Sale of the School of Arts

Enclosed here is a respectful but quite pointed letter, particularly because it’s recipient, Councillor Howard, is the Chair of Council’s Community and Arts Committee. If you agree with the argument that the Brisbane school of art should not be sold please sign the petition by putting your name and email address in the comments section below.

Sources say this is one of a number of sales of valuable public assets embarked upon by the LNP council and state government in the run-up to the Olympics.

Open letter to Councillor Vicki Howard,
Civic Cabinet Chair of the Community and the Arts Committee
Councillor for Central Ward, Brisbane City Council

Dear Councillor Howard,

Re: Brisbane School of Arts, 166 Ann Street — please do not sell this historic community building

I am writing to you because I am deeply concerned about Council’s proposal to sell the Brisbane School of Arts at 166 Ann Street to private developers.

I am particularly concerned because you have responsibility for the Community and Arts portfolio, and because Council itself describes your committee’s role as including the provision of community venues, meeting spaces, cultural and artistic activities, and the management and maintenance of Council-owned community facilities.

So I want to ask you a very simple question:

Why?

Why would Brisbane City Council — a Council with an enormous financial capacity and responsibility for one of the world’s largest municipal areas — choose to sell an historic public building to private developers when that building could continue to serve the community in so many different ways?

The Brisbane School of Arts is not simply an old building occupying a valuable piece of real estate.

It is part of the social history of Brisbane.

Council’s own heritage material records that the building began life in 1866 as the Servants’ Home, providing accommodation and training for young women waiting to enter domestic service. In nineteenth-century Brisbane, domestic servants were an essential part of the household economy of the wealthy. The building therefore tells us something about a social world that has not yet disappeared from the modern city. Class.

In 1873 the building was acquired by the Trustees of the North Brisbane School of Arts, and after alterations and the addition of verandahs it opened as the Brisbane School of Arts in 1878. It subsequently became a place for a library, public lectures, classes and other community activities. Council took over trusteeship in 1966, and a public library continued there until 1981.

That history alone makes the building enormously significant.

I also have personal connections to people who worked in the building when it was still a Brisbane City Council library. Two former Council librarians who worked there in the early 1980s have told me stories about their experiences in the building.

One of them recalls an extraordinary incident when water began cascading down through the internal brickwork during a major storm.

Rather than standing helplessly watching the books being destroyed, Paula organised everybody who was in the library at the time to help.

People passed books down from the shelves — right up to ceiling height — and moved them away from the area where the water was pouring through the internal walls.

It is a small story, but it says something important about the building.

It was a living community institution.

People cared about it. The librarians cared about the books. The public cared about the place.

And subsequently there was a substantial renovation of the building before the library was moved elsewhere. After that, the building continued to be used as the School of Arts, hosting public functions and community activities.

I intend to provide photographs with this letter which show that the building is, in my view, in remarkably good condition considering its age. Don’t listen to so called experts, the architects embroiled in development, listen to the people.

I am not suggesting that nothing needs to be done. Quite the opposite. I believe this building deserves a serious program of conservation and adaptive reuse.

There are obvious things that could be done to make it more accessible and functional: installation of a lift so that people with disabilities can access all levels, appropriate ramps and accessibility improvements, repairs to sections of flooring, attention to lighting and downpipes, and proper investigation and treatment of any water penetration through the brickwork.

But these are not reasons to sell the building.

They are reasons to invest in it.

The basic structure remains extraordinarily impressive — the brickwork, the multiple levels, the verandahs, the internal staircases and the overall character of the building.
And what an opportunity it represents.

A properly restored and accessible Brisbane School of Arts could accommodate community organisations, cultural activities, exhibitions, meetings, classes, lectures, performances, historical interpretation, artists and community groups.

I have spent 76 years of my life as a continuous resident of this city. I have benefited by public institutions in that very block. The dental hospital in Turbot Street, the uniting church buildings where we conducted the campaign against the mining and export of uranium and the fight for democratic rights against the corrupt Bjelke-Peterson government.

It could once again be a genuinely public building in the heart of Brisbane.

Indeed, that would be entirely consistent with the history of School of Arts buildings in Queensland. They were never simply libraries. They were community institutions — places where people met, learned, organised, debated, performed and participated in civic life.

This is why I find the proposed sale so difficult to understand.

Look at what has been preserved elsewhere around Ann Street.

Council’s own Brisbane City Centre Heritage Trail celebrates the Ann Street Presbyterian Church at 141 Ann Street and recognises its importance to Brisbane’s history.

Yet other significant historic buildings have been lost, threatened or subjected to redevelopment pressures.

The former Brisbane Dental College is a particularly painful example of what Brisbane has already lost.

The question is therefore not simply whether this particular building can be sold. The question is:

What sort of city do we want Brisbane to be? Do we want every historically significant piece of land in the CBD to be evaluated primarily according to its potential value to private developers?

Or do we want to retain some of the extraordinary buildings that tell the story of Brisbane and make them available for future generations?

State governments have already demonstrated how little they understand the importance of preserving the history of Brisbane’s CBD, preferring instead to participate in the redevelopment of the old Bellevue site as part of the Queen’s Wharf project—a mega-casino where only the mates and high rollers have a seat at the table of commerce. What a crass legacy to leave to the next generation.

That is why I am asking you directly:

Why would you support, or allow, the sale of the Brisbane School of Arts rather than fighting to retain it as a public community and cultural asset?

The Brisbane School of Arts should be part of our living heritage, not another casualty of property development.

And I would particularly like you to consider this in the context of your own responsibilities for community and the arts.

If Council is genuinely committed to providing high-quality community venues and supporting cultural and artistic activity, why dispose of one of the most historically significant community buildings in central Brisbane?

I am not asking Council simply to preserve a museum piece. I am asking Council to preserve and revitalise a building that can once again serve the public. There are many possibilities for its future use.

The building could accommodate community organisations, cultural groups, arts organisations, educational activities, exhibitions, public meetings, historical displays, performances and other community uses. It could become a genuine civic and cultural asset rather than an asset disposed of for its development potential.

I would also like to ask whether Council has properly investigated the possibility of retaining the building and allowing a long-term community partnership or adaptive-reuse arrangement?

Before any sale proceeds, I believe the community deserves a transparent assessment of all of those alternatives.

Councillor Howard, I understand that you have expressed concerns about the loss of Brisbane’s heritage and have spoken about the importance of our city’s history.

Brisbane City Council has the resources to do this.

The building has the history.
The community has the potential uses.
What appears to be missing is the political will.

I would very much appreciate a substantive response to that question, rather than simply an explanation of the financial or administrative process involved in the proposed sale.

I would also welcome the opportunity to provide you with the photographs and the recollections of the former Council librarians who worked in the building, including Paula’s remarkable story of the day she and members of the public worked together to save the library’s books from the water pouring through the walls.
Those stories are part of the building’s history too.

And once the building is sold, that history — and the opportunity to give the building another public life — may be lost forever.

I urge you to use your position as Councillor for Central Ward and Chair of Council’s Community and Arts Committee to advocate for the retention, restoration and adaptive reuse of the Brisbane School of Arts.

Please don’t let another piece of Brisbane’s history become another piece of real estate. Will you remember only two well Bob Katter’s rejoicing at the demolition of the Bellevue in 1977 when he was a minister in her majesty’s government.

Yours sincerely,
Ian Curr, Editor Workers BushTelegraph
20 August 2025