Overview

Community Arts and Cultural Development (CACD) is a socially engaged practice that brings community members and professional artists together to create art. This may take many forms, including young people writing and recording their own music, a person with lived experience of disability using animation to tell their story, or a local LGBTQI+ Pride festival bringing community together in celebration.

CACD practices are among our most powerful tools for building community, improving wellbeing and battling intractable social problems such as racism, poverty and family violence.  

Where Community Meets Creativity: Mapping Community Arts and Cultural Development activities across Australia takes a snapshot of the CACD sector in 2024, via a national online survey of 106 CACD organisations.  

The survey gathered information relating to organisations’ locations, funding sources, the nature of their programs and their communities of focus. Accompanied by an interactive map of CACD activities across the country, this important study represents the first national research of its kind into the Australian CACD sector. 

Research for this report was conducted for Creative Australia by Maz McGann from arts consultancy Play Your Part. Analysis of the research data was conducted by the News and Media Research Centre at the University of Canberra.   

^{Image: Isi Sweeny and Annalisse Truong at Floods of Fire, Our Voices Our Dreams Artistic Intervention 2024. Photo: Emmaline Zanelli}

Key findings

• ‘Health, mental health and wellbeing’ is the most commonly cited impact area. More than three quarters (77%) of the organisations surveyed dedicate their CACD efforts to addressing this area, with the next largest group addressing social isolation (72%), followed by diversity (66%).   
• Visual arts is the most common art form used in CACD projects (75%), followed by music (65%). Most broader-focused organisations (such as hospitals and large arts organisations) work with visual arts (83%), while CACD-focused organisations are more likely to work with music, as well as emerging and experimental art forms.
• Most CACD organisations (61%) draw on both arts and non-arts sources. The most common funding source identified by respondents is local government (62%), followed by Creative Australia (43%) and state government peak arts agencies (42%).   
• Employment on CACD projects is most often short-term, with 83% of organisations engaging artists or practitioners on a short-term basis. Only 39% of surveyed organisations employ full-time artists or practitioners while 58% employ artists or practitioners part-time. 
• All five principles of CACD work, as developed by the former peak CACD body, Creating Australia, are strongly endorsed in the sector. Organisations were asked to rate the relevance and importance of their CACD work against the five principles. ‘Socially inclusive’ received the highest rating (95%), followed by ‘community centred’ (92%) and ‘promoting positive change’ (90%).