Perth Words… exploring possibilities.

Peter Cowan Writers Centre, ECU Joondalup Campus, Western Australia

As an original, contributing committee member in those early years, I will happily join the High Tea celebrations at Peter Cowan Writers Centre, the only community writing centre based on a University Campus in Australia (and maybe anywhere), tomorrow.  

In the beginning, I represented Theatre and Writing on the City of Wanneroo (later Joondalup) Cultural Advisory Committee, when the opportunity to place Peter Cowan’s House on the Edith Cowan University Campus was first mooted.

At the time, I was studying for my BA in Creative Writing at ECU, Mt Lawley campus and, although an enthusiastic member of the Fellowship of Australian Writers in WA, worried many times if my old bomb of a car would make it all the way down to Cottesloe for meetings.

A fellow student, Trudy Graham, as part of her Community Writing unit, started Northern Writers which in 1998, became the Peter Cowan Writers’ Centre Inc in honour of Peter Cowan, an esteemed Western Australian writer and academic.

My story about that very first Northern Writers meeting held in Warwick, was published in PCWC’s first anthology ‘Urban Scrawl’.  Although the names have been changed – you know who you are!

The proposal to place the historical home on Joondalup campus was brought up in a meeting of the Cultural Advisory Committee; ECU Students were dismantling the former home of Edith Cowan, Peter’s grandmother and Western Australia’s first female member of parliament in 1921.

Using Trudy’s Northern Writers membership numbers I was able to demonstrate a need and thankfully committee allowed the use (initially part) of the house as their ‘home’.

The City of Wanneroo Cultural Advisory Committee immediately set up a sub-committee to oversee the (significant) house move by students under University supervision, and invited Literature Prof. Andrew Taylor and Assoc. Prof. Glen Phillips from ECU, to lend their considerable support.

Which they certainly, did over these many years, resulting in the thriving Community Writing Centre we see today.  A job well done.

Congratulations Trudy, for taking the initiative all those years ago and to everyone involved then or now.

@FrancesMForde  #FrancesMacForde  #PeterCowanWritersCentre  #PCWC  #FAWWA   #GlenPhillips  #AndrewTaylor  #TrudyGraham