist, designer and producer preoccupied with plants, people and places.
She trained in Fines Arts and Environmental Design and, along with this formal training, has been invested in building her plant knowledge from a young age. She works across disciplines, using drawing as a base for all endeavours, while being comfortable and skilled as a designer and maker, as well as a facilitator and producer. Bec believes in the capacity of creative practice to work through complex problems in lateral and effective ways. She uses emergent strategies to weave understandings of the social, historical and geographical attributes of the places we inhabit and embody. A key project that she devised was STOP. REST. PLAY. A three-week shopfront project that visualised and involved children as active citizens in the CBD and invited public response to including children’s needs in our urban strategies. Bec has been involved in the creative fields for 20 years with experience within community, galleries, museums and artist run initiatives.
Kris Schaffer
Kris Schaffer is an indigenous horticulturalist, bush food expert, consultant and artist amongst many things, with a life-time’s experience of being creatively embedded in nature. Kris was one of the key garden designers on the Macquarie Point Edible Precinct, bringing her knowledge of bush foods to regenerate the post-industrial precinct. She is passionate about indigenous land management, and this is expressed by her being a key designer in the Gardens for Wildlife practice guideline and in building Growing Respect Gardens. Most recently Kris has worked as the lead horticulturalist, designing bush food gardens at the indigenous Child and Family Centres, Yarapati and Tigara lia, and she has been involved in their ‘Bushfoods to Plate’ project. She established Tasmania’s first nursery of Indigenous Tasmanian plants and has extensive knowledge in this area.
This project is supported by the City of Hobart through the Dr Edward Hall Environment Grant.
Image Credits: Bec Stevens