ABSTRACT
The year was 1998. I noticed the middle-aged woman sitting in the front row in the small, shabby room. As our meeting was in an Aboriginal community, I wondered if she were Aboriginal. I couldn’t tell. She looked strong. Sophia and I had just got the meeting underway, working with the local community, trying to define a set of principles to guide the development of a derelict factory into a space for community use. We were holding this workshop after several months of consultation in the Redfern community – trying to negotiate agreement about community uses for the site. John, the landscape architect, was keeping an eye on things, as meetings were often stormy in Redfern.
