Central Coast's Growing Creative Community Transforms Arts and Tourism Economy

The Central Coast's landscape, combining dramatic ocean cliffs, serene lake environments and the bush of the Watagans and Brisbane Water National Parks, has long attracted artists who find the visual material of the region inexhaustible. This artistic tradition has resulted in a distributed community of painters, ceramicists, photographers and craftspeople whose studios and galleries populate the region from Gosford through to Terrigal and the lake shore communities.

The Gosford Regional Gallery, which operates from Kibble Park in the heart of the CBD, provides an institutional centre for the visual arts community and runs a program that includes both local and nationally touring exhibitions. The gallery has been a consistent advocate for increased arts investment on the Central Coast, arguing that a region of the Central Coast's scale and creative population deserves cultural infrastructure commensurate with comparable regional centres.

The creative workforce that has migrated to the Central Coast from Sydney in recent years has added new energy and commercial sophistication to the existing arts community. Graphic designers, photographers, film-makers, illustrators and digital creative workers who have relocated from Sydney bring commercial skills that bridge the gap between fine art practice and the business sectors that need creative services. This cross-pollination is gradually building a more commercially robust creative economy alongside the fine arts tradition.

Community arts programs run through councils across the region engage residents in creative activity and help build the audiences that sustain local arts businesses. The relationship between participation and patronage is well established, communities with high rates of creative participation tend to be more supportive of professional arts organisations and more willing to pay for cultural experiences.