Fourteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Many cities around the world, especially those of metropolitan scale, are undergoing transformation. The reclamation and redevelopment of de-industrialised inner-city spaces is creating pressing problems for arts and cultural practitioners. These producers and exhibitors of diverse cultural forms were once able to operate, albeit precariously, in relatively inexpensive working and living spaces in transitional urban zones. The combined impact of property booms and gentrification has been to displace many of them, while its ripple effect is being felt across suburban and even peri-urban creative contexts. These disturbances in the urban cultural ecology affect mutually supportive communities of practice who tend to live precariously but are deeply committed to their cultural and social communities. This paper draws on survey and interview research for the Australian Research Council Linkage Project (LP 130100253) Recalibrating Culture: Production, Consumption, Policy, which is focused on the organisation of cultural practices and lives in Greater Western Sydney, Australia. It also considers and analyses some relevant findings of three commissioned research projects: Mapping Cultural Venues and Infrastructure in the City of Sydney Local Government Area and Planning Cultural Creation and Production in Sydney: A Venues and Infrastructure Needs Analysis (Sydney City Council), and Cultural Creation and Production in the Inner West LGA: A Case-study Needs Analysis (Inner West Council). This research directly addresses questions concerning the arts in social, political, and community life, emphasising the key role of cultural policy and planning in sustaining communities of arts and cultural practice that are confronted by late-capitalist urban economics.