Queen Street Studio. Arunas Photography
NSW is home to a flourishing and innovative arts sector with artists, writers, arts and cultural organisations and infrastructure as well as creative industries all being part of a dynamic ecology.
- Australia’s iconic performing arts centre, the Sydney Opera House, attracts more than 8 million visitors a year. In 2011/12, 1.3 million people were entertained there.
Sydney Opera House - The NSW performing arts sector includes 11 of Australia’s 28 major performing arts companies.
Australia Council for the Arts - New South Wales generates the largest share of Australia’s live performing arts revenue (40%) and in terms of ticket sales (36.5%).
Live Performance Australia, Ticket Attendance and Revenue Survey 2011 - NSW has extensive networks of regional theatres, music festivals, conservatoriums, regional galleries, writers’ centres, museums performing arts touring and cultural institutions.
- Aboriginal arts and culture in NSW is distinctive, contemporary, urban and cutting edge.
- NSW dominates the Australian feature film and TV drama production industry representing 51% of total expenditure in 2011/12.
Screen Australia, The Drama Report 10/11, Production of Feature Films and TV Drama in Australia 2012 - The Art Gallery of NSW is one of Australia’s most visited galleries with around 1.2 million visitors in 2011/12.
Art Gallery of NSW - Sydney is home to one of Australia’s leading modern art museums, the Museum of Contemporary Art.
- Sydney stages a world class program of major arts festivals across Greater Sydney each year – Sydney Festival, the Sydney Writers’ Festival, the Biennale of Sydney and the Sydney Film Festival – which attract up to 1.5 million visitors annually.
Data provided by Festivals - NSW is an innovative environment for encouraging the benefits of the arts across society in areas such as education, health, ageing and disability through support for organisations such as Big hArt and Beyond Empathy who work with disadvantaged communities.
Private support
- NSW has a strong culture of private support for the arts with the local industry receiving $33.3 million from the corporate sector and $49.3 million from private philanthropy.
Australian Business Arts Foundation (ABAF) 2009-10 (published 2011)
Employment
- Total cultural employment in NSW is almost 177,000 people. 66,000 people have a cultural occupation in a cultural industry, 42,000 have a cultural occupation outside the cultural industry and 69,000 have a non-cultural occupation in the cultural industry.
ABS, Census 2011 - NSW has 36,380 people employed in arts occupations, representing 37.9% of the national arts workforce.
Australia Council, What’s your other job: a census analysis of arts employment in Australia, Cunningham and Higgs 2010
Creative Industries
- The Creative Industries directly employ over 147,000 people representing 4.7% of total NSW employment with an additional 65,000 people in creative occupations within non-creative industry sectors
ABS, Census 2011
Attendance
- 4.76 million people attended at least one cultural venue or event or 83.2% of the NSW population aged 15 years and over (which totals 5. 7 million people).
ABS, Attendance at Selected Arts and Cultural Venues and Events 2009-10 - The attendance rate is 80% in regional NSW (1.67 million people) and 85% in Sydney (3.09 million people).
ABS, Attendance at Selected Arts and Cultural Venues and Events 2009-10 - Nearly 600,000 NSW children aged 5-14 years or 66% of NSW children attended at least one cultural venue or event outside school hours.
ABS, Children’s Participation in Culture and Leisure Activities 2012 - 25% of children aged 5-14 years attended a museum or art gallery 3-4 times in the previous year and 21.8% visited a public library 5-9 times in the previous year.
ABS, Children’s Participation in Culture and Leisure Activities 2012
Participation
- Over 1.53 million people aged 15 years and over in NSW participated in a cultural activity, such as dancing, sculpting, painting, drawing or cartooning. This represents a participation rate of 26.6%.
ABS, Participation in Selected Cultural Activities 2010-11 - The participation rate in NSW is highest amongst people aged 15-24 years – this group had a participation rate of 36.6% (compared to the Australian average of 34%). People aged 65 years and over reported the lowest participation rate in NSW of 22.6%.
ABS, Participation in Selected Cultural Activities 2010-11 - There were 226,000 people who had some paid involvement in cultural activities in NSW, 33% of Australia’s total.
ABS Participation in Selected Cultural Activities 2010-11 - Of this number, 140,100 NSW people received a wage or salary for their involvement in cultural activities, which is 9.1% of the total of 1.53 million people aged over 15 who participated in a cultural activity in NSW.
ABS, Participation in Selected Cultural Activities 2010-11 - 35.6% of children aged 5-14 years participated in at least one organised cultural activity such as playing a musical instrument or an art or craft activity outside school hours.
ABS, Children’s Participation in Culture and Leisure Activities 2012
Cultural Tourism
- NSW attracts 60% of Australia’s domestic overnight cultural and heritage visitors. Those visitors to NSW spent $3 billion during their trip.
Tourism Research Australia, National Visitor Survey, year ended 2011
