Creative Australia has announced the next wave of Creative Futures Fund investments, including a grant for The Second Cities Producing Consortium to deliver the first two years of a proposed four-year pilot, with a $280,000 investment in year one.
Four Australian ‘second city’ performing arts organisations have formed a landmark partnership to co-invest in seeding, developing and staging new large-scale Australian theatre productions.
Together, the Consortium will create a new national pathway for ambitious Australian theatre works to be developed with audiences in mind from the outset, connecting artists, producing partners and major regional venues across multiple states and territories.
The Second Cities Producing Consortium members, each the cultural heart of their region, have a collective audience of 1.2 million annually:
Canberra Theatre Centre (ACT), the performing arts centre of the national capital
Geelong Arts Centre (VIC); Australia’s largest dedicated regional performing arts complex
Wollongong’s Merrigong Theatre Company (NSW), Australia’s largest and most prolific regional theatre company
HOTA, Home of the Arts (QLD), the Gold Coast’s landmark cultural precinct
Working with a range of producing partners and other key venues across the country, the Consortium will shape the major works made for Australia from development through to presentation. Audiences will sit at the centre of the model, building a sustainable pathway for ambitious work to reach communities right across the nation.
The Consortium will deliver a new model of formalised collaboration across state borders, bringing regional arts organisations together to respond to shared challenges, pool insights and resources, and build the resilience of the sector.
By working collectively, the partners will create greater opportunities for artists and touring production companies, expand audience access to ambitious Australian work, and build stronger national advocacy and influence for Australia’s second cities.
The Second Cities Producing Consortium Pilot Project is funded through strategic investment from Creative Australia. Individually, its members are backed by funding from the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria, the NSW Government through Create NSW, City of Wollongong, City of Gold Coast, the QLD Government through Arts Queensland; and the ACT Government.
Canberra Theatre Centre Executive Director, Georgia Hendy, said:
“Canberra is where Australia comes together to reflect on our national identity, and our stages should be a place where Australian stories can be told with ambition, scale and impact.
The Second Cities Producing Consortium creates an ambitious new pathway for Australian stories to be developed, produced and shared beyond the traditional capital-city circuit, recognising the importance of Australia’s vibrant regional cities and the audiences they serve.
Canberra Theatre Centre is proud to be part of this landmark collaboration, reinforcing our role as a leading arts hub for the nation’s capital and surrounding region. Together, we can strengthen cultural and economic connections between our cities and help ensure more people can experience world-class Australian theatre closer to home.”
Geelong Arts Centre CEO and Creative Director Rhys Holden said:
“This Consortium brings together the strength, ambition and creative energy of Australia’s second cities. Too often the conversation is dominated by our capital cities, but some of the country’s most exciting artistic work, fastest-growing communities and boldest ideas are coming from regional centres like Geelong and our partner cities across the nation.
For Geelong Arts Centre, this is about more than presenting great work. We want to create it. By working together, we can invest in new Australian stories, support artists to make ambitious new work, and build pathways for that work to reach audiences right across the country.
We’re excited by what we can achieve collectively and the role this Consortium can play in shaping the future of Australian arts and culture.”
Australia’s ‘Second Cities’ – large regional centres within a couple of hours’ drive of capital cities – already play a key role in the national performing arts ecology – hubs that service and develop the more regional and remote audiences in their respective surrounding areas. Think Wollongong in relation to Sydney, Geelong to Melbourne, Gold Coast to Brisbane, and Canberra as a centre for the ACT and Southern NSW region.
The performing arts venues in these second cities have sizeable audiences, infrastructure and artistic ambition. Their business and audience development models depend on a regular supply of large-scale productions that are artistically compelling and capable of attracting significant audiences.
In many international markets, such as the UK, pathways between capital city markets and second-tier markets are well established and built into the planning and business models for major works from the beginning.
In Australia, however, this pathway has often been an afterthought, with costly remounts, redesigns and transfer costs making the supply of large-scale work unreliable and poorly supported by existing producing, touring and funding structures.
Merrigong Theatre Company Artistic Director / CEO Simon Hinton said:
“As Australia’s largest and most prolific regional theatre company, Merrigong is excited to be part of this powerful new arts industry partnership. The Second Cities Producing Consortium pilot comes after years of discussion in the sector about developing new and better models for creating Australian theatre works that connect with and build audiences across the nation, and most especially in the burgeoning regional population centres we now refer to as Australia’s ‘second cities’.
This strategy sits perfectly within Merrigong’s vision for our region as a place where artistic ambition is nurtured, and where artists and audiences are connected and strengthened. Merrigong has, in the last two decades, pursued this vision through our sector-leading new work and artist development programs. To now place alongside these, a new audience-led producing and presenting model with this Consortium of like-minded organisations is an exciting next step in our journey.”
About the Pilot (2027-2030):
After many years of informally collaborating around programming and touring of works of scale, the four key second cities are now forming this Consortium in order to better guarantee the supply of such works, and ensure the continued growth of audiences in our respective markets.
This pilot has the potential to significantly impact wider sector sustainability, grow regional and remote audiences (beyond immediate audience catchments), and generally improve industry practices around the making and touring of larger scale work around Australia.
The Second Cities Producing Consortium addresses this opportunity by establishing a coordinated, audience-led producing and presentation model. With a combined catchment of 2.6 million people and more than 1.2 million annual attendances, these venues already demonstrate strong demand, particularly from regional and remote audiences, for high-quality work typically only available in capital cities.
Due to rising costs and fragmented touring models, Creative Australia’s investment is critical to support this audience-focused sector sustainability strategy.
John Kotzas AM, Head of Arts and Culture, Experience Gold Coast – HOTA Home of the Arts said:
“HOTA – Home of the Arts is proud to have been announced as Queensland’s representative for the Second Cities Consortium. This significant milestone reflects the strength of our artistic community, the ambition of our programming, and our commitment to championing exceptional Australian theatre.
We look forward to bringing these newly commissioned productions to our growing audiences on the Gold Coast, while helping showcase the extraordinary creativity and talent that defines our state. As one of Australia’s fastest-growing cities, we have an exciting opportunity to connect our community with bold new stories and play an important role in shaping the future of Australian theatre.”
Second Cities Producing Consortium pilot initiatives will be announced in the coming year.
Website: https://creative.gov.au/
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/canberratheatrecentre/
Hero image: HOTA Home of the Gold Coast, supplied.
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