Creative Ecology · Indicator 4
Diversity of scenes & experimental programming
What this indicator asks
How diverse and varied are Sydney’s scenes, including experimental and interdisciplinary work, and new formats and models?
70.3/ 100 · Sydney
When asked, 49% of survey respondents in Sydney agree that new and experimental events happen often. Though 35% disagree.
A participant said audiences are hungry for new work, and really do respond when it is put in front of them. But traditional venues and festivals are not willing to take risks on new and experimental artists.
Summer Break is a mini-festival run by first-time organisers. They went from putting on events in a park to selling out the entire Lord Gladstone hotel weeks before the event.
A participant said informal spaces fill a gap that larger venues cannot:
“I think ‘informal spaces’ is doing a lot of the heavy lifting there. I think that traditional venues and clubs and festivals are really struggling to take risks with programming. It’s something that you can’t do unless you have tenure and security, unless you can wear a bad night or a bad week or a bad month.”