MusicSA and the City of Mount Gambier have launched a new project aimed at revitalising the live music scene in the South East.

Project: Music South East is a year-long initiative that aims to increase the live music capacity of local venues, connect local and touring artists with those venues, and stimulate audience growth to address damage to the regional live music scene caused by the pandemic.

Music SA CEO Christine Schloithe says that industry development in the region will take place in the coming months before the project’s main objectives can be realised.

“The basis of the project is we will pull together a range of small to medium music venues in the Limestone Coast region that either are already hosting live music activity or want to do more live music activity,” she says.

“And then we’ll be working with a pool of artists around the South East region and providing skills and expertise opportunities through workshops and masterclasses and access to industry development, and from there we’ll start to see some of the actual live music outcomes that will come from the project.”

Woolstore Brewery is one of the Mount Gambier-based venues involved in the project.

The brewery began hosting live music events in 2022, starting by reaching out to local bands to provide them a space to perform in the wake of the pandemic. Now, the brewery has a function area that can hold 200 people for live performances.

While still new to the scene, co-owner of the brewery Kylie Ind says it’s clear the community is eager to see more.

“It’s actually been amazing, the response we’ve had from the community for the events that we’ve done,” she says.

“People have come up to us afterwards and said, ‘Thