Adelaide seeks recognition as an international music city

Adelaide is seeking a global endorsement of its music culture with a bid to be named a UNESCO City of Music. The endorsement, which is handed out by UNESCO as part of their Creative Cities Network, would make Adelaide the first Australian city to receive the endorsement.

According to the ABC, the South Australian capital sought advice about its campaign from Seville in Spain, the first city named as part of the UNESCO program, which now sits alongside Bologna in Italy; Glasgow, Scotland; , Hamamatsu, Japan; Hannover and Mannheim, Germany; Seville, Spain and others.

Adelaide Festival Centre Chief Executive and Artistic Director Douglas Gautier the ABC that accreditation would be an exciting opportunity for the city, stating “It’d put our cultural assets on a global platform; it helps make creativity and the works in arts and entertainment a greater element of local economic and social development.

“It builds a capacity within the various elements of the music-making industry, both professional and non-professional.”

“We get to share across the cultural clusters, the music clusters right around the world with some really great cities like Seville and Bologna and Glasgow… and it’s a growing network.”

According to Gautier, the bid would be considered by UNESCO in Paris and he hopes to hear an outcome by late October.

Highlighting what he says are strong credentials across many facets of music, Gautier also emphasised the city’s “really good background in music-making, education, (and) community involvement”.

He continued “if you consider whether it’s pop music, whether it’s classical music, whether it’s world music, whether it’s brass bands, whether it’s our music education - our commitment whether it be on the educational side or whether it be festivals - all of this qualifies us pretty strongly in this regard.

“I think it was for this reason, in my capacity as chair of the Asian arts centres association, that I was tapped on the shoulder and somebody said to me, ‘Adelaide would (be) a very good application for this’.”

Melbourne is also aiming to highlight its music credentials, having recently been named one of the world’s leading music cities in a study published by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and Music Canada.

The study cited Melbourne, along with the likes of London, Montreal, New York, Berlin and Austin, Texas, as one of the world’s foremost hubs for music, particularly when it comes to live performance, and a shining example for the rest of the world.

Main image courtesy of WOMAdelaide.

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