'Westies' No More: Towards a More Inclusive and ...

‘Westies’ No More: Towards a More Inclusive and Authentic Place Identity Katrina Sandbach,1 Sydney, Australia [email protected] Abstract: Suburban development in western Sydney boomed in the area during the 1960′s and 1970′s, and soon thereafter the label ‘Westies’ emerged – a derogatory term used to identify people from the west as Sydney’s ‘other’. Today, there is still a social and economic stigma associated with being from the western suburbs, even though in western Sydney you’ll find thriving creative and professional communities, with the government describing the region’s population as young, diverse, and dynamic. Cultural programs, local government place- making initiatives and the broad span of the University of Western Sydney’s six local campuses characterise a place that is far from the ‘Westie’ stereotype. This begs the questions – how was the ‘Westie’ produced, and what have been its effects as a place identity? In exploring these questions, the aim of this paper is to work towards revealing new identity/ies for western Sydney. Keywords: place identity, participation, diversity, collaboration, cultural innovation

Introduction Western Sydney is the name given to a vast region to the west of metropolitan Sydney, Australia. Encompassing a total land area of about 5,400 square kilometres, including national parks, waterways and parklands, western Sydney has “substantial residential, rural, industrial, commercial, institutional and military areas” (WSROC, 2012). Residential development in this region boomed during the 1960s and 1970s, driven by post-war population expansion and the need for affordable housing, the State Planning Authority purchased large parcels of land on the urban fringe and implemented structural plans for new suburbs to draw people from other parts of Sydney. Gwyther (2008) explains that during this critical period of suburban development, the majority of new residents in western Sydney were low- income families from the inner city who found themselves living “out in the sticks” in subsidised government housing estates (Guppy, 2005: 1). Early on, western Sydney became synonymous with economic disadvantage, and the image of dangerous sites of delinquency and dysfunctionality became etched in the local psyche and strongly influenced perceptions of life in Sydney’s

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Katrina Sandbach worked as a graphic designer prior to joining the University of Western Sydney as an Associate Lecturer in 2008. Culminating in art direction, her professional experience is in brand communication design for clients predominantly in the tourism, hospitality, retail and corporate sectors. At UWS she enjoys lecturing and teaching across the undergraduate Bachelor of Design (Visual Communications) program, with a focus on professional practice. Katrina is currently a PhD candidate with research interests including place and cultural identities.

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western suburbs. Soon thereafter the label ‘Westies’ emerged, “a term of division and derision, becoming shorthand for a population considered lowbrow, coarse and lacking education and cultural refinement” (Gwyther, 2008: 1) that over time became fixed as the identity of western Sydney and though to a lesser degree, still has resonance today. From the onset, community initiative supported by local and/or state government funding strove to produce cultural artefacts that countered negative perceptions of western Sydney, and the focus of this paper is to highlight some of this work, as a way of revealing a new identity for the western suburbs of today and the future.

‘Westie’ origins The ‘Westie’ is an anglo-centric, ugly, loutish, stupid, poor person/s with criminal tendencies and bad taste (Powell, 1993: 3). There is no simple explanation about where the term came from and why the image of the west is so ugly, but Gwyther (2008) notes that the phrase became iconic after Michael Thornhill’s 1977 social realist film The FJ Holden, which shows a snapshot of the life of young men in Sydney’s western suburbs, present ing the area as a “cultural and spiritual desert”, a place “where regular bouts with the bottle are the only antidote for lives without hope or direction” (Enker, 1994: 211). Although merely a fictional representation of life in the western suburbs, this c inematic portrayal of the ‘Westie’ was reinforced by subsequent media imagery that consistently depicted a dangerous place littered with public housing estates, plagued by juvenile delinquency, broken homes, and riotous behaviour (Gwyther, 2008: 3). In her book Out West: Perceptions of Sydney’s Western Suburbs, Powell (1993) explains that public perceptions of the western suburbs and its people have been strongly influenced by negative media representations. Collecting and analysing hundreds of Sydney press articles, she noted that coverage of western Sydney repeatedly portrayed people who were “living on the edge”, desperate and hostile. Powell explains that “the constant repetition of stories about problems and neglect, about the excess of disadvantage, crime, violence, unemployment and lack of facilities, services, wealth, education and so on, produced an image of the western suburbs as Sydney’s ‘other’” (1993: 12). Reinforcing the role of the media in the production of the ‘Westie’ is Marie Gillespie’s notion of ‘TV talk’ (1995), where media representations – news talk in particular – becomes a valuable resource in negotiating individual and collective identities. Gillespie argues that “our understanding of identity formation needs to account for the role of mass media in limiting as well as enabling individual projects of self- formation” (in Powell, 1993: 110). Powell explains that “over a period of time, the term ‘western suburbs’ came to indicate a social category rather than a geographic region” (1993) and by 1990 the Macquarie Dictionary of New Words listed ‘Westie’ as both an adjective as well as a noun: “of or pertaining to a person who lives in the western suburbs of Sydney usually characterised as unsophisticated and macho” (in Powell, 1993: 2). Pre-dating the contemporary practice of place-branding, through the constant dissemination of western Sydney stories consistently focused on “social problems, life in particular locations, and specific events in the area have reinforced urban folklore surrounding the working class, public housing and the urban fringes of the city” (Powell, 1993: 1) the ‘Westie’ was fixed as the identity of western Sydney. Agreeing that the media has had a powerful role in shaping public perception of western Sydney, Castillo and Hirst (2000) critically investigated the mainstream media’s coverage, suggesting that the reason western Sydney is such a target for negative media coverage is attributable to their discovery that most of the media professionals they spoke to had little knowledge, let alone experience of western Sydney. They argue that there is no conspiracy 725

against the people of the western suburbs to serve a particular agenda, that rather, the reason why the negative style of reporting was so prevalent at the time of the ‘Westie’s’ formation is simply because most journalists then were male, Anglo, ‘yuppies’– as demonstrated by Henningham’s comprehensive national study of Australian journalists (1996: 207). Castillo and Hirst suggest that for journalists, the western suburbs were “nothing more than a fertile ground for feature stories of violence and despair, to be read by a faraway audience living under a middle class, well-off roof” (2000: 128). Exacerbated by a newsroom culture with dominant news values of “conflict, drama, human interest and celebrity/notoriety” the combination of these values, the pressures of time constraints and a newsroom culture favouring the mainstream “leads to the oversimplification of news values and complex social issues are reduced to stereotypes, myths and clichés” (Castillo and Hirst, 2000: 130). However, the reality is that the western suburbs are culturally, linguistically and economically diverse (Collins and Poynting, 2000: 21). Gwyther (2008) notes that as if it were a slight reflection of this diverse fabric of western Sydney, more recently, ‘Westie’ competes with a wider lexicon of derogatory terms used to describe those from the west, such as ‘Westie Bogan’, ‘Westie Skank’, ‘Fresh Off the Boat (FOBS) to denote the area’s ethnic groups and ‘Cashed-up Bogans’ mark the more aspirational of the population. However ‘Westie’ and its offshoots are still used as a “rhetorical device to designate the ‘other’ Sydney: spatially, culturally and economically different from the more prosperous and privileged Sydneysiders of the north and east” (Gwyther, 2008: 1).

