Twenty Years of Arts House: Reflecting on the Start

Steven Richardson

It’s hard to imagine a time when nobody was making TikToks about their morning matcha, when MySpace was cutting-edge, flip phones passed for advanced technology and politicians were still casually sidestepping climate change. However, it was in this context a new space for artists in Melbourne quietly launched.

It is now twenty years since the establishment of Arts House. Today, Arts House stands as one of the city’s most fertile laboratories for contemporary performance, live art, and experimental practice. Its origin story is about curatorial intention, cultural necessity and an unwavering commitment to artists working beyond conventional forms.

At the turn of the century, Melbourne boasted world-class institutions for music, visual art and mainstream theatre, but there was comparatively little sustained investment in experimental performance, live art or contemporary physical practice. Durational, interdisciplinary and hybrid works had no enduring home, and the collapse of organisations such as Anthill, The Church, Handspan Theatre and Danceworks left further gaps in both infrastructure and ecology. Independent companies and freelance artists continued to innovate, but they struggled for consistent presentation opportunities, production support and spaces that foregrounded non-textual performance practices.

Arts House entered this landscape with a clear vision: to create a multidimensional resource hub for artists—one that would both cultivate new work and connect local practice to global conversations. Through the activation of two old buildings – the North Melbourne Town Hall and the Meat Market – into a unified, year-round program, the initiative signalled a bold civic commitment to forms not rooted in the western classical canon. These nineteenth-century buildings became engines for twenty-first century ideas.

My role as founding Artistic Director during the initial phases (2006-20012) drew on a deliberate curatorial approach with a strong appetite for risk and change. The vision was simple yet ambitious: to use the needs of artists and the potential of the buildings to create a multi-campus program that acted simultaneously as presenter, producer, commissioner and international bridge. In a relatively short time we launched CultureLab—still thriving today—as a space for artists to develop new work; established studio residencies and administrative supports; joined the Mobile States national touring consortium; and formed partnerships with the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts and international cultural agencies. These relationships enabled Australian work to sit confidently alongside boundary-pushing international projects.

Global peers offered valuable precedents: Tramway in Glasgow, Trafo in Budapest, Roundhouse and Battersea Arts Centre in London and Carriageworks in Sydney. Arts House in turn provided a blueprint for venues that would follow, including The Substation and Collingwood Yards. Though the decoupling of Meat Market from the Arts House program has reduced some opportunities for interdisciplinary practice, its earlier integration as a high volume flexible space remains a critical chapter in Melbourne’s cultural evolution.

From the outset, Arts House positioned itself at the confluence of global shifts in performance-making. Across the world, artists were dissolving boundaries between dance, theatre, ritual and visual art; experimenting with endurance, spatial dramaturgy and scenographic intervention; and privileging the body and the site over text. By foregrounding contemporary and physical performance, Arts House aligned itself with these impulses and provided a platform where they could flourish.

The list of artists who presented work during this period includes many who are now mainstays of Australian contemporary performance: Circa, Chunky Move, Lucy Guerin Inc, Back to Back Theatre, Ranters, pvi collective, Australian Art Orchestra, Branch Nebula, Anthony Hamilton, Jo Lloyd, Helen Sky, Gurrumul, Marregeku Company, acrobat, Jenny Kemp, Fleur Elise Noble, Force Majeure, Tanya Liedtke, Rosalind Oades, Ros Warby, Callum Morton, David Pledger, Ilbijerri Theatre Company, The Fondue Set and many more.

The interplay between international and local work became one of Arts House’s most distinctive virtues. International artists—including Forced Entertainment, Peter Greenaway, Onterend Goed, Merce Cunningham Company, Gob Squad, Stans Café, Wim Vandekeybus, The Tiger Lillies, Ursula Martinez and others—were invited not as exotic programming but as catalysts. Their presence challenged assumptions, introduced new methodologies and supported co-productions that left lasting impressions on the local scene. Crucially, Australian artists were not relegated to supporting roles; they shared the stage as peers.

This deliberate choreography of international exchange expanded the city’s cultural imagination, strengthened local practice and nurtured a dynamic two-way flow of ideas.

Arts House also became a seedbed for major national initiatives. Among the most significant was Dance Massive, launched in 2009 through a partnership between Arts House (City of Melbourne), Malthouse Theatre and Dancehouse. Dance Massive filled the vacuum left by the end of the Green Mill project in 1998, establishing Australia’s first large-scale festival dedicated solely to contemporary dance. Over multiple editions, it became a magnet for international presenters and a transformative showcase for Australian choreography. Dance Massive strengthened the national dance ecology, expanded touring opportunities, and positioned Melbourne as a global destination for cutting-edge movement practice. Its absence is still felt today, though recent announcements connected to Rising offer hope that the gap may again be addressed.

Another defining initiative to emerge from Arts House was The Black Arm Band. Conceived in the mid-2000s after a conversation with Ruby Hunter—who told me, “What Australia needs is an Aboriginal orchestra, and you are the one to pull it together”—the project grew to be an independent company and to become one of Australia’s most powerful contemporary music collectives. Reclaiming a term used dismissively in political discourse, the ensemble transformed it into a declaration of pride, cultural sovereignty, reconciliation and truth-telling. Featuring artists such as Archie Roach, Ruby Hunter, Gurrumul, Emma Donovan, Bart Willoughby, Shellie
Morris AO and many others, The Black Arm Band created landmark works including Murundak, Hidden Republic and Dirtsong, presented in every major festival in Australia, remote communities, and toured internationally for a decade shifting national conversations about identity, history and reconciliation. Black Arm Band remains a case study in how contemporary arts institutions can support cultural justice and amplify First Nations leadership.

Across its first two decades, Arts House has modelled how civic cultural institutions can nurture ambitious ideas. Its commissioning programs, studio access, residencies and partnerships provided artists with developmental time and production scaffolding—resources still urgently needed today. Importantly, the City of Melbourne’s civic model allowed Arts House to prioritise long-term sectoral impact over short-term box-office pressures, enabling work that was experimental, niche audience, or resistant to mainstream categorisation.

Looking back, the impact of Arts House resonates not only through its programs but through the ripples it sent across the city. Artists who developed work there toured nationally and internationally; audiences embraced durational, participatory and nontextual forms; and Melbourne’s cultural policy now regards contemporary performance as essential, not peripheral. The ecology that formed around Arts House has proven resilient, adaptive and creatively ambitious.

Arts House’s founding was a deliberate cultural intervention: it filled a clear infrastructural gap, reimagined civic heritage buildings as engines of contemporary creation, and championed practices that privilege the body, the site and the event. As we acknowledge twenty years, it is worth remembering that what now appears an established part of Melbourne’s cultural fabric was built piece by piece— deliberately imagined, argued for and fought into existence through the collective determination of artists, curators and a local government authority willing to take risks.

Arts House’ curatorial intention continues to evolve, but its foundational purpose endures: to support artists bravely, to nurture experimentation, and to expand what performance can be.

Steven Richardson

(Steven was founding Artistic Director of Arts House from 2006 to 2012 and currently works for Creative Australia)

Image credit: Playground, A New World Order, Panther, 2009
Image description: A crowd gathers around large wooden wheels with their backs to the camera.