Arts

Background

To maintain the City of Melbourne’s longstanding reputation as a centre of arts and culture, Council has an important role to play in supporting new and emerging arts and artists whilst promoting Melbourne’s world-leading creative industries.

Principles

  1. Melbourne artists across a diverse range of genres, cultures and backgrounds play an essential role in our City’s cultural life and Government has an important role to directly and indirectly support artists to create.
  2. Aboriginal artists and their work represent unique cultures and heritage and must be supported, respected and appropriately protected through Council policy and funding.
  3. Arts funding processes must be transparent, accountable and free from political interference and censorship.
  4. Melbourne’s great strengths as a city of emerging and contemporary arts should be embraced by Government.
  5. All residents and visitors to Melbourne should be encouraged and supported to enjoy the arts as well as participate, regardless of ability and financial means.

Aims

  1. Expand Council’s Creative Spaces program to provide more spaces in central Melbourne for artists to work and collaborate affordably.
  2. Establish incentives for the development of affordable residential and live/work spaces for artists in urban renewal areas.
  3. Continually evolve public art programs which maximise access to exciting and innovative art in the public realm.
  4. Develop the North Melbourne Arts House precinct as a centre of emerging, contemporary and independent arts.
  5. Recognise and protect Melbourne’s existing live music venues in the Planning Scheme.
  6. Continually review arts funding policies to ensure funding:
    1. is accessible to a range of artists and arts organisations of all practices and backgrounds;
    2. targets creative development as well as final presentation of works; and
    3. is free from political interference and censorship.
  7. Embed artists’ work into a broader range of the Council’s projects, programs and services.
  8. Build the Melbourne Indigenous Arts Festival through partnerships to become a truly sustainable and accessible premier event.
  9. Continue to find new ways to acknowledge and make visible the City’s Aboriginal heritage.
  10. Promote better understanding of the relationship between global cities of the arts and Melbourne’s place in emerging, contemporary and professional artistic networks, and to learn from other jurisdictions’ programs that support and enable thriving artist communities.
  11. Promote and support Melbourne’s internationally renowned street art scene and its contribution to Melbourne’s vibrant urban culture.
  12. Expand Council’s Signal and ArtPlay programs to allow greater access to creative experiences for young people.
  13. Broaden Council’s participatory arts programs to ensure that community members across the municipality (of all ages and backgrounds) have opportunities to directly participate in community-based arts projects.
  14. Support Melbourne’s arts organisations to practice and operate as sustainably as possible.