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 OPEN LETTER

Dear Governors,

Watching on as I do from afar it is bewildering and dispiriting to witness the degeneration of an extraordinary vision and to learn of the increasing incidences of the creeping shifts of Winifred West Schools (plural) to a TOPdown hierarchical pyramidal operational structure. That is, Frensham School (singular). The consequence of this is obvious in the WWS Board of Governors being as, and marketed as, Frensham Governors (singular) something that I believe to be something of an anathema to the foundation that the operation was once so firmly founded upon.

Being one of the few people alive today who got to know Winifred West, I find it extraordinary that this operational modelling has evolved and apparently with total disregard for the multi-branched operation that Winifred West envisaged at the time Winifred West Schools Ltd.(Company Limited by Guarantee) was created.

Winifred West envisaged WWS as being an entity with multiple standalone and interconnected branches on the ‘premise’ that if one branch faltered it would return to source (its roots) or take root elsewhere as it is with the archetypical Tree of Life modelling found in many of the world's philosophical traditions.

Winifred West often recounted this modelling to articulate her vision and explain how the tree could, and would, go on to achieve its full expression all the time growing new branches and losing some along the way. Somewhat poignantly in the case of Hartfield School – a free syllabus alternative to years 11 and 12 in the structured syllabus system. Her Tree of Life modelling is how she explained Hartfield’s demise. Interestingly, despite Hartfield’s perceived failures the students that were enrolled went on to live very successful lives. One might say Winifred West’s Hartfield vision has been vindicated somewhat. In fact, I suspect that few, if any of you, are ware that there ever as a Hartfield School given that it existed ever so briefly.

Today I have no doubt that Winifred West would whole heartedly embrace the ‘rhizomatic learning model’ [LINK 2]that recognises that learning is a complex process of sense-making to which each learner brings their own context and having their own needs. Albeit that the French theorists Deleuze and Guattari, who used the term in their book ‘A Thousand Plateaus’, (1980) used the term to refer to the networks of networks that establish "connections between chains of organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences and social struggles". In fact, they were simply philosophically theorising the relevance of networking, so one might well say that Winifred West already knew that and had already espoused such thinking.

Importantly in rhizomatic thinking there is no centre and the ‘structure’ can be accessed from any point at any time without any apparent order or coherency. Winifred West was not a siloed thinker and as a consummate gardener and networker she would have understood rhizomatic modelling so very well in the way it has been articulated by Deleuze and Guattari.

My purpose in raising this issue is to demonstrate Winifred West’s thinking regarding operational models and modelling as I knew it via our conversations. She has been a powerful reference for me in my time as an advisor to a Minister for Education and the Arts, in my academic career and subsequently in my action research relative to cultural landscaping, placemaking and cultural geography.

Winifred West was a quintessential trail blazer, networker, placemaker and educator. She was a thinker who had a deep understanding of the purposefulness in networked de-siloed scholarship. Indeed, the success she experienced; I believe, can be almost entirely explained in her dependence upon her ability to build networks of networks that took her and those who worked ‘with’ her to extraordinary ‘places’.

One of my most vivid memories of Winifred West is of her comparing her Tree of Life model where its full expression is only achieved by ongoing development. Thus, the inbuilt weakness of TOPdown hierarchical pyramidal modelling where once its full expression has been realised it almost immediately self-destructs – and this has a certain poignance. Winifred West used the gymnastic pyramid as a metaphor where the structure once realised can only survive for just as long as the weakest gymnast had the ability to bear the weight assigned to them. Inevitably such structures always crumble into chaotic heaps. To access some graphics to illustrate much of this see …https://raynorman7250.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_14.html.

Turning to the apparent demise of Sturt. It is known to me that Sturt as an entity was fundamentally founded upon the premise of the operation/organisation/entity being a standalone self-sufficient operation. It was intended that Sturt built its own networks in accord with some fundamental ‘rules’ put in place sometime after foundation – see https://raynorman7250.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_28.html.

That status as a stand-alone was devastatingly and quite deliberately destroyed by WWS Governors in Y2000 or there abouts. Sturt’s Board was abolished, and the Sturt operation was insidiously ‘colonised’ by the Frensham entity. Arguably, Sturt has been ‘asset striped’ step-by-step ever since. Euphemistically, equating this with throwing the baby out with the bathwater is not quite true. Why? Well because the point had been reached it seems where nobody either knew about ‘the baby’ being there nor really cared. Sadly, there is no evidence of a working moral compass anywhere here and there is no kinder way to understand this outcome.

That said, Sturt evolved over time, understandably, in such a way where early network linkages with Frensham, ‘the farm’ and various individuals who were likewise networked with the WWS operation. However, looking at the Sturt Association’s foundation members it was ‘peopled’ with architects, musicians et al whose relationships were ‘Sturt focused’ rather than other ‘schools’ in the WWS networks. Indeed, the real estate Sturt ‘occupied’ pre the devastating 1939 bush fires housed Frensham teaching staff as I understand it. The fires changed all that and Sturt took root upon ‘the place’ and Phoenix like Sturt rose from the ashes and grew on towards its own ‘full expression’ whatever and wherever that might be. Phoenix like Sturt might well rise from the ashes yet again.

To imagine Sturt as a COSTcentre as is currently all too apparent is nothing short of being some kind of Machiavellian try on for whatever purpose. It makes as much sense as regarding a mathematics department as a COSTcentre with no connectivity with a music department or indeed any other department. Albeit that there are elements of a COSTcentre in divisional education operations it is a nonsense to invoke such imaginings and that should be self-evident. Nonetheless, spend any time in a bureaucratic paradigm and sadly one finds all too many ONEdimensional thinkers who entertain such nonsense.

I have to say that in doing what you as WWS Governors have done you have euphemistically twisted the lion’s tail. Francis Bacon taught that not only must we observe nature in the raw, but that we must also 'twist the lion's tail', that is, manipulate our world in order to reveal its secrets. It has been increasingly evident that operationally WWS has somewhat blithely been on the pathway to the lowest common denominator and self-diminishment for some time.

Sadly, there are social media reports that among you there are those trying on self-deprecation to divert attention away from the apparent disregard for the devastating impacts your “pausing” has had on people’s lives coming as it did absolutely ‘out of the blue’. Hubristic rhetoric and SMARTremarks about artistic ineptitude, painting barn walls, etc is no excuse for ineptitude and the lack of an ability to know how to pick up a brush or by what bit of it … whatever. When the chips are down cultural cave dwellers isolate themselves even though that they cannot insulate themselves from their accountability. It is insensitive, unprofessional, and diminishing to engage with this class of thinking. However, the metaphor pertaining to ‘barns’ that resonates in the circles that I choose to move within goes … ‘If you have the paint, you paint the barn red, otherwise stay tuned in and listen intently’.

It is a weakness, and a mistake, to be caught up endlessly in the exchange of the slings and arrows and self-serving critical rants. Sadly, it is all too often believed that THE job is to COPYedit the world, not to design it. As Aristotle apparently said … Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.

Nonetheless, creativity cannot be sustained by approval, and it cannot be destroyed by criticism. Therefore, I submit the ’review process’ you have set in train needs to be expanded and extensively.

If in your actions, you lose sight of the vision that created the circumstance you find yourself in, and you lose sight of the trust invested in you very quickly lose relevance. And, it needs to be said out loud that Winifred West entrusted WWS Ltd with a vision and a legacy that I submit has become tainted and in decline for decades.

Moreover, trust in the process in play is fragile. Inevitably in such a situation, you quite simply bang around in a sense of futility projecting ineptitude. Marketing wise, and across the entire operation, it is not a good look. It is especially so given that Australia is apparently on the cusp of fundamentally reimaging educational institutions.

Holding fast to grass roots foundational visions and investing trust in their purposefulness is important. That is allowing yourself to acclimatise to new and expansive visions as they evolve. There is purposefulness in holding to a foundational vision and trusting the processes it has put in place. Interestingly, the ARTSworld is no longer a hapless disempowered bystander it once was since the development of support systems that has enabled cultural producers et al collectively to proactively protect their interests.

There is yet another matter that as WWS Governor there has been a deathly silence coming from you. Possibly in the hope that if it left alone and undiscussed it will simply fade away. I refer to the Sturt Permanent Collection. In this collection there is work that has significance that must not be ignored in the review process. This collection should not for a moment be imagined as an asset that can be mindlessly ‘flogged off’ to whoever for reasons that should be self-evident. Flogging off the collection would be an exemplar of cultural vandalism.

IN CONCLUSION

I am aware that this open letter is as likely as not to be welcomed as a packet of rotting prawns in the boot left over from last week’s fishing trip … it is what it is. In any event in doing what you have done you have awakened Sturt’s Community of Ownership and Interest [Reference LINK] and the reverberations are likely to be coming from disenchanted members all over either directly or via social media. Having set the scene you can expect some eye watering robust commentary that as likely as not will come from unanticipated and unexpected vantage points – some of which will cut right down to the bone.

There might have been a gentler way forward, but it seems that you did not look for it. In any event perfection is unachievable, and what is done is done. When seeking out wisdom, we might look to Mahatma Gandhi … “It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.”

Yours sincerely,
Ray Norman
• Sturt Alumni
• Independent Researcher
• Cultural Geographer