Effects The ‘Westie’ identity has impacted on how people from the west socially and economically interact with the rest of Sydney. Mehrer (2001) conducted a study in Cabramatta, a weste rn Sydney suburb that is often referred to as Australia’s heroin capital, with a long history of media interest showing stories on Asian migrants, teen gangs, illegal immigration and heroin dealing – a site of many of Sydney’s most feared and exotic ‘others’ (Mehrer, 2001: 107). Thanks to the saturation of news stories about the area, many people in Sydney feel that they know something about Cabramatta even though they’ve never been there to experience it themselves, nor would they visit due to its bad reputation (Mehrer, 2001). Powell (1993) asserts that issues affecting Cabramatta are relevant to many other communities in Sydney’s west, and Mehrer wanted to understand both the negative and positive influences that the public image of Cabramatta has had for residents in their daily lives, engaging citizens through informal but lengthy community discussions. Mehrer discovered that among the people she spoke to, negative media representations of the area were seen as shaping their interactions with other Sydney-siders, “with reactions ranging from fear to disdain to discrimination” (2001: 113). This stigma is also seen as having very practical consequences and one man she interviewed explained: like when you apply for the job it ’s trouble if you co me fro m Cabra matta… I was applying for a job in the city once… and he asked me ‘where do I co me fro m?’ I said, ‘Vietnam’, and he asked me, ‘where do I live?’ I said, ‘Bonnyrigg’, because I was actually living there, and he asked me, ‘is that close to Cabramatta?’ and I said, ‘yes’ and he said, ‘sorry, we can’t hire you’. (Meher, 2001: 113)

Echoing this, Morgan (2005) notes that the reputation of western Sydney and Mt Druitt in particular, weighs heavily on locals, accounting for a conversation he had with Veronica who grew up in Mt Druitt: 726

It is unfair, because, like, you find it hard to get jobs anywhere – like, especially, they’ll ask where you’re fro m and the first thing, they’ll look at you funny… It’s like, does it really matter where we’re fro m?... It’s not like we carry guns or anything like that, you know! That’s what they think, basically, that we shoot to kill! (laughs) You get some people thinking like, you know, ‘Have you got knives in your pockets’. (Morgan, 2005: 5)

‘Westies’ have been regularly insulted in public forums, “by people in privileged positions such as radio announcers, Members of Parliament, prominent surgeons and even by a government department” (Powell, 1993: 2). In 2011 Anne-Marie Taylor conducted a study for the Youth Action and Policy Association NSW entitled The Western Sydney Research Project that engaged young people with current or previous connections to western Sydney to discuss their experiences of the area. The findings show that even in 2011 most young people believed there was a stigma attached to being from western Sydney. However, what the study highlighted is that while the participants echoed the frustration of many western Sydney residents who have described the negative impact of the stigma, they also felt that the ‘Westie’ stereotype “provided them with an opportunity to “prove them wrong” and assert their identity as a person from Western Sydney who is different from the stereotype. For a lot of respondents in this study, being from western Sydney was something to be proud of despite the negative perceptions of outsiders” (Taylor, 2011: 24). One participant of the study stated: People view western Sydney as a ghetto-like area where people of ‘ethnic’ backgrounds are violent and destructive. We are racially profiled and v iewed as the arse-end of Sydney. This stig ma affects me by motivating me to fight it and represent Western Sydney in a truthful kind of way. (Taylor, 2001: 23)

Moving forward It is important to understand that the first generation western suburbanites of the 1970s and 1980s were predominantly low- income, migrating from other areas in Sydney’s metro to farflung places in the west like Mount Druitt. Encouraged to make the move by offers of government subsidised housing, “the process of settlement represented a process of dispossession and acclimatisation to an unrecognisable cultural landscape” (Guppy, 2005). New residents were vocal, speaking bitterly about their experiences, with news reportage during this early phase of settlement preoccupied with stories of neglect, poverty and unrest, depicting the subsidised housing estates of Mount Druitt and later Macquarie Fields as “suburban ghettos” (in Morgan, 2005: 3) and even though these two places represented only a small proportion of western Sydney’s geography, the negative publicity paved the way for widespread criticism of the western suburbs (Guppy, 2005) and over time validated the atrocities of the ‘Westie’ label. On the upside, this initial flush of negative attention led to local governments’ recruitment of various experts to “ameliorate Mount Druitt’s problems and renovate its image” (Morgan, 2005: 4). Marla Guppy (2005), a cultural planner who specialises in creative community involvement in the planning process, tells how this led to a number of cultural projects aimed at providing residents with the opportunity to recontextualise or re-enact the suburban landscape. An initiative of the local government, the community arts workshop Garage Graphix was set up in Mount Druitt with state arts funding. In 1986, by then having established itself as a part of the community infrastructure for 7 years, Garage Graphix produced Mount Druitt: 365 Days – A Community Calendar Project. With assistance from professional community artists, a series of 12 calendar pages depicted images produced by community groups and local residents that gave an insight into the issues they were experiencing. Guppy describes how the resulting images formed part of a process of self727

definition, and at the same time, the final calendar expressed positive values that challenged the negative perceptions of the area. It wasn’t until the 1990s that some positive stories about western Sydney started appearing in the media and (Powell, 1993: 5) and “in its absence the positive imagery produced by community arts projects had a particular status” (Guppy, 2005: 2). In 1998 a series of community arts programs funded by the state government sought to involve Mount Druitt residents in improving the images of their communities through acts of naming areas that were perceived to be in the middle of nowhere, and Guppy explains that: The re-working of a sense of place in suburbs that were the recipients of consistent bad publicity formed a large part of th is work. Resident-generated banners, logos, posters, videos and t-shirt designs sought to connect suburb names with desirable attributes of suburban experience. (2005: 4)

It is through community-based initiatives like Garage Graphix and the Mount Druitt naming project that cultural identities for western Sydney began to emerge and became recognisable. During the 1990s “western Sydney began a process of redefinition, from the ubiquitous ‘other’, a place not considered ‘cultural’ by inner Sydney, to a region with new and distinctive cultural possibilities” (Guppy, 2005: 1). These projects show us how the synergy between local governance, cultural innovation and bottom- up initiative can transform communities from within. However, despite the effectiveness of projects like Garage Graphix were in cultivating community pride and self-definition to combat the outside-in identity imposed by the ‘Westie’, the media still continued to only “examine the problems in western Sydney but fails to explore the efforts made by the community to fix these problems” (Castillo and Hirst, 2001: 124). Perhaps as a result of the achievements made by cultural programs designed to challenge the ‘Westie’ paradigm, today there are visible signs of thriving creative and professional communities in western Sydney, with the government describing the region’s population as young, diverse, and dynamic (Office of Western Sydney, 2012). Indeed, in 2012 Sydney Festival, one of Sydney’s most revered cultural institutions which is traditionally confined to the inner-city, launched a busy art, film and music program based in the western suburbs, reflecting a growing and culturally hungry population (Schwartzkoff, 2012). Arts writer David Williams (2008) comments that a significant artistic boom is “gaining critical mass across western Sydney”, citing a diverse range of initiatives occurring across the western suburbs, including new and revitalised spaces, and new collaborations between artists, community and corporate sectors. In 2008 one such project, Lattice: Sydney facilitated by western-Sydney based community arts group ICE (Information and Cultural Exchange), saw established UK-based artist group Proboscis collaborate with 15 emerging western Sydney artists to explore approaches to creatively transform suburban space, “imagining the city through they eyes of people who live in it” (Angus, 2008). ICE runs many other similar programs annually, in partnership with local councils and national arts funding, referring to the work they do as essentially storytelling, to “encourage people to take something from the inside, put it on the outside and share it with the world though digital mediums” (ICE, 2012). Particular municipalities in western Sydney have also embraced innovative place- making programs that engage locals in the process of transforming public spaces into meaningful places for community to connect with each other. A relatively new practice that hinges on local initiative and community participation in a bottom- up process, the priority of placemaking is to create or transform spaces into places that people want to inhabit (Legge, 2008). A part of Penrith Council’s Neighbourhood Renewal Program, Magnetic Places gives financial support in the form of cultural grants to organisations and individuals in order to 728

