What to Expect From Sydney’s New $25 Million Creative Hub

Building grand concert halls and top-notch performance venues is crucial to boosting a city’s arts scene. Equally important is providing creative types with affordable spaces where they can live, work and exchange ideas. Unfortunately, Sydney’s astronomical increases in property prices haven’t been making that too easy. So the City of Sydney Council is straightening up, flying right and doing something about it.

The council's brand new cultural policy promises all kinds of gangbusters arts-promoting initiatives, including interest-free loans for art investors, year-round public art smorgasbords and cutting back on red tape for pop-ups. They're not all talk either, as one of the policy's first practical applications has just been announced — the development of a $25 million creative hub smack bang in the CBD.

Housed in one slick, bubbling creative centre, artists, dancers, actors, musicians, writers and filmmakers will have access to 36 low-rent work spaces, spread over 2000 square metres and five storeys. They’ll be located within what’s soon to become Sydney’s tallest residential tower — the former Sydney Water site on Bathurst Street, set for redevelopment by Greenland Australia. Creatives will share the 67-storey building with 490 residential apartments, as well as ground-floor retail outlets. The inclusion of the hub has been made possible through a Voluntary Planning Agreement, much to the delight of Sydney's creative community.

AN AUSTRALIAN FIRST

"While we developed our new cultural policy, Creative Sydney, one issue consistently raised by artists and creative workers was the lack of affordable work space in the inner city," Lord Mayor Clover Moore told us. "The City of Sydney has already had great success with affordable creative spaces in our own properties on William and Oxford Street, but to unlock bigger opportunities we knew that working with commercial developers would be essential."

"There’s been a history, albeit limited, of infrastructure — theatres and so on — coming through development agreements," adds Rachel Healy, City of Sydney’s executive manager of culture. "For example, the City Recital Hall came through a voluntary planning agreement with the MLC Centre. But there’s been no attention paid, not to the end result of the artist’s work — which is being on a stage, or being in an exhibition space — but to the spaces that artists need to create their work ... We think this is an Australian first. It’s [Greenland’s] first venture into Australia as well, so they’re really excited to be partnering with us. They were interested in what makes cities interesting and in how they could contribute in a way that wasn’t necessarily orthodox.”

SPECIALISED SPACES FOR EVERY ART FORM

Bands, bards and ballet dancers have different needs when it comes to creative space. The new hub's 36 unique spaces will cater to the needs of varying art forms — there’ll even be one live-work apartment, enabled through a creative fellowship program. "Workspace is a pretty broad term," Healy explains. "It includes rehearsal studios, offices, meeting rooms and spaces that are set up to accommodate the particular needs of various art forms. If you’re in a metal band, for example, how many spaces exist which are soundproofed — meaning you don’t have to turn yourself inside out trying to rehearse at a time when the neighbours aren’t going to complain? Every art form has particular needs. Dancers need to work on sprung timber floors. Musicians need acoustically treated spaces. Visual artists often need wet-dry spaces." The hub also caters to the technologically inclined, with media editing suites for filmmakers and new media artists.

CREATIVE COLLABORATION

Creatives need coffee, so a ground floor cafe (planned for the socially advantageous spot right next to the lift) will provide a place for arty types to get together, swap ideas, devise collaborations (and plan creative revolutions). Plus, it’s hoped that the central location will mean exposure to new audiences and helpful commercial forces. "Great cities are places with a great blending of commercial, cultural and residential activity," the Lord Mayor says. "I expect the creative hub to attract more people to the city centre, which is great for business. The Oxford Street and William Street affordable creative spaces have also seen artists develop good relationships with surrounding businesses, and I’m sure the new creative hub will have a similar benefit. I hope that the new residents take advantage of living so close to such great facilities. And I’m sure the wide range of artists working in the creative hub will lead to some interesting collaborations."

SO, WHEN CAN WE MOVE IN?

Hold on to those flourishing ideas, it’s expected that the facilities will be up and running by mid-2017. Configuring exactly how the spaces will be made available and shared is still a work-in-progress. "One option we’re investigating is to have a cultural organisation based permanently on each floor that would be responsible for running the booking the creative spaces on their floor," says Moore. "We expect to announce details of how artists and creative teams can access the spaces in 2016."

To find out more ways the City of Sydney's cultural policy will make Sydney better, head over here for our handy rundown.