Sydney Culture Network implements collective strategies to connect Sydney’s cultural offer, grow audience participation, and encourage greater engagement across the cultural life of the city.
The Network creates opportunities for joint efforts in research, programming and marketing: drawing on technological, cultural, academic and business networks to better position Sydney’s cultural life in a global context.
“We’re exploring our relationships to make the invisible more tangible, and to strengthen the dynamic connections that draw our cultural organisations together.”
Who we are
Sydney Culture Network is a core group of cultural institutions and creative sector organisations working together to make Sydney a global leader in valuing culture.
Meet our members here.
“This is so unique, perhaps the first time in the world — that such a group of arts organisations, cultural institutions and academics are coming to work together.”
Our members:
are joint custodians of over 25 million collection objects
provide 100+ spaces for creative production across the city
directly employ over 2700 people in Sydney
engage with a large, diverse audience
have a combined audience attendance of 12.7m and over 195,000 school visits
Our Mission
Sydney Culture Network creates the conditions for a new collaborative ecology. As a group, we are committed to fostering creativity and driving innovation. We want to build on Sydney’s great cultural institutions, our diversity, business and technology networks, and the state’s dynamic research, higher education and innovation sectors.
The Network includes leading arts, educational and cultural institutions, businesses and technology enterprises of all sizes. We want to play a key role in defining the value of culture, and to enhance the international profile of Sydney as a place of creativity and ideas.
“We hope to create deep and productive connections with other Network members to create events and projects that would be impossible to resource otherwise. We have already had actual project outcomes, including a South East Asian cultural event and a series of relationships established that will enable us to launch our retail/gift shop arm.”
The Council of the Sydney Culture Network:
Chair: Jacqui Strecker, Head of Curatorial, Powerhouse
Deputy Chair: Adam Porter, Head of Curatorial, Campbelltown Arts Centre
Treasurer: Sally Webster, Acting Director of Public Engagement, Art Gallery of NSW
Michelle Newton, Deputy Director, Artspace
John Waight, Head of First Peoples Programs, National Art School
Megan Lawrence, Head of Digital, Australian Museum
Andrew Totman, Industry Lead - Arts and Culture, TAFE NSW
Anne Loxley, Executive Director, Arts & Cultural Exchange (ACE)
Craig McMaster, Director, Riverside Theatres
Lizzie Muller, Associate Professor, UNSW Art & Design
The Council has elected as Secretary of the Council
Jack Howard, Advisor to Sydney Culture Network
Why are we working together?
Globally, cities are harnessing the role of culture and creativity to define themselves as vibrant, tolerant and attractive places to live and work. Sydney has demonstrated its capacity for and ability to host large-scale festivals and cultural events in the city.
These have attracted huge visitor numbers and cemented the profile of the city as one associated with spectacle and wonder. Meanwhile its wealth of collections, archives, cultural institutions and arts academies are less visible on the global stage. Through the power of open, cross-sector collaboration, Sydney Culture Network can change that.
“Creating a better understanding of the true depth of cultural diversity that exists across the whole of Sydney is an important outcome for Sydney Culture Network. It will allow audiences to break through known worlds to experience the real Sydney. Understanding the challenges, opportunities and potential of the Sydney arts and cultural ecosystem has revealed many possibilities for collaboration.”
How will we do this?
Sydney Culture Network members have developed a collaborative working methodology through regular meetings over the past three years and have agreed on a constitution and organisational form which will allow a flexible, non-hierarchical structure for a variety of projects. There are two working groups: Program and Communications; and Education, Research and Innovation.
“Sydney Culture Network is bigger than just the GLAM sector. It should also emphasise the cultural and intellectual life of Sydney.”
our activities to date
One of the first activities enabled by the Sydney Culture Network brought successive cohorts of Masters of Curating and Cultural Leadership students from UNSW Art and Design into a number of Network member organisations, including Casula Powerhouse, Art Gallery of NSW and Artspace, spending one semester embedded in the organisation to deliver their Capstone project. The Capstone is designed to build research, project design and management into the students’ skill base and offerings as professionals in the field, and to offer the participating organisations the resources and perspectives of a diverse range of emerging sector workers.
we work together to:
Develop opportunities for joint strategic appointments and conjoint Fellows
Share data and events tech strategy
Tackle identified challenges and seize opportunities across galleries, libraries, archives and museums, and wider arts and creative sectors, with a focus on Sydney in a global context
Build initiatives to strategically build audiences, increase engagement and interaction and enable members to access transformative leaders and powerful transferable research and great ideas from around the globe
Generate innovation and breakthrough disruption
Act as an interdisciplinary think and action tank
Support expert policy development and advocacy
Contribute to national and global development
Build awareness of and engagement with grand challenges
“Part of our drive to be a part of this group is the collaboration between members. The Asia Society thinks about locating itself not in one physical space, but within a network of physical spaces and in partnerships.”
Sydney Culture Network: Constitution
Image credits
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Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences. Photo: Anna Kucera.
Superposition of three types, 2017, launch, Artspace, Sydney. Photo: Jessica Maurer.
Art After Hours talk with Dr Michael Brand and SANAA architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue, discussing the ideas behind the Sydney Modern Project, 2016 © Art Gallery of NSW.
In The Blood – NIDA Final Year Student Production, 2014. Photo: Mark Nolan.
Exhibition: Martin Parr – Life’s a Beach at The Bondi Pavilion 2016 © ACP. Photo: Michael Waite.
EXIT (installation view at UNSW Galleries), 2008-2015. Collection Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris © Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Mark Hansen, Laura Kurgan & Ben Rubin, in collaboration with Robert Gerard Pietrusko & Stewart Smith. Photo: silversalt.
Courtesy Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney.
Up Late with the Greats, Art Gallery of NSW. Photo: Jacquie Manning.
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Penrith Regional Art Gallery; Photo silversalt. Campbelltown Arts Centre; Photo Nikki To. National Institute of Dramatic Art, Eurydike+Orpheus, 2017; Photo Lisa Tomasetti © NIDA 2017. External shot of Carriageworks; Photo: courtesy Carriageworks. UNSW Art and Design, The Galleries; Photo Britta Campion. Australian Design Centre, Chili Philly. Sydney Living Museums, Christmas Fare; Photo James Horan. Australian Museum; Photo Michael Nicholson. Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences; Photo Anna Kucera. ArtSpace, An Imprecise Science, 2015; Photo Zan Wimberley. Art Gallery of NSW, Archibald Prize 2017; Photo Felicity Jenkins. 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Jogja Calling; Photo Document Photography. The Royal Botanic Gardens Domain Trust; Photo Jaime Plaza. Museum of Contemporary Art Australia; Photo Daniel Boud. Australian National Maritime Museum, Endeavour. Mosman Art Gallery, Mr Squiggle exhibition. Other images provided courtesy of respective locations.
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Danica Chappell, Distances #2, 2014, unique duratran, photograph, 189 x 450 cm. Installation: Australian Centre for Photography. Photo: Michael Waite.