Second Cities Producing Consortium to Launch New Pathway for Australian Theatre

Creative Australia has announced the next wave of Creative Futures Fund investments, including a grant for The Second Cities Producing Consortium to deliver the first two years of a proposed four-year pilot, with a $280,000 investment in year one.

Four Australian 'second city' performing arts organisations have formed a landmark partnership to co-invest in seeding, developing and staging new large-scale Australian theatre productions. Together, the Consortium will create a new national pathway for ambitious Australian theatre works to be developed with audiences in mind from the outset, connecting artists, producing partners and major regional venues across multiple states and territories.

The Second Cities Producing Consortium members, each the cultural heart of their region, have a collective audience of 1.2 million annually:

• Geelong Arts Centre (VIC); Australia's largest dedicated regional performing arts complex;
• Wollongong's Merrigong Theatre Company (NSW), Australia's largest and most prolific regional theatre company;
• HOTA, Home of the Arts (QLD), the Gold Coast's landmark cultural precinct;
• Canberra Theatre Centre (ACT), the performing arts centre of the national capital.

Working with a range of producing partners and other key venues across the country, the Consortium will shape the major works made for Australia from development through to presentation. Audiences will sit at the centre of the model, building a sustainable pathway for ambitious work to reach communities right across the nation.

The Consortium will deliver a new model of formalised collaboration across state borders, bringing regional arts organisations together to respond to shared challenges, pool insights and resources, and build the resilience of the sector. By working collectively, the partners will create greater opportunities for artists and touring production companies, expand audience access to ambitious Australian work, and build stronger national advocacy and influence for Australia's second cities.

The Second Cities Producing Consortium Pilot Project is funded through strategic investment from Creative Australia. Individually, its members are backed by funding from the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria, the NSW Government through Create NSW, City of Wollongong, City of Gold Coast, the QLD Government through Arts Queensland; and the ACT Government.

Second Cities Producing Consortium pilot initiatives will be announced in the coming year.

Australia's Second Cities

Australia's 'Second Cities' – large regional centres within a couple of hours' drive of capital cities – already play a key role in the national performing arts ecology, acting as hubs that service and develop the more regional and remote audiences in their respective surrounding areas. Think Wollongong in relation to Sydney, Geelong to Melbourne, Gold Coast to Brisbane, and Canberra as a centre for the ACT and Southern NSW region.

The performing arts venues in these second cities have sizeable audiences, infrastructure and artistic ambition. Their business and audience development models depend on a regular supply of large-scale productions that are artistically compelling and capable of attracting significant audiences. In many international markets, such as the UK, pathways between capital city markets and second-tier markets are well established and built into the planning and business models for major works from the beginning. In Australia, however, this pathway has often been an afterthought, with costly remounts, redesigns and transfer costs making the supply of large-scale work unreliable and poorly supported by existing producing, touring and funding structures.

About the Pilot (2027-2030)

After many years of informally collaborating around programming and touring of works of scale, the four key second cities are now forming this Consortium in order to better guarantee the supply of such works, and ensure the continued growth of audiences in their respective markets. This pilot has the potential to significantly impact wider sector sustainability, grow regional and remote audiences (beyond immediate audience catchments), and generally improve industry practices around the making and touring of larger scale work around Australia.

The Second Cities Producing Consortium addresses this opportunity by establishing a coordinated, audience-led producing and presentation model. With a combined catchment of 2.6 million people and more than 1.2 million annual attendances, these venues already demonstrate strong demand, particularly from regional and remote audiences, for high-quality work typically only available in capital cities. Due to rising costs and fragmented touring models, Creative Australia's investment is critical to support this audience-focused sector sustainability strategy.

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