State of the Arts in Cairns Report 2019 (SoARTS)

Cairns Regional Council (CRC) has aspirations to become the Arts and Culture Capital of Northern Australia and has embedded this in their Strategy for Culture and the Arts 2022 (CRC 2018a). The Strategy outlines steps to strengthen Council’s ongoing commitment to growing the city’s reputation as a key hub for artistic and cultural expression with outstanding cultural facilities and a distinctive character. As part of the Strategy, Cairns Regional Council engaged James Cook University (JCU) and Central Queensland University (CQU) to work alongside the five-year planning cycle to provide evidence-based research to support and guide future decision making and investment in regards to the three core priorities or focus areas of the cultural plan. The output of this process is a State of the Arts in Cairns (SoARTS) report that monitors and measures the outcomes of the Strategy, providing tangible evidence of the value of culture and the arts to the local community and economy. This State of the Arts in Cairns 2019 Report represents the first collation and analysis of data gathered over the 2018/19 period.