Renew Adelaide: The Basic Idea

Renew Adelaide is based on a program run in Newcastle called, fittingly enough, Renew Newcastle. The team behind that, Marcus Westbury and Marni Jackson, essentially set it up as an attempt to revitalise the city of Newcastle by filling the plethora of empty shop spaces with artist and community run initiatives. There are comparable projects being run overseas and there’s a strong history of artist run spaces taking over disused or underused urban areas. Mostly those projects are fairly temporary – things like the Adelaide and Edinburgh Fringe both use disused space, as does Deptford X in the UK and, in its earlier incarnations, the Berlin Biennial. In the UK there’s a heap of comparable initiatives all using different methods and all linked together via the Empty Shops Network. Essentially what all those organisations recognise is that supporting the cultural life of an urban environment supports its broader social and economic status.
Renew Newcastle is different because it works on a series of 30 day rolling license to access agreements. Essentially, landlords give artists free access to empty space. In return, that space gets cleaned up, cared for and given a sort of ongoing open inspection for people who might want to lease it in a more traditional, commercial sense. Artists get space to exhibit their work, run studios, offices, theatres, shops, workshops, teahouses and whatever else. And cities get a bunch of people coming into their centres and an increased cultural life that helps them compete with the suburban malls that have, over the last fifty years, emptied them out.
Renew Adelaide, like Renew Newcastle, is an independent, artist run project. Neither project was set up by anyone working in a council, government or profit based organisation and they rely heavily on volunteers.
Our attempts to set this project up in Adelaide are still in their infancy. We’ve talked to Marcus, we’ve visited Newcastle, we more or less understand their model. Now we’re trying to adapt it to Adelaide, getting our heads round the labyrinth of regulations and laws pertaining to development, trying to figure out how to approach landlords, talking to Council, artists and anyone else keen to help us out.
If this project works, we could see a significant revitalisation of the Adelaide metro area, we could help support others to adapt the project for other areas and we could contribute to the cultural and social welfare of both our own communities and the wider state. We think that’s important and we thank the people who’ve come out of the woodwork to help get this off the ground.
We’ve set this blog up to help archive the experience, help us think through things, get advice and feedback and keep everyone informed of what’s going on.

yours,

Ianto Ware and Brigid Noone

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