devise community-based creative projects spanning film, photography, music and theatre that “highlight community strengths and build community capacity and connection” (Penrith City Council, 2010). Penrith mayor Kevin Crameri attests that “the program has transformed public spaces into magnetic, creative and meaningful places for people to meet” (in Metcalfe, 2010). More recently, Penrith launched the Penrith is Here brand resulting from a collaboration between local community, local business and local government which aims to put Penrith “on the map”, distinguishable from greater western Sydney as its own “destination, place, people” (Penrith is Here, 2012). Penrith opinion writer Michael Todd endorses the campaign, writing: The ‘Penrith is Here’ brand will drive jobs and economic investment, as well as enhance community pride by changing the way people see the area… we now have a brand that allows you to express your pride in our area. I know I’m not the only one that gets sick of the ill informed stereotypes people have of the Penrith, especially in the city and inner west. I see this as our chance to change these perceptions and all Penrith businesses should get behind the new brand.

The campaign strategy makes use of a multi-channel approach to reaching its audience, including environmental branding, traditional media, and social media, and it will be interesting to chart its progress. The University of Western Sydney (UWS), with six campuses in western Sydney including Penrith, and a student body exceeding 30,000, is one of the largest universities in Australia (Australian Universities, 2012) with most of its students hailing from western Sydney. UWS comprises nine Schools spanning business, computing, engineering, maths, education, humanities, communication arts, law, medicine, nursing, social science, psychology, science and health, plus seven active research centres and four research institutes. Its graduates include successful entrepreneurs, award-winning artists and journalists, business leaders, medical and legal professionals (UWS, 2012). All of this characterises a western Sydney that challenges the ‘Westie’ label.

Towards a new place identity Despite being understood as a one-dimensional, generic and unfair label perpetuated by news stories rather than distilled from real life, the ‘Westie’ image has affected how people from western Sydney socially and economically interact with other S ydney-siders. While the word isn’t as commonly heard, it has resonance today, and ‘western suburbs’ still incites negative associations. What early cultural programs such as Garage Graphix showed us is the value of engaging people in the process of re- imagining and re-defining the identity of their communities, strengthening people’s connections to place and each other in the process. More recently the outcomes of arts and research projects, cultural innovations, and place- making initiatives signal that western Sydney is now in the process of transformation, and among individuals, communities, organisations and local governments in western Sydney there is a deep commitment to and belief in the potential of the area and its people. Collins and Poynting (2000) argue that while the history of the western suburbs is one of working-class settlement, in later years the children of these working families became “white-collar workers, university graduates, professionals and business men and women” (p. 20) and today, one of western Sydney’s best assets is its class and cultural diversity. This suggests that while the ‘Westie’ label and its negative connotations may have captured a moment in western Sydney’s history, what we do know for certain is that it is not an adeq uate shorthand for today’s western Sydney where the “congruence of ethnic diversity and class diversity gives 729

western Sydney a complex, changing character at odds with the very negative stereotypes that predominate” (Collins and Poynting, 2000: 20). While it is envisaged that the initiative of cultural programs like ICE, place- making programs like Penrith’s Magnetic Places as well as the work of the University of Western Sydney will continue to produce richer and more holistic western Sydney stories and ima ges that capture its unique diversity, unless these new stories cut through the thick haze of the ‘Westie’, this will do little to shift the established negative image and the stigma will continue to affect people from western Sydney in the way they interact with the rest of Sydney. One of the recommendations of the Western Sydney Research Project (2011) is that “the Office of Western Sydney develop strategies to improve the image of Western Sydney to the NSW community through a promotional campaign showcasing the great things about Western Sydney” (p. 33). Adding to this, Penrith is Here’s campaign strategy and ICE’s employment of digital media in documenting its projects suggests that there is value in using online participatory content sharing tools such as social media to take control of telling these stories, bypassing the media as intermediary, since it has proved unwilling or unable to retract its previous efforts. In any case, the path towards a more inclusive and authentic place identity for western Sydney has been carved. The continued combined efforts of community and local government, collaborating creatively to celebrate the strengths of the area will produce new images of western Sydney from the inside. Through this, a new identity will gain definition and positive recognition in the near future. Author’s Address: Katrina Sandbach – School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Building BB – Room BB1.63, University of Western Sydney, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith NSW Australia 2751.

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