Revisioning Sydney

This article began out of many train journeys from the author’s home in Eastern Sydney to various parts of the Western suburbs where she was working with young people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. These young people are redefining what it means to be Australian, negotiating their sense of self in the friction of boundary clashes with sites of power such as family, peers, local authorities, and the state itself. There is a realization in their construction of popular culture that even where social constraint is strong, there are still possibilities, still interstitial spaces in the city where they can create their own sense of place and maybe even reinvigorate wider cultural institutions in Australia