A seven-metre wide digital screen is being used to strengthen the sense of community in Melbourne's multicultural south east.
It is also building the area's high technology skills base. Volunteers are working with the City of Greater Dandenong's urban screens coordinator Tom Dawe, learning about screen technology and how it can be used for entertainment, artistic and community purposes.
Dawe, who was part of the team operating the Federation Square screen until his move into local government, says the council regards the screen - and a number of smaller screens in other parts of the municipality - as public assets. Although it will show international and national events and entertainment, its main purpose is civic engagement and he is already encouraging local groups and artists to use it.
The screen is part of a new civic centre in the heart of Dandenong that includes council offices, a state of the art library, civic plaza and retail outlets. The $65.5 million centre was largely funded by the council with $1.25 million from the State government's Living Libraries fund and $6 million from the Commonwealth's Regional Development Fund.
Dawe says people who work on the development and operation of large screens in Australian public places are only a small group, and they are regularly asked for advice by local authorities considering installing screens. He helped Dandenong when its project was in concept stage.
Now he is enthusiastic about a job that requires him to involve volunteers in the screen's operations, regarding it as a practical opportunity to build skills in an area hard hit by the contraction of manufacturing industry and the foreshadowed end of car making in Australia.
"Broadcast engineering is converging with regular IT so the landscape is changing rapidly. The only way to gain experience is really to just jump in," he says.
It's the philosophy that has guided his own career. After completing HSC in Albury, NSW, he came to Victoria to study new media and arts at Swinburne. He then joined Videocraft Australia, one of the country's largest integrators of broadcast technology.
In 2008 he joined Circus Multimedia, a company operating big screens in Australia and New Zealand, becoming multimedia systems administrator at Federation Square two years later.
Dawe's enthusiasm for production technology followed naturally from film-making at school and enabled him to support his own creative projects, including a film about refugees in Melbourne's west and an animation feature for children.
"I had some sort of technical nous and broadcast systems, design and installation became my main source of income. During my time at Federation Square I really became a jack of all trades, working on technical issues and also on content."
He says Dandenong is the first suburban council in Victoria to install a big screen, seeing it as an adjunct to civic space and a logical extension to its communications work.
"The size of the screens makes them ideal to show big set pieces such as international sporting events, but they are wonderful for showing large and small community events."
He remembers the screening of former prime minister Kevin Rudd's Apology to Australia's Indigenous People as a highlight of his time at Federation Square and says Dandenong's new screen will feature a growing number of local events, as groups understand how it can be used to highlight their activities and boost a sense of community and participation.
