Community group rallies behind SCA

BY LUCAS BAIRD

The Friends of Callan Park has called for the University of Sydney to allow the Sydney College of the Arts (SCA) to stay in the Kirkbride facility.

Members of the Let SCA Stay group defeated a move by the University of Sydney and UNSW to combine the art school with UNSW’s faculty of art and design, but the University of Sydney still wants SCA to move out of its current facility in Callan Park.

The Friends of Callan Park group has raised concerns over the potential move. They said that the community has a “special interest” in the SCA staying in Callan Park and that the SCA has been an “ideal tenant”

“They have kept the building in good order; they have been very accommodating to the public who want to inspect the buildings; they don’t have much of an impact on the park itself. They have been excellent tenants,” said Friends of Callan Park President, Hall Greenland.

“Kirkbride, which is the finest bit of colonial buildings in Australia, for the last 20 years it has been tenanted by the Sydney College of the Arts.”

“If it is left vacant or if it’s cut up into a number of tenancies then we have, I think, quite reasonable fears that the state and condition of the building will deteriorate.”

However, Mr Greenwood conceded that the move would not affect the group’s Callan Park Master Plan as long as another educational institute took the SCA’s place, but said he didn’t want to risk anything.

Let SCA Stay has also diverted their attention to maintaining the Kirkbride campus as they claim that students prefer it over the main university campus and that enrolment numbers would drop.

“The student intake would be vastly reduced, the majority of the people studying now would not have a place in the small scale boutique art school,” they said.

“The university is only thinking now where the hell they could put us; this is not a thought out and considerate plan.”

“Students demand to be treated with respect. Students want to stay at Kirkbride in Callan Park.”