Heritage conservation and the transformation of institutions of incarceration into community arts centers in postcolonial Australia

The connections between community and heritage may appear self-evident, and both concepts are often used vaguely and emotively when it comes to understanding identity and place (Crooke 2010). Yet public responses to the preservation and management of historic buildings and land­scapes are often complex and unsettled, and especially so when such sites have a contested his­tory that still exists within living memory. This chapter examines how community-led heritage initiatives and the adaptive re-use of historic sites for the purposes of arts and entertainment can foster community reconciliation with places long associated with 'difficult' histories, including colonial violence, imprisonment, the dispossession of Indigenous peoples and the mistreatment of women and children. Through its focus on Australian case studies of colonial sites, this chapter raises broader issues about the centrality of heritage conservation and interpretation to the re-purposing of once grim and foreboding historic buildings into places of community value and identity.