I have been struck this week by how much I don’t know about the west.

I feel more comfortable with the north that I do with any other area in Melbourne, and while I’ve spent time in the east and south, the west is an area unknown to me. I think this is going to be a challenge for me in this studio, but I’m also very excited about it. For a while now I have wanted to make non – fiction content in an area I had little prior knowledge about, so I think this will be great.

I am also very much looking forward to the collaboration with the living museum of the west. I love archival footage and see the value in local history. I think there will be a lot to work with. This week in the studio we did some sound exercises which involved doing interviews with classmates. I had a great opportunity in being able to interview Georgia, who is a local to the west side.

For the first assignment, I will be focusing on Yarraville and the streets and small businesses surrounding The Sun Theatre, an art deco theatre in Yarraville. An area of interest for me for this first assignment is small business and independent trading. While I do not know Yarraville very well, my research on the area has informed me that it’s defined by its cafe culture. I have heard that suburbs in the West (particularly Footscray) have a history of small business/strip malls. I am intrigued by how Yarraville fits into this – many of the surrounding businesses are independent ones, but Yarraville is 6km from the city which makes it a pretty expensive area. I am wondering how this differs from other areas in the western suburbs and am looking forward to checking it out on Tuesday.