Newcastle's Creative Scene: The City That Reinvented Itself Through Arts

Newcastle's creative and arts community, the catalyst for the city's post-industrial reinvention that the closure of the BHP steelworks in 1999 made necessary and that the creative sector's occupation of the former industrial buildings, the revitalisation of the Hunter Street mall, and the development of the arts and entertainment precinct around the Civic Theatre and the Newcastle Museum have delivered, provides the cultural infrastructure and the creative identity that have established Newcastle as one of Australia's most interesting regional arts cities. The transformation from the steel city to the creative city is not complete and not without the tensions that the gentrification of former working-class neighbourhoods that the creative migration creates, but the direction of travel is clear in the quality and the ambition of the cultural institutions and the creative businesses that Newcastle now hosts.

The Newcastle Art Gallery, the public gallery that the City of Newcastle operates in the CBD and that holds a collection of Australian art including significant works from the colonial and the twentieth century periods alongside its contemporary acquisition program, provides the visual arts foundation for the city's cultural life. The gallery's temporary exhibition program, hosting the touring exhibitions from the national galleries and the work of the regional and national contemporary artists that the gallery's curatorial program identifies, sustains the arts engagement that the permanent collection alone cannot generate at the frequency that the gallery's program requires.

The music scene of Newcastle, producing the national artists including Silverchair, The Screaming Jets, and the successive generations of Hunter Valley musicians who have built careers from the Newcastle circuit, has sustained the city's identity as a music city despite the challenges that every regional music scene faces in retaining talent against the pull of the metropolitan music industries. The local venue network, including the Cambridge Hotel and the smaller venues that the Newcastle music community uses for the original music nights and the touring shows, provides the infrastructure that the local music ecosystem depends on for the performance opportunities that develop the talent and sustain the audience.

The design and technology businesses that have established in Newcastle, including the creative agencies, the architecture and urban design practices, and the technology companies that are choosing Newcastle for the lifestyle and the cost advantages that the city offers over Sydney, create the knowledge economy employment that sits alongside the arts and culture sector in the creative economy that the city is building. The co-working spaces and the creative industry precincts of the CBD provide the infrastructure that the creative and knowledge workers who have chosen Newcastle over Sydney use for the collaborative work environment that the isolation of the home office does not provide.

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