Joanne McNeill: Fear crushing creativity

Sometimes I hardly recognise the world. It's as if I woke up suddenly to discover everything changed by the barely perceptible creep of freedoms eroding while I was busy with something else; life perhaps.

Attending the Festival of Lights at the Quarry Arts Centre's 30th birthday in Whangarei recently brought it home.

The Quarry - fantastical even in the sober light of day - never looked more magical.

I wanted to celebrate because I was there 30 years ago with its founder, the late Yvonne Rust. We went together to assess the site for suitability as the art-craft-resources-education centre she envisaged. First we found a Rust family gravestone in the park at the entrance. It was a sign.

The abandoned Waldron's quarry was like a Hieronymous Bosch painting: all rubble, rusting steel, craggy outcrops, rushing water and rampant bush. So close to town, yet conceptually so far. Only perfect.

At first it was a one-hut-and-fireplace field of dreams where Yvonne inspired countless unemployed on PEP and TEP schemes, as well as assorted artists and artisans, into transforming local resources - clay into pots, minerals into pigments, plants into paper, skins into leather goods, and earth, recycled bricks, timber, found objects and demolition windows into buildings for instance - and lives, using ingenuity and traditional skills. Quarry facilities grew organically, independent of building regulations. Spaces made the kinds of leaps of faith into unprecedented originality - once valued as part of Kiwi do-it-yourself culture - which were fostered by the Quarry's anything-is-possible climate of creative contagion.

Then came the tyrannical dark ages of building inspectors, OSH, employment contracts, danger tape, road cones, drug testing, invasive surveillance, resource consents, background checking and the tangled webs of bureaucracy, compliance, and fear of stepping out of line, which stifle enterprise, creativity, originality and industry.

Quarry facilities were condemned and some rebuilt, sacrificing their lumpy, honest charm and integrity to the bland conformity slavish regulations demand. Fortunately Yvonne died before the thought police took over.

Her vision would have been unthinkable today; yet arguably never more appropriate.

On the night, I planned to lay lilies on her headstone then make a spiritual pilgrimage to the Quarry's waterfall before blissing out on the pretty lights but alas, access to the waterfall was blocked by burly security guards.

Soon it became clear security personnel outnumbered party-goers.

Of course the Trust which operates the Quarry has no choice but to comply with the prevailing climate of fear now that the world is allegedly far more dangerous than the lively one I'm sure I remember where creative risks and fun were actually possible.

Now, job and skill losses are reported daily, the unemployed are offered blame not opportunities, local industry has dwindled until we depend almost entirely on imports, and our abundant local resources are exported wholesale in primary produce, with minimal local return to the few.

It seems the only remaining local growth industries - besides minimum-wage elderly care - are crime, policing, security, health, justice, bean counting and safety.

I can't help thinking terrorism has won.