04 Apr Parramatta Female Factory Precinct Named National Site
For ten years UTS staff and students have worked with Parramatta Female Factory – a place of incarceration and confinement of more than 30,000 women, children and Indigenous Australians from 1818 to 2008 – to build a body of work to support the heritage recognition of Parramatta Female Factory Precinct in the face of increasing pressure from NSW Government’s development plans for the three-hectare site near Parramatta CBD.
In late 2017 the Australian Government announced that the Parramatta Female Factory Precinct was inscribed as a National Heritage site.
In 2007, Parragirls founder Bonney Djuric OAM contacted UTS’s community-engagement program Shopfront, to ask for help in compiling a history of the precinct. Within months, UTS Communication/Law student, Clare Butler began researching the Female Factory and addressing the criteria to nominate the site for state and national heritage listing. The first national nomination was submitted by Bonney Djuric in November 2011.
As part of a long term program to support the heritage preservation of the precinct, UTS students and staff worked on six further projects through UTS Shopfront, and organised an international symposium. This led to the publication of the book, Silent Systems: Forgotten Australians and Incarcerated Women and Children edited by Paul Ashton and Jacqui Wilson.
UTS Shopfront is a service that matches community organisations with the expertise available within the University of Technology Sydney. Click here for more information or to apply.
For more information: https://www.uts.edu.au/partners-and-community/initiatives/uts-shopfront-community-program/news-and-events/news/parramatta
Watch Creating Community at the Parramatta Female Factory Precinct on Vimeo.