City People is a resident of the Joynton Avenue Creative Centre.
Just minutes from Green Square station, the old Sydney Hospital nurses’ quarters have found new life as a beautifully restored, contemporary community space, created by the City of Sydney. It is an inspiring workspace for creative businesses.
We love the building and its history so much that we decided to make a short interpretive video/sound piece about it. Continue scrolling to watch and listen.
Joynton Avenue Creative Centre (Peter Stutchbury Architects)
In talking with one of our colleagues, Greg Kenny, we discovered that his aunt, Desley Kenny had lived and worked here. Desley was a nurse and later Director of Nursing at Royal South Sydney Hospital. The nurses’ quarters were her home for a number of years. Greg had recently walked through the centre with Desley and recorded an interview about her experiences here.
Desley Kenny, Director of Nursing, with Sister Constant and the 1981 nurse aide graduates – from an article in the Southern News (a Randwick-based local paper)
City People’s passion is creative placemaking: finding authentic ways to tell the story of the place – connecting us with its landscape, history and culture – as well as with each other. So, we decided to turn this fragment of an interview into a video to acknowledge and celebrate this connection with the place we now work. Perhaps this is also a form of virtual placemaking – creating a sense of place on our website?
The Sydney Hospital and the nurses’ quarters are places that had an impact on so many people’s lives, as patients and as professionals. We are reminded of this in the stories shared by the people who experienced this place before us, interpreted in the heritage photos within the building. It is also reflected in the pale cream ceramic tiles in the meeting room (a former bathroom), in the single-bed sized rooms of the studios and in the building’s brass hospital taps. Hearing Desley, we reflect on the many other women who once lived in the building and worked at the hospital.
Yet, today, the place is transformed. We talk with the creative practitioners that we share our workplace with, slip past elderly members of the community using the park to do tai chi, fix our broken toaster with the team from The Bower nearby and hear the voices of children in the playground.
We value this richer, deeper connection to place as we work at Joynton Avenue Creative Centre, in this 1936 restored heritage building. In this video we created, you can hear Desley Kenny talk about living in the nurses’ quarters and take a look inside the Joynton Avenue Creative Centre.
We look forward to welcoming you here.
Background
Royal South Sydney Hospital was Sydney’s major training hospital for general nurses in the 1950s and 1960s and was a rehabilitation hospital of about 130 beds by the time it closed around 1993.
Desley Kenny was Director of Nursing at Royal South Sydney Hospital from 1974 to 1989. She was resident on the first floor of the Nurses Home when she first took up her position in 1974 until 1977.
Peter Stutchbury Architecture in association with Design 5 – Architects turned the former Esme Cahill nurses’ quarters, a 1936 heritage building, into the Joynton Avenue Creative Centre.
The centre has won a swag of awards including the highest accolade, the Lachlan Macquarie award for heritage, and a national award for public architecture at the 2018 National Architecture Awards.
Launched in 2018, the centre houses over 25 artists, creative practitioners, organisations and startups. It also supports creative education programs, jewellery making and cultural events.
It is curated and managed by 107 Projects, one of Sydney’s best-loved arts organisations.
Video and photography: Huy Nguyen
Sound: Eugene Ward
Our thanks to Desley Kenny and Greg Kenny