tonight I was lucky enough to be invited to a round table meeting with the cream of the young adelaide arts, music, design and advertising scene and the adelaide city council.
organised by merge and the ACC, the meeting was put together to sound out ideas to make the city more attractive for youth and transform the sterile streets into vibrant little hubs of stuff to see and do.
here are a couple of the ideas that came out of the meeting (in no particular order):
- band / gig posters - the city needs more public spaces designated for sticking up posters, so people can pop by and find out what's on that night in the city.
- water frontage bars / cafes - we've got the awesome grassed areas next to the festival centre with lovely water frontage that's an ideal place to hang out on a long summer night, but we need some bars / cafes / street food there to attract people so they don't have to venture to the west end for a drink.
- reduce inner city housing costs - there needs to be something done to create affordable inner city housing for young people. at the moment there's just opposite ends of the spectrum from student 1 room accommodation to $700 / week penthouse living. more young people living in the city = more young people out and contributing.
- increase noise in the city - in the last decade pubs and live music venues have been getting screwed by suffocating noise restrictions forced upon them by touchy old residents in new apartments. the city is meant to be noisy and bustling, so stop listening to the whinging few and bring the noise back to the CBD.
- street art zones - there needs to be a few council-blind-eye areas, where street art can go up and not be buffed.
- first friday gallery night - the first friday of the month becomes a night when all galleries in the west end are open with new artwork, attracting people to west end and building a real sense of community amongst the art scene.
- short term empty shop front leases - the council needs to act as a broker for short term shop front leases, so that empty shop fronts can be transformed into month long exhibitions without the usual pain of going through landlords and huge short term lease fees.
- rolling leases - continuing on from the short term leases are rolling leases, so empty shop fronts get leased as exhibition spaces rolling month to month until the landlord has a full-time tenant. this provides great opportunities for emerging artists with little track record to exhibit and a steady stream of income for landlords that would otherwise have no income from those shop fronts.
- close hindley street - the council experimented with closing hindley street for one saturday night. unfortunately the only attraction was a hotdog and a clown. proposal is to regularly close hindley street once a month on a saturday night to traffic and have food and drink stalls from the clubs and shops on the street and some live bands playing. that would attract people, and make the street less scary / seedy.
- improve public transport - free public transport within the CBD, and extended running hours so that people can stay out in the city longer and still get around and home.
- simple bus route naming system - to make it easier for international students, visitors and the general public, there needs to be a simple naming system to replace the bus numbers in adelaide. colour coded routes and simple names of the directions busses are headed would be much more user friendly.
- dedicated street art laneway - it would be great for the council to dedicate one laneway in the CBD to foster street art. a safe place where anyone can paint anytime. a place where we can run masterclasses by the legends of adelaide street art. ideally the laneway would have a secure stereo system that artists / bands / djs can plug into and have live performances there. we'd install picture frame rails so that there could be outdoor exhibitions there.
- de-regulate the rundle st markets - the gilles street markets are a huge success because they're run by the people. move the rundle st markets to east terrace and put them back into the hands of the people, sell organic farmers market style food and have some live bands and art to attract people.
- take more risks with modern architecture - we're sick of the glass stumps going up around the city. hand some architectural design work to graduate students and talented conceptual architects so that there are more interesting buildings.
- support industrial design - after graduating, industrial design students have few job opportunities in adelaide. to keep the talent in adelaide, fund more gallery spaces devoted to industrial design to show off furniture and product designers.
- more public art - hire local designers to create more public art, especially more interactive public art. art that can be modified by either digital manipulation via SMS or the internet, or even by physical touch.
those were the major points raised that I remember. hopefully in the coming days / weeks there'll be an official round up of ideas from the ACC minutes. I'll add a link to that when I get one.
there was a positive feeling from the council when Matt and I raised our proposal for a street art laneway. I think the ACC might finally be coming around and realising that now they've buffed all the art from the streets they actually miss it! fingers crossed.
do you like any of the ideas generated? do you have any of your own that you think would work? then please leave a comment and I'll pass them onto the ACC.
cheers, si.
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