A PLAN to turn Fremantle council’s vacant properties into artist studios was shot down at the monthly council meeting on Wednesday. 

The initiative was put forward by East Ward councillor Ben Lawver as the City adopted a new 10-year Arts, Culture and Creative Strategy.

Cr Lawver suggested an audit of all vacant council buildings in the Fremantle area, to analyse their suitability to “incubate” the city’s struggling arts sector.

The amendment, was voted down by councillors, several suggesting its sentiment was well placed but in the wrong plan. 

The new arts and culture plan aims to promote Fremantle as a “major cultural hub” and will guide the prioritisation of arts and culture over the next 10 years. 

The strategy’s production has been slow, with council officers conducting two years’ worth of community consultation. 

Priorities include First Nations art and culture, community experience, the council’s role as an incubator of the arts, and partnership with arts and cultural experiences. 

“There’s real benefit in taking the community with you when we do these things,” Fremantle mayor Hannah Fitzhardinge said. 

“It sets up a bunch of work that we know we need to do around infrastructure and investment,” she said, highlighting the lack of available funding to the arts sector in Fremantle. 

“The enduring feeling I come away from reading this is ‘imagine if we had all the money in the world’, and what we could do with that.”