World Basement: Promoting Harmony through World Music

 Each year, hundreds of well known musicians from different cultural backgrounds visit Australia and having a venue such as World Basement would be ideal to host concerts and promote harmony through world music.

For the past 18 months I have been working on an idea to develop a world music hub (the world basement) in Marrickville area. Marrickville has an extensive arts program and provide a range of services for artists including local galleries. However, I feel we could do more to promote world music in the area. Also, since the diversity of the area is one of our main strengths, we can preserve it for our future generations by making the inner-city a world music hub.

 Almost half of our population speaks a language other than English, for instance, five major languages spoken in Marrickville after English are Greek, Vietnamese, Chinese, Arabic, and Portuguese. 

There are a number of artists and musicians from diverse backgrounds that reside in the Marrickville/Newtown areas. These areas boast the greatest population of artists anywhere in Australia. This provides Marrickville/City with a unique opportunity to develop a diverse hub that promotes and develops both poetry and world music. So far, I have had a positive feedback from a number of groups in the area for such a venue. 

I have been working with Clubs NSW and Council to help smaller local clubs survive in the area. Local ethnic clubs are important to create and maintain a sense of belonging for diverse communities in the area as well as providing important local services. Almost all smaller community clubs are still managed by volunteers. With ageing memberships and increasing compliance, smaller community clubs in the area have been finding it difficult to survive. They are also not well-equipped to deal with rapid demographical changes that are taking place in the Inner-City. Some have resorted to development applications in recent times.

I believe world basement provides an ideal opportunity for all to work together for Community’s benefit. I am very confident that the local as well as diverse communities throughout Sydney will appreciate such a venue.

The world basement, once in place, would also assist in community building as local musicians and artists will be provided with a stepping stone and paid work opportunities. It could also be used by other programs such as Café Carnivale as well as visiting ethnic artists and musicians.