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February 2, 2009
Marcus Westbury of Not Quite Art has a theory of why and how Adelaide is the least interesting cultural place in all of Australia. Presumably, that means Adelaide is conservative and has little in the way of an interesting, innovative culture; is thin on low budget DIY creative activity; and that there is little artistic innovation and initiative since cultural life is dominated by the conservative major institutions. If Adelaide is the least interesting cultural place in all of Australia in Westbury's view, he has not put his theory as to why this is so in the public domain.
Westbury also has a theory that each phase in the economic cycle creates a different set of cultural possibilities and problems and that different times and different economic conditions create different cultures and different people. He says:
Looking at a post boom Melbourne it is easy to forget how much of what i love about this city is the product of the last great recession of the early 90s. It’s laneway bars, it’s smart graffiti, it’’s living CBD, it’s distinctive inner suburbs of eclectic shops and retail strips, it’s creative community are not the product of arts agencies or central planning but of the fertile ground, cheap space, and hard working initiative of a decade ago. The city is a rich ecology not created through central planning but grown in economic detritus and forged in the harsh and searing furnace of hard times.
I too love Melbourne for similar reasons. Well, Adelaide went through rustbelt hard times from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s and no vibrant, low scale experimental artistic culture emerged here, as it did on Melbourne. Nor has there been a great emphasis on the cultural industries from the governing ALP political class. Adelaide is where the issues and ambitions of our professional companies and major cultural institutions are still mistaken for those of the creative community as a whole.
So why did a vibrant artist culture develop in Newcastle and not Adelaide? There's plenty of cheap unused space in the CBD; there are several art schools and it has a tradition of embracing modernism. But it doesn't have a billboard public art program; its graffiti artists are persecuted, its art photographic culture is small and insular, and it has been slow to embrace Web 2.
What happened to Adelaide's creative culture then? How come this former rustbelt industrial town did not see the emergence of a thriving creative space with flexible spaces for emerging artists of all persuasions?
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I did never get around to elaborating my Adelaide theory did I? Although you did a reasonably good job of speculating on it :)