Gary Cleveland was instrumental in establishing Design Tasmania

It would be an accident that led to a life-long passion for well-designed art and the establishment of an industry built on the backbone of the Tasmanian economy – wood.

“I didn’t really know anything about wood,” he said.

Appointed as a designer in 1952 at Queensland Woollen Mills in Ipswich he said it wasn’t his first choice as a career.

After seeking new employment in Tasmania, Mr Cleveland embarked on a challenge to establish the state as the world’s design capital of the world.

It was a dream that culminated in the establishment of the Design Centre of Tasmania, now named Design Tasmania, located on the fringe of City Park in Launceston.

The first detour on his road to the Tasmanian design industry was in 1967 when he got a job with Kelsall and Kemp, a UK-based textile factory that had an office in Launceston.

A federal government decision by then-Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, to reduce the import duties on textiles by 20 per cent resulted in one of the most defining moments of Mr Cleveland’s life.

In mid-1973 he was forced to make a hard decision and sack 60 per cent of the staff. About 243 people were dismissed from their jobs.

“That really set my life.”

He said it was that moment he realised the manufacturing industry was on the brink of collapse.

“I realised what I was doing that day was what was going to happen to every other manufacturing industry in the Western World,” he said.

“That is one of the first examples of what is still happening with the car industry in Australia at present.”

Mr Cleveland said he became concerned about the future of the people he had to dismiss from the company – ‘what where they going to do with their lives?’

In response, he transformed the company from a textile company to a producer of cloth.

“I changed it from a weaving company to a creator of fabric, I saved it by doing that and made it one of the most successful companies,” he said.

In 1976, he resigned from Kelsall and Kemp and the small kernel of an idea for Tasmania was beginning to take shape in Mr Cleveland’s mind.

“I decided to form an industry based on creative thinking and Australian resources, particularly Tasmanian,” he said.

He said he believed he could use the same principles he used to transform Kelsall and Kemp and apply it to the whole state of Tasmania. 

“I don’t know where I got the cheek, but I believed I could succeed,” he said.

That idea – The Design Centre of Tasmania –  was opened the same year, in 1976. 

Good design, Mr Cleveland said, can be defined by three attributes.

“If you’re not curious, you can’t be a designer; if you don’t take risks you won’t be successful and the third thing, is the most least understood, is focused imagination,” he said.

He said to be successful in the design field it was important to have the ability to focus on your project but be imaginative.

Mr Cleveland said he had spent the last 40 years of his life working out the answer about what good design is.

He said he was proud to have been able to contribute to that definition and the discussion around it in Tasmania.

Mr Cleveland said Launceston was chosen for the home of the centre because of his belief in private enterprise.

“I have a high regard for private rather than public employment,” he said.

“Hobart, to me, is a government town. Launceston feels more like a private town.”

Despite being instrumental in the establishment of Design Tasmania, Mr Cleveland maintains his vision for the industry was supported by many others.

“I believe with the Design Centre, what I was trying to do was to give the thinkers, the makers, who hardly existed when we opened, the confidence to take the next step.”

Mr Cleveland said in the beginning Tasmanian artisans had no reason to think they were particularly good.

“We have, on this funny little island, the most industries based on micro-businesses that are creative and sustainable.

“There is nowhere else in the world within ‘cooee’ [of us] doing what we’re doing and I’m really proud I helped develop that.”

He said despite his influence, the centre was successful because of the makers themselves and the supportive network of the government, the Launceston council of the time and other key players.

“It’s about me releasing the creative power of the others. That’s what I was able to do and that’s why they did it so well,” he said.

One moment that sticks in his mind is in 1996 when Mr Cleveland and a group of six people exhibited some of the design furniture and other pieces at the International Furniture Fair in New York.

Tasmania was named as the best exhibit in the world at the fair, which Mr Cleveland describes as “one of the most magic” nights of his life.

Mr Cleveland has worked tirelessly for the past 40 years, through ill health, to establish confidence among the artisans of Tasmania.

“You can talk to any number of them now and you will hear a pride in themselves that wasn’t there when I began.

“There was hope but there was no surety but there is now,” he said.