Cultural Precincts, Creative Spaces: Giving the Local a Musical Spin

Abstract

This article examines the role of three community-based music projects—in Newcastle (Australia), Thanet (United Kingdom), and the City of Playford (Australia)—in engendering notions of regionalism, locality, and identity. Through their involvement in these projects, young people are placed at the intersection of music program management, city mythologies, and national policy. Each of the three projects examined attempts to facilitate urban regeneration through supplying their target community with what one regional arts development officer has coined a “musical spin.” However, within wider cultural frameworks, youth's lived experience is often at odds with grander ideals of community arts space. Thus, although the discourses of “creative” urban regeneration articulated by the facilitators of community-based music projects may appear credible at the level of cultural policy, their practical implementation is problematized by competing local narratives that are grounded in established local knowledges and often highly resistant to intervention by outside sources.

Keywords: community; cultural policy; identity; locality; music making; youth