By supporting the arts, we’re supporting Melbourne as a whole

If you ask any Melburnian what makes our city incredible, it’s a safe bet they will mention our creative scene. It’s the second biggest driver for tourism to our city and contributes $40.3 billion yearly to the Victorian economy.

It’s because our creatives are passionate, talented, and importantly – they are supported by government to grow and thrive.

Championing the arts is crucial to nurture a thriving economy for those who live, work, study, and invest in Melbourne.

At the City of Melbourne, we have a critical role to play in providing funding, professional support and accessible spaces for our creatives – whether they are emerging, independent, or established. That is the role we play as a capital city council – and our teams who support the creative sector are a vital part of this.

Arts continue to grow and change as our society does, just as the City of Melbourne must continue to change to best support the sector. Recently, we proposed a restructure of our organisation to better serve our community as more people call Melbourne home.

Our vision is to better embrace the fact that the arts do not exist in a silo – art responds to the world around us. It reflects our values, our heritage, our culture and our identity – which in turn feeds back into creativity.

That’s why we’ve established a new Place Activation team, to enable us to activate different areas of the city flexibly and with purpose. This team will sit within the Creative Melbourne branch – where the arts teams remain largely unchanged. The Place Activation team will help teams to deliver unique and memorable activations for our many places and communities.

This aims to set us up to better activate spaces when we know they’ll be busy throughout the year, as well as more quickly to respond to trends and moments in our community.

For example – we could commission street art and book busking performances to respond to major events like the Now or Never Festival – in partnership with the teams that deliver them.

We could further elevate how we add vibrancy through arts, music and events to areas where businesses need support – with business owners and creatives working together with council to bring these spaces to life.

Our new council supports our commitment to the creative sector. At the first Future Melbourne Committee meeting of the new council on December 3, councillors resolved to establish the Creative and Arts portfolio. This means there will be two councillors dedicated to driving investment and support of the arts through their term – as portfolio head and deputy porfolio head.

We know our approach is working – in this year’s budget, we’re investing $13.4 million in the creative sector, with funding mainly supporting grassroots local artists, creative projects and programming.  And through our deeply local relationships, we’re supporting a truly unique creative sector. This year we had more applications for our Aboriginal Arts Grants than ever before. Overall, we’ve given funding to 35 new arts projects this year – giving newcomers a chance to make their mark.

Ultimately, we need to have the right structure in place at the City of Melbourne to support and sustain the creative sector long-term. There is no end date for creative development in our city – and we must always consider how we adapt our approach as the sector continues to grow and change.

We want Melbourne to continue to be the vibrant, liveable and creative city we all love. Our reputation as a place for exciting and unique experiences is what attracts new residents and major businesses.

And we’re confident that Melbourne will continue to accelerate as a global leader in arts, culture and creativity.

Alison Leighton is the Chief Executive Officer at the City of Melbourne.