There Goes Our Neighbourhood (2018)

When politicians and property developers threaten to transform Sydney’s inner city suburb of Waterloo, forcing public housing tenants to the edges of the city, the locals fight back: their war cry an ambitious artwork, the making of which will both unite and divide. There Goes Our Neighbourhood is the powerful, funny and uplifting story of a team of public housing locals who come together with a hope to unite their neighbourhood, convince residents and the outside world of the value of their community through an ambitious art project, in an attempt to prevent the destruction of their suburb Waterloo. The film explores the formidable forces stacked against them: the government, developers, real estate agents as well as the middle class gentrifiers who now covet convenient inner city addresses previously occupied by the urban poor. The people who live in public housing are not who you might think they are. Meet Richard, a retired teacher, conservative but now a born again activist; Mary, a young Samoan Australian single mum and community worker who recently had her fourth child; Jenny, a long-time warrior for Aboriginal rights; Becz a young mother and aspiring chef and Catherine, a stealthy guerrilla granny, masked like Bansky who spray paints her protest slogans around Waterloo. The group come together to roll out a collective artwork that will install coloured lights into 500 tenants’ windows in two of Sydney’s most iconic public housing towers.. Each tenant can change the colour of the light in his or her window, an individual and unifying war cry against the destruction of their community: this is our neighbourhood. In the process of knocking on every door in the two high-rise towers, the audience is invited into the homes of the battlers who live within these public housing buildings. We meet an unlikely cast of characters who have lived colourful lives and have found sanctuary in public housing. There Goes Our Neighbourhood is an intimate story about a misunderstood suburb in Sydney but also a tale that echoes in cities around the world as the wealthy move into the areas previously home to poor and working class communities. This is a feel good film which reveals a community who are often made to feel powerless successfully using Art to demand to be seen and heard.