The radical property plan to bring artists back to Sydney

The NSW government and the City of Sydney will join forces to create a pool of affordable working spaces for artists and creatives currently locked out of Sydney by soaring rents.

In an Australian first, an independent charitable trust is set to be established to secure rehearsal and studio space through property purchases or long-term leases.

It’s part of a broader strategy being developed by the City of Sydney to retain the city’s cultural lifeblood, which is likely to see it boost cultural spending by $20 million over the next decade.

Hayes Theatre Company rehearsing in the City of Sydney’s creative studios on Bathurst Street on Wednesday. It features 30 spaces across five storeys of the Greenland Centre and includes rehearsal spaces, recording and editing suites, visual art studios, workshop and screening rooms. Credit: Steven Siewert

Sydney’s proposed Creative Land Trust is closely modelled on the same-name scheme launched by the City of London in 2019 to fix its acute shortage of rehearsal and studio spaces. The scheme involves allowing properties gifted or transferred by public or private landowners to working artists, musicians and writers at a subsidised rate.

Council analysis of the 2021 census found the number of artists, musicians, writers in greater Sydney fell by 11.6 per cent when in every other capital city the population of creatives had increased, showing the impact of rising property prices on the creative sector.

“We’re preparing to tip a certain amount of creative floor space into this,” Arts Minister John Graham told The Sydney Morning Herald.

“We are going to shift from what we’ve been doing which is building a small number of amazing public spaces to using a range of levers to deliver space and crucially activating space that already exists.

“Like other major world cities, Sydney is finding that creative spaces are getting squeezed out. We’re losing that battle.”

The organisation Heaps Decent assisting marginalised youth engage in culture uses the City of Sydney’s creative studios. Credit: Nick Langley

A feasibility study into the joint project will be announced at a conference Wednesday evening attended by London’s deputy mayor for culture, Justine Simons, who has helped champion that city’s efforts to save its creative soul.

The London trust buys buildings or secures them for the future and then populates them with working musicians, artists and performers paying rents as a proportion of the commercial rates.

Its first permanent building opened in March 2023, providing 180 long-term affordable workspaces for 400 artists, with another two buildings to open later this year, as it advances to its goal to help secure affordable studio space for more than 1000 artists.

Over the last decade, Sydney’s cultural infrastructure has shrunk by the equivalent of three Sydney Opera Houses, Lord Mayor Clover Moore will tell cultural leaders. Of that lost space, 14,400 square metres was once production space occupied by artists, musicians, writers and performers, a decline of 28 per cent over that time.

“This raises the prospect that Sydney will lose the ability to produce its own cultural products and will instead become an importer of culture made in Melbourne, Brisbane or overseas,” Moore said. “There is a direct correlation between Sydney’s housing affordability crisis and the acute and urgent demand for subsidised cultural spaces.”

Moore said the trust would work as an independent, not-for-profit entity with a board of trustees that take land out of the private market and place it in the hands of the cultural sector in perpetuity.

“Think of it as a real estate social enterprise,” she said. “This approach requires buy-in from all levels of government and the private sector.”

The trust plan signals a shift in state and local government investment priorities from big spending on places to present and consume culture to the kinds of creative spaces where arts and entertainment are made.

The council identified the need to help the “missing middle” in its updated cultural strategy that is to be voted on by councillors on June 24.

“There is a notable lack of midsized venues, mid-sized organisations and opportunities for mid-career artists,” it noted.

To this end, Moore said city council would boost cultural funding by $20 million over the next 10 years. Out of this, 50 individual fellowships per year, start-up grants and artist residencies would be funded with writers to be given space to work in City of Sydney libraries and community centres.

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