Decentralisation of music performance

They say you don’t truly miss something until it’s gone. For Melburnians, 2020 has given new meaning to the old trope. As we collectively recoiled into our homes in the wake of COVID our minds have had boundless time to wander into the realm of ‘where we would rather be’ and for many the thought of seeing a favourite band, losing yourself on a dancefloor and reconnecting with the music community is at the top of the list.

As many Cities People Love readers would appreciate, the pubs, clubs, bars and venues where live music can be enjoyed are among our city’s most treasured spaces. Be they ornate art-deco band rooms, smoky jazz bars or the classic sticky-carpeted pub, the rapture of collective experience of music played loud is hard to replicate.

In spite of this, it’s no secret that live music venues in Melbourne and across Australia face growing pressure as their neighbourhoods have become increasingly contested through the dynamics of densification and gentrification.

When coupled with a regulatory system that applies significant barriers to entry for new venues there is a need to re-evaluate how our cities can facilitate and support a vibrant and diverse music scene.

Planning has no small role to play in this. While not the only factor, the planning system provides the regulatory framework that determines where land uses such as music venues can and cannot locate.

Since the early 2000s planning policy in Victoria has followed a logic of urban consolidation in order to increase the supply of new housing and employment opportunities in areas well-serviced by public transport and existing services – which in planning terms are referred to as ‘activity centres’.

In the inner-Melbourne context, activity centres typically comprise the existing commercial shopping strips in neighbourhoods such as Brunswick, Richmond, Fitzroy, Collingwood, Prahran and St Kilda - places that also happen to be home to the most prominent clusters of live music venues.

The concentration of commercial and residential land uses within activity centres has generally been a success story. However, it has also resulted in unintended consequences with the intensification of residential development applying a sustained threat to the viability of existing live music venues and making a scarce resource of the large and affordable spaces that support new cultural pursuits.

The challenge is three-fold: housing density is encouraged in activity centres, pushing up the price of land, particularly on larger sites which are more suited for re-development. As new residents move in, noise generating activity needs to be managed to avoid conflict. This in turn leads to a regulatory response that intends to control (and often restrict) the way music venues and other late night activities operate – whether through acoustic attenuation, restricted operating hours or patron capacity limits.

This is not to say that planning policy does not provide support for music venues and the arts - Councils such as Yarra, Darebin, Moreland and Port Phillip have well-established policy supporting the arts and culture in their municipalities - rather, that managing the land-use conflict created by co-locating housing and late night activity is an innately challenging proposition

The forecast isn’t all doom and gloom however. In Victoria, the introduction of the ‘agent of change’ policy - whereby the agent of change responsible introducing a new land use (be it new housing or a new venue) is responsible for managing the impact of that change – was a major victory for established music venues.

More recent changes to state planning policy explicitly identify the social, economic and cultural benefits of live music venues, while providing a mechanism for local councils to identify ‘live music precincts.’

In New South Wales, recent amendments to liquor licensing, planning and local government legislation considered to be a once-in-a-generation package of reforms include similar opportunities to establish cultural and entertainment precincts while streamlining approval processes for small bars and live music and art spaces. These policies echo Brisbane City Council’s creation of the Special Entertainment Precinct in Fortitude Valley.

These policies are undoubtedly positive for Australia’s music industry. However, they maintain the underlying logic of concentrating late night activity within specific precincts which has contributed to the problems for live music venues discussed above.

This dynamic is not a recent occurrence: Sarah Taylor’s mapping of live music venue listings and Kate Shaw’s [1] similar mapping of indie and community arts activity demonstrate that these venues have become increasingly concentrated in precincts since at least the early-90’s.

Interestingly, this research confirms the benefits that clustering venues and creative spaces can induce. However, as the number of residents living in these areas has rapidly increased the difficulty for new venues to emerge has also grown, as venue operators seek to balance their “desire for interaction with others in the scene and the need for accessibility for audiences” with their “need for cheap rent” [1].

This raises a key question: whilst there are many benefits to locating live music venues within activity centres, do all venues need to be located within these designated precincts?

Take for example a new venue that is the ‘agent of change’. Complying with requirements relating to noise and amenity in locations surrounded by medium-high density residential development is an expensive exercise, both in installing soundproofing measures and the hefty costs associated with navigating the planning and liquor license approval process.

The challenges for new venues with a late night focus have been compounded by a prolonged freeze on the issuing of new liquor licenses operating later than 1am within select inner city Councils - legislation introduced in 2008 in response to concerns around alcohol fuelled violence that is yet to be repealed.

Whilst there also are market forces at play, these regulatory conditions are among the key barriers to entry for new venues, forcing some prospective operators, musicians and event promoters to look outside of formal avenues towards less regulated (and often less legal) options.

A more flexible approach to the locating of late night activity may be one way to offer opportunities for new venues to emerge in a post-COVID context, reframing how we consider late night creative spaces such as music venues and nightclubs and developing less burdensome regulatory requirements for venues whose primary purpose is cultural.

Cultural venues are often ‘destination venues’ whose patrons are willing to travel to attend specific events, rather than being ‘walk-ins’ from the street searching for the next spot. For this reason they are often less likely to depend on (and contribute to) the benefits of co-location with other hospitality venues in activity centres.

So if not in activity centres, where? We can start by acknowledging the necessity of noise to live music. Noisy uses are typically dealt with well under Victorian planning policy. We have dedicated commercial and industrial precincts that actively restrict or discourage more-sensitive land uses (such as residential) to ensure businesses that emit noise can operate without risk of complaints being lodged.

Allowing music venues to locate in commercial or industrial precincts may be one way to better respond to the needs of some operators. Instead of requiring expensive noise attenuation and restrictive operating conditions to protect residential amenity, allowing venues to locate away from noise sensitive uses reframes their function to one that is quasi-industrial in nature – whereby emissions such as sound are an unavoidable reality.

The cheaper cost of land in areas where new housing development is not permitted may also facilitate opportunities for younger and more adventurous venue owners. This links to the historical tradition of creative and cultural operators taking advantage of more affordable rents and flexible building typologies.

A reduced cost-of-entry can facilitate a petri-dish-like approach, where new ideas can be tested in a lower-risk environment more similar to a typical creative process. One only needs to cast their mind to the decentralised nightlife institutions in cities like Berlin, where venues like the famed Sisyphos can operate from a sprawling former dog-biscuit factory and provide a patron experience unable to be contemplated in a dense urban centre.

Interestingly, despite layers of planning and liquor license policy directing venues toward activity centres, anecdotally, this shift is already underway.

Local music scenes in Melbourne felt the pinch of a number of key venue closures in 2017 and 2018, and in the absence of suitable established venues and with substantial barriers to entry for new venues, many independent event organisers have become increasingly reliant on vacant warehouses or other informal spaces.

These spaces are often located outside of activity centres in industrial precincts within Footscray, Coburg and Brunswick, or even secluded areas within Melbourne’s network of public open spaces to throw events. While it’s fun to indulge in the romanticisms of this ‘punk’ ethos, these spaces carry a range of health and safety risks and lack the basic amenities (i.e. properly trained staff and security, free water, bathrooms) that formalised venues provide.

Furthermore, the vulnerability of informal events in these spaces to policing (let alone the cost to the community of this policing focus) means they lack the ability to provide stable opportunities for artists and performers to hone their craft over a longer period of time, for shared histories to emerge, and for venue operators to learn the ropes of managing a venue in order to transition to more permanent contexts in the future.

A decentralised approach to live music venues could provide a mechanism for these types of informal spaces to become part of our established music landscape.

The Victorian planning system has the responsibility and capacity to better facilitate the decentralisation of music performance by allowing the establishment of venues in appropriate locations outside of activity centres.

Whilst policy should continue to support venues in existing music precincts and activity centres, there is an opportunity to respond to the current pressures in these areas by allowing larger destination venues to locate in areas where it’s ok to make noise.

This undoubtedly presents a shift in attitudes toward music venues and requires a new level of trust to be placed in our music communities, with the stigma of alcohol fuelled violence needing to be permanently decoupled from our music scenes.

If successful, we may emerge from our COVID slumber to welcome in a new era of live music community in Melbourne supported by a range of new and exciting venues – new treasures for our treasured city.