Australian Cultural and Creative Activity: A Population and Hotspot Analysis: Marrickville

Marrickville is located in the western heart of inner-city Sydney and is the beneficiary of the centrifugal process that has forced many creatives out of the inner city itself and further out into more affordable suburbs. This locality is built on the lands of the Eora nation. It is one of the most culturally diverse communities in the country but is slowly being gentrified creating tensions between its light industrial heart, its creative industry community and inner city developers. SME’s, co-working spaces and live music venues, are all in jeopardy as they occupy light-industrial warehouses which either have been re-zoned or are under threat of re-zoning. Its location underneath the flight path of major air traffic may indeed be a saving factor in its preservation as the creative industries operate across all major sectors here and the air traffic noise keeps land prices down. Despite these pressures the creative industries in Marrickville have experienced substantial growth since 2011, with the current CI intensity sitting at 9.2%. This is the only region in this study where the cultural production sector holds more than half the employment for specialists and support workers, when compared to creative services.