Arts & Culture

Melbourne is the engine room of the independent arts in Australia. Innovation, inspiration and brilliance emerges from our streets, our theatres, our galleries, our studios and our festivals every single day. To be in Melbourne is to live the excitement of a vibrant arts culture, to breathe it in with the waft of espresso coffee and the grafittied, cobbled laneways. The sheer weight and breadth of what's on offer can be overwhelming, so we've put together a little guide to help get you living Melbourne like a local.

 

FESTIVALS

Naturally, we reckon the most incredible time to get up amongst the arts in Melbourne is from September 21 -October 9, when the Melbourne Fringe Festival takes over the streets of our city. With more than 300 shows in venues all over Melbourne, this is a Melbourne arts event not to be missed. If you want to do Melbourne Arts, this is way to do it!

But Melbourne is the festival city, so if you're not in town during spring, you'll always be able to find some sort of art-party you can celebrate with. We particularly love the Next Wave Festival, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, the Emerging Writer's Festival, Freeplay, NotFair, The Melbourne International Film Festival and the Melbourne International Arts Festival but this is just a very limited taste of the festivals we gad about town with all year round! Go to visitvictoria.com for more details on what's on when.

THEATRE

Melbourne's diverse theatre scene is constantly evolving and producing some of the finest, riskiest and most acclaimed work in the country. There are established companies like the MTC and Malthouse Theatre which produce exceptionally professional and polished performances. Scratch the surface and you'll discover an absolute goldmine of indpendent companies mounting challening, surprising and brilliant productions all over this city. Arts House in North Melbourne is a multi-dimensional artists' hub that exhibits, presents and supports contemporay work. FULL TILT at the Arts Centre programs risky new work. Carlton's La Mama is one of the longest running and most important independent theatres in Melbourne. The Butterfly Club in South Melbourne is perfect for a Southside taster of cabaret, burlesque with a very cute bar. 45 Downstairs on Flinders Ln in the city programs brave, new work with some of Australia's most experienced and respected practitioners. Red Stitch Actors Theatre in St Kilda East is an actors-focused company that produces excellent ensemble work. TheatreWorks in St Kilda produces a varied program of performing arts each year, just off Acland St. This is just a short, incomplete list of some of our favourite generators and supporters of exciting new performance work in Melbourne.

VISUAL ARTS

Galleries are just the beginning when it comes to Visual Arts in this city. Not only are we engaged every day by the street art that adorns our laneways, events like the Gertrude St Projection Festival also provide a visual treat when we least expect it. The Platform Artists Group took a busy pedestrian underpass next to Flinders St Station and transformed it from a bleak subway into an exciting art space. And THEN there are the galleries. The National Gallery of Victoria is the main public art gallery which features exhibitions from international galleries and an excellent permamnent collection of important Australian and international works. Want to know what's new? Head to No Vacancy Gallery in QV and Federation Square, traipse down Gertrude St to check out Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, as well as the Diane Tanzer Gallery and Seventh Gallery.

Some of Melbourne's best art can't be found in galleries. Step off High Street, and you'll discover a world of creativity in the beautiful, cobblestoned backstreets that we're famous for. Our friends at We Make Stuff Good provide incredible street culture tours of Melbourne that give you an educated insight into these amazing graffiti artists, and the laneway culture that pervades this marvellous city.

And don't forget to catch Fringe Furniture as part of each Melbourne Fringe Festival - it's Australia's only showcase of experimental object design.

 

 

DANCE

The flagship Australian Ballet Company is based in Melbourne, but there are also some really exciting local companies pushing boundaries in performance and genre, and creating brilliant new dance.

Chunky Move and Lucy Guerin Inc are two companies that consistently produce criticilally accalimed, daring work.

Dancehouse is an excellent venue to keep an eye on as they program talented, driven new choreographers and dance-makers and give them the space to explore their craft in front of engaged audiences.

MUSIC

With so many talented musicians and bands sprouting out of the woodworks, it only makes sense that Melbourne provide as many cool live music venues as possible to give them a stage to play upon!

For an evening of smoky Jazz and intimate soul, and tickets as cheap as chips, Bennetts Lane is Melbourne's best kept secret.

Eat, drink and ruin your hearing at any of the best pubs-slash-music venues around town, including the Northcote Social Club, the East Brunswick Club (where you can also order a mean vegan parma), the Thornbury Theatre, The Tote, The Espy and of course, the Corner Hotel in Richmond.

For those wanting the refinement of their own chair, the iconic Palais Theatre and the Athenaem give you that comfy pleasure.

And for everyone else, there's Yah Yah's...

COMMUNITY

Melbourne has one of the best arts communities going, and tapping into all its supportive goodness is the best way to stay in the know, see what you didn't even know was happening, and rock up at the right events.

Tune into Triple R (FM102.7) for the best in local Aussie music, Joy FM (94.9) for the voice of the city's gay and lesbian community, and 3CR and PBS for community music, news and insights.

Prefer to keep in touch through the interwebs? Make sure you check in with Arts Hub, the one stop shop for arts news, jobs, reviews and event listings. threethousand.com is the online directory of Melbourne's subculture and will keep you clued into everything happening underground, on rooftops, and in the streets. To hold it in your hands, pick up Inpress , the street press bible for live music and arts. It can be found upon a downward glance outside many inner city cafes.

For a more sunstantial experience, make sure you drop in to the Footscray Community Arts Centre or The Newport Substation who both offer fantastic community arts programs and showcase exciting new work and events all year round.

Still feeling lost? Make sure you sign up to The Fix, our monthly update of all Melbourne's arts and culture news.

Even better, become a Fringe Dweller, and you'll be rocking up to many of these venues with your name on the doorlist, a free ticket, and a Fringe Dweller grin.

We've just scratched the surface with some of these suggestions ...consider this your starting point for launching your choose your own adventure through Melbourne's magnificant cultural landscape.