Sanitise Live Streaming Music Festival, 2020 - ⓒ Alex Groves
Creative city strategy
Ballarat’s award-winning Creative City Strategy presents a proposed long-term vision for the City, to guide policy and investment for the cultural and creative industries.
The strategy is built on comprehensive research and extensive engagement with community and expert stakeholders.
Collectively, and with community support, the strategy and masterplan aim to position Ballarat as one of Australia’s leading creative cities. We plan to do this by increasing creative participation, attracting and supporting creative talent and developing a world-class creative industry and precinct.
Our Creative City Strategy is designed to take our intrinsic Ballarat creative spirit and apply it not just to consolidating Ballarat as an internationally-notable centre for arts and culture, but also applying it to our city’s continuous innovation, economic growth and social sustainability. It strives to make Ballarat the city of the sustainable creative practitioner.
Ballarat has recently been assessed as one of Victoria’s creative ‘hotspots’. Read the research report from QUT, University of Newcastle and Creative Victoria.
creative city masterplan
To support the objectives of Ballarat’s Creative City Strategy, the Ballarat’s Creative Precinct Master Plan has also been created. The Masterplan will guide the future development of the creative precinct in the city.
Ballarat’s Creative Precinct will be a welcoming place for people to live, create, study and visit. Varied and adaptable streets and public spaces will support a broad program of activities, showcasing the city’s assets and expressing the creative energy of its community.
Precinct actions:
A master plan implemented and owned by everyone
A place to live, create, study and visit
A place that showcases and celebrates Ballarat’s assets, stories and people
A place that supports playfulness, flexibility, experimentation and vitality
A place of people-friendly streets and comfortable spaces that celebrate Ballarat’s seasons
APPLICATION OF THE STRATEGY
The City of Ballarat works to track the impact of the Creative City Strategy. Check out our reports into achievements since the commencement of the strategy in 2019.
APPLICATION OF THE MASTERPLAN
The Bridge Mall is entering into a period of rejuvenation and redevelopment. The application of the Creative City Masterplan sees a need for us to co-create a new vision for the retail heart.
public art policy
The Ballarat Creative City Strategy informs and guides the programming of public art activities across the city. In 2020 Public Art Commission (Deakin University) ran a series of consultations with our community to inform the development of the policy. The key things that you told us during the consultation were:
That highest quality and best practice approaches are endorsed and should be a priority of the program.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander engagement should be evident in legacy public art commissions.
Public art should be contemporary, challenging and address complex issues, while highlighting the unique and important heritage of Ballarat.
The public art program should include permeant commissions and temporary and ephemeral artworks.
Council approved the new policy in May 2021
Live Music Strategic Plan
The Ballarat Creative City Strategy now encompasses the City of Ballarat’s Live Music Strategic plan.
Written with a scope of five years, from 2016 through to 2021, the Live Music Strategic Plan defined the goals and objectives underpinning support of local and regional live music.
it identified actions to strengthen development, appropriate to Council’s role within the community.