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Business shouldn’t rule “the people’s square”

May 20, 2015
The Royal Croquet Club in Victoria Square.

The Royal Croquet Club in Victoria Square.

The Adelaide City Council should resist business attempts to limit Fringe venues in Victoria Square, argues Adelaide arts veteran Frank Ford.

The Adelaide City Council web site states “one of the exciting developments in the city is the Victoria Square $24m development. The Square is being overhauled to provide an event space and stage, upgraded paths and a new central plaza for public events. Boulevards with seating and shelter and shaded walkways will turn it from a traffic thoroughfare into the people’s square.”

The council and its staff have excelled in making this a reality.

That is, like most great cities in the world, Adelaide now has at its heart a grand place to celebrate and showcase our wonderful, creative and vibrant city.

The Victoria Square initiative has been a great success and achieved its aim of displaying the visible heartbeat of a vivacious city. A variety of events have imaginatively and successfully used the newly re-developed square.

The most successful and innovative community use of the square to date has been the fabulous Royal Croquet Club (RCC) of the Adelaide Fringe Festival – the second largest Fringe in the world. This once again reaffirms Adelaide’s distinction as the best city in Australia and one of the best in the world to mount arts festivals.

In its second year, RCC attracted 210,000 visitors and with its innovative use of venues sold 20% (77,500) of all Fringe tickets. This is a remarkable achievement and represents an overwhelming community endorsement of this use of the public space.

People flocked to the Victoria Square, with crowds of all ages wanting to experience the exciting ambience and great variety of shows. I saw three RCC shows which were some of the best theatre in the Festival and Fringe.

RCC succeeded in creating and managing a large, exciting arts event, providing excellent venues and surrounds where people felt safe and could enjoy themselves. Having been involved in initiating and organising festivals and festival venues over several decades I know what highly skilled management and co-ordination this requires.

We should be proud that the whole event has been activated by a group of young Adelaide-based entrepreneurs. The Adelaide City Council website also boasts under the heading “The City of Entrepreneurs”: “This is an exciting time for the entrepreneurship community in Adelaide.”

I encourage the Adelaide City Council to resist emotive objections about the use of Victoria Square raised by some high profile and highly commercial bricks and mortar venues purely in pursuit of their own self interests. They should not determine how the “people’s square” is to be used and managed.

Otherwise, we run the risk of losing what has been created in the new square and, at the same time, discouraging our brightest  young entrepreneurs.

We should celebrate the Adelaide City Council’s achievement in creating our great new people’s square, the success of our bright young entrepreneurs and their joint success in making Victoria Square as Colonel Light intended it to be –  the heart of the city of Adelaide.

Frank Ford AM was founding chair of the Fringe Festival and initiator of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. He is currently chair of the Independent Arts Foundation and is the Australia Day, City of Adelaide, Citizen of the Year 2015.

READ MORE ON THIS DEBATE:

Council built it – but doesn’t want people to come?

Conservative Adelaide’s pop up hypocrisy

The reality behind Adelaide’s small bar buzz

 

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