Small cities, big ambitions

Artists and organisations living outside the Sydney-Melbourne axis can sometimes feel overlooked, but isolation also has its advantages.
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Image: Chris Fletcher, Where Am I?, oil on paper, via Chris Fletcher-Sleepy Giant Studios

For artistically inclined young people living in remote and regional areas, the main question they often face is which capital city to move to: Melbourne or Sydney. Creative communities flourish in both cities, across all art forms, and consequently Australia’s two largest cities tend to dominate cultural discourse in most forms of media, with events in the remaining capital cities scrambling for a piece of the pie. Regionally based artists and arts organisations are often left with the crumbs.

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Richard Watts is ArtsHub's National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM, and serves as the Chair of La Mama Theatre's volunteer Committee of Management. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, and was awarded the status of Melbourne Fringe Living Legend in 2017. In 2020 he was awarded the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize. Most recently, Richard was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Green Room Awards Association in June 2021. Follow him on Twitter: @richardthewatts