Creatives spend more than 60% of their income on rent, and at the same time, Sydney’s cultural workforce is shrinking faster than the national average. Creativity is being priced out of our city, and the need for affordable creative spaces is urgent.

Our new Making it in Sydney report outlines four key strategies to safeguard and grow creative workspaces, including protecting existing spaces, supporting creative operators, planning for future needs, and providing new spaces through innovative policies.

Key recommendations include:

• Protect what we’ve got. Because it takes a long time to properly establish affordable creative workspaces, the best spaces are the ones that already exist – and where they exist, we should protect and support them.
• Back creative space operators to succeed. There’s no boom in creative workspace without a pool of viable operators to run those spaces.
• Plan for what we will need. We need clear and specific guidance on what creative workspace is needed and where, to translate goodwill and good intentions from public and private sector actors into opportunities to address identified gaps.
• Provide new creative workspace. Three key actions will help: the NSW Government’s review of under-utilised property, the creation of a Greater Sydney Creative Land Trust, and the opportunity to deliver creative infrastructure where growth is underway through development.

Read the full report.