Wareamah Cockatoo Island creative feasibility, interpretation and visitor experience strategy
Client: Sydney Harbour Federation Trust
Location: Sydney, NSW
Year: 2023
Weaving creativity, truth and recreation into heritage fabric.
Brief
The Sydney Harbour Federation Trust commissioned Left Bank Co. as part of a Mott Macdonald-led consultant team to produce a masterplan for Wareamah Cockatoo Island, with sights set on reactivation and transformation of the island into a vibrant and connected heart of Sydney’s western harbour. This involved testing the idea of the Island as a precinct for the production and presentation of home-grown creativity, and envisioning a future interpretation-led visitor experience.
Approach
Left Bank Co. brought together stakeholders, experts and creative industry leaders to determine the desirability, viability and feasibility creative and cultural uses on the island. We considered the functional, financial and physical opportunities and constraints to prepare for a preliminary market sounding with known and potential partners.
Together with the broader team’s inputs, we then assessed the potential of different visitor experience layers in balancing the dual ambitions of communicating the Island’s important history and attracting both every-day and tourism-driven visitors.
We delivered tested experience concepts for a detailed mapping workshop with the project team to feed directly into the masterplanning and landscape strategy.
Impact
Our input into the masterplan enabled the Trust to envision the Island performing for locals, repeat visitors and tourists alike. It will bring diverse audiences with a range of direct and indirect modes of interpretation: from passive to self-guided to fully engaged with the site’s history.
Our strategy’s grounding in expert knowledge and demand insights and our weaving of the imperative for historical interpretation into the broader activation strategy shores up the masterplan’s visitation ambitions. Our research showed the Trust how the Island can be a locally loved harbour recreation hub and a place that tells Sydney Harbour’s deep historical truths.
