How to build western Sydney’s arts economy: new report
Image: The crowd at AR Rahman’s performance in Parramatta Park in 2010. Photo by Prudence Upton
A new report by the Sydney Business Chamber and Deloitte has made a number of recommendations on how to spark the cultural economy of western Sydney.
Called Building Western Sydney’s Cultural Arts Economy: A Key To Sydney’s Success, it looks at ways to stimulate tourism, jobs, economic activity and cultural events to benefit the two million residents and 150,000 businesses in the area.
They include:
- Build a local version of the Hollywood Bowl for major outdoor concerts.
- Set up a month-long version of the light, music and ideas festival Vivid “along the region’s major river cities, including Parramatta, Penrith and Liverpool”.
- Increase the skills of western Sydney’s growing creative sector by relocating the Australian Film, Television & Radio School and the National Arts School, and set up more scholarships.
- Double Arts NSW’s current funding for programs to the region.
The data shows that western Sydney is moving away from being an industrial area to one with a younger, more educated and diverse population and with an economic growth between 2.3% to 1.7%.
In 2011 western Sydney households spent $232 million directly at concerts, museums, art galleries, and live theatre. By 2036 they are expected to spend more on these than eastern suburb households, as the population rises to make up 60% of Sydney’s.
It aims to dispel the myth that music and arts fans from the area do not attend events. They do (79% attendees of the Way Out West festival were locals) but they just don’t want to commute to the Eastern suburbs.
The report’s focus is the fact that western Sydney has an abundance of creative people living there, many who whom travel every day to work in the east.
This is the new Creative Class, and it looks at examples of overseas cities as Newark, Brooklyn and Shanghai which successfully used this new social class to generate economic and social activity.
It points out that western Sydney gets less arts funding than other areas – 1% of Commonwealth arts funding despite being 10% of the country’s population and 5.5% of NSW’s arts funding despite being 10% of the state’s population – and it prevents the area from being a major cultural hub: “Western Sydney’s attractions and major venues are challenged by poor public transport services to many of its key visitor destinations and events.”
Other recommendations in the report include:
- Commit $300 million for cultural infrastructure in the next five years.
- Put into place programs to create a focus on the area’s arts and cultural events.
- Generate more government and public sponsorships.
- Investigate how to expand the amount of cultural venues.
- Establish a Western Sydney Arts Advisory Group “to serve as guardians of the Cultural Arts in western Sydney.”