“There’s art oozing from every orifice of the city,” an artist at the Rose Street Market told me. And walking through Fitzroy, it was clear. Murals decorate every other building or corner on Brunswick Street and its side streets. More than simple graffiti, this stuff is art. It is literally everywhere you look. Here’s where pictures come in:
There is even art hanging off buildings. With a sense of humor.
And randomly placed in the middle of the sidewalk.
They even make art out of themselves (I’m in there somewhere, too).
(this one’s a bunch of people dancing during Open House Melbourne)
Melbourne is a, and many argueTHE, cultural center in Australia. People here say that on all measures but beauty (on which Sydney would win), Melbourne gets highest marks. By all accounts, it is the culinary capital, a coffee mecca, and the fashion center as well. (Please don’t take offense if you’re from another part of Australia – I’m reporting what the people here tell me). It’s a European-style city, with dense neighborhoods, old-world style buildings, and infinite cafes and restaurants. They even call the part of town where I’m staying the “Paris-end”.
In terms of health care, too, it seems to be on the vanguard. The CEO of General Practice Victoria shared with me a document called “Doing it with us not for us”, a framework for consumer and community participation in health planning and policy produced by the Victoria state government in 2006. This document apparently underpins much of what has come out of Canberra (the central government) on these topics.
Among other examples is Health Direct Australia, a national call service to help people who need after-hours care determine where to go. It’s like nurse lines we have in the U.S. This service hasn’t totally evolved in Victoria because this state has had a nurse on-call system in place for years.
I’m not sure this is particularly innovative, but I did learn from the CEO of Bang the Table (www.bangthetable.com) (more on that in another post) that the hotel where I’m staying is like a hospital annex. Specifically, after women give birth, they come to this hotel to recover. It’s cheaper than the hospital, and it makes room for new patients. I did see a teeny tiny baby in the elevator (with his mom and a valet bringing up the luggage). This might be a necessity due to overcrowding in the hospitals, but I think it’s a damn good idea for routine deliveries. I wonder if they bring clinicians over to check on these patients. If I were a nurse, I might be persuaded to work in a luxury hotel/hospital.
Victoria sounds a bit like Massachusetts – progressive, on the leading edge in implementing health reforms, and often a model for the national policy framework. Now, if only we had a fraction of the public art…
P.S. I ran into my artist friend again on Sunday, at a Sunday market near the Melbourne Arts Complex. It being the annual Open House Melbourne, I was thankfully not the only tourist clutching a map. And I got to see the inside of a bunch of buildings that are usually closed to the public.
(These are bowls in a pool in the National Gallery of Victoria. They move with the water, so this is a moving art piece — it changes constantly, and it makes noise when the bowls clink up against each other. The rest of what I saw in the gallery was pretty great, but I could have stopped here and been happy I went.)
Ahhh, art.
Eisenhower's Last Smoke 