News

New competition from established venues

Many performing arts centres now operate as producers rather than as venues for hire, creating competition with their tenants.

19 Jun 2013

Richard Watts

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Performing Arts

But as CEO and Artistic Director of the Adelaide Festival Centre, Douglas Gautier, notes in Lance Campbell’s Heart of the Arts: The Adelaide Festival Centre at 40 (Wakefield Press, 2013), things have changed.

‘As a rule the most successful and relevant arts centres, anywhere in the world, are those that are not simply “halls for hire”. They are the ones that have chosen to control their own destiny and positioning with a “program and ideas” led approach, to best engage and sustain artists and audiences,’ Gautier says.

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Richard Watts

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