Material is presented in a brief manner including artist statements (where available), pictures and project descriptions.

Unfortunately, there are some gaps in the archive. For example, not all of the committee's early work in the 1970s has been preserved - nor has any documentation of some projects occurring immediately prior to and following the Newcastle earthquake in 1989.

1974

The workers cultural action committee was formed as a sub-committee of Newcastle Trades Hall Council in April 1974. The immediate impetus was a visit to Newcastle that year (organised by Ross Walters, a trade unionist and musician) by Max Ogden, the then education officer for the AMWSU (or AMWU as it is now known). Ogden told Newcastle metalworkers about concerts his union was organising in Melbourne's factories and workplaces. This resulted in Newcastle musician and union organiser, Bob Campbell, accepting the task of implementing a similar program in Newcastle. The workers cultural action committee was a result of this initiative, supported by the then NTHC Secretary, Keith Wilson, and its office secretary, Vi Adamson.

Emphasis was given to taking the arts to the workplace and developing the workers' interests in their own cultural traditions as well as introducing the kind of arts activities that most people in the region would not have previously found accessible in content nor location.

In the late 1960s and early 70s folk musicians and other artists in Newcastle were very active members of the peace movement especially the Vietnam Moratorium. It was appropriate then that much of the committee's early activities involved concerts. For example, the committee organised concerts featuring Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger, the Grimethorpe Colliery Brass Band (before it achieved world reknown through the film "Brassed Off") and Australian bands such as Redgum and Ironbark. A concert featuring folk singers Bill Morgan and Declan Affley was organised for lunchtime at the State Dockyard on the Port of Newcastle. At the last minute, Dockyard management refused the musicians' entry to the workplace. Unperturbed, the committee organised a barge to be floated in the harbour opposite the Dockyard as a stage for the musicians and the concert went ahead.

The entrepreneurial aspect of the committee's program sought to present events that would relate more directly to the lives of the workers in this region than those arts activities generally available in Newcastle.

Projects (on record)

Blinky Bill's Nightmare Show, May Day Rally (1978)

Star Hotel Project (1979)