FOR SIX YEARS the businesses and institutions of Hindley St and Adelaide's West End have used their annual Open House street party to promote that the precinct is changing. This year, it signals that change is taking the vulnerable district in yet another direction.
At the genesis of the Open House event, the area did indeed have much to broadcast. Unity between city council, state government and small businesses saw an injection of money and the forming of plans to revive the district from its record high property vacancy rate of 45 per cent in 1996. An arts-led urban renewal program brought a mix of new tenants and businesses, anchored by ArtsSA offices moving into the former Wests Coffee Palace building in 2000, and the ASO building its home in the Grainger Studios. Adelaide was being touted internationally beside Glasgow, Boston and Toronto for promoting urban renewal through the arts.
Local and state governments have since changed and progress has stalled; the mood and energy that drove the original West End Strategic Taskforce has dissipated. The council has averted its attention elsewhere; the West End Urban Development Strategy is inactive. Cheap rents that had attracted artists to create studios in vacant warehouse spaces and lofts have risen; artists have moved out as a consequence.
Thus, without a second wave of arts-based urban renewal, Hindley St traders have been forced to assess how the precinct's rejuvenation can continue to progress. And the thriving West End student population is helping this direction to take shape.
The arrival of the Adelaide Institute of Technology arts campus on Light Square, and the growth of the University of SA campus on North Tce, have built a West End student population of more than 20,000. The pending closure of UniSA's Underdale campus will bring as many as 400 more students into the city, to the visual arts facilities under construction on the City West campus. A dynamic student precinct is emerging with sundry businesses to service the young population - coffee shops, bars, clubs, cafes. It is creating the sort of social energy that Thinker in Residence Charles Landry said is crucial if Adelaide intends to attain its goal of being recognised as a more vital "creative city" - specified as a target in the Rann Government's State Strategic Plan.
West End traders see that embracing the image of an energetic student precinct will easily complement the existing entertainment precinct, and they intend to use this year's Open House event to start reflecting this change.
The annual street party, being held on November 26, is being promoted by a new slogan - "inside out" - suggesting the traders will bring more of what they do out into the open, which is "entertainment". Thus, this year's key event will be a free, licensed open-air concert on Light Square, featuring US jazz saxophonist Lou Donaldson, Detroit hip-hop act Amp Fiddler, US funk band Breakestra and Australian funk band The Bamboos.
Robbi Tims, coordinator of the Adelaide West End Association, says investing in an international entertainment drawcard for Open House is designed to maximise impact and enthusiasm for the new direction of the West End. It is expected that an audience of about 3000, mainly in the 18-to-35 age group, will attend.
The diversity which has been a feature of previous Open House events will mostly focus around two other entertainment hubs - with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra performing jazz in the Grainger Studios foyer from 6pm-8pm, and the Lion Arts Centre having live music and exhibitions. The traders hope that these and other simultaneous events in the neighborhood - the Feast festival and Off the Couch youth bands showcase - will pull focus on the other restaurants, clubs and businesses.
Indeed, the traders have decided that less formal art and more energy is the key to the West End's future as the student quarter of Adelaide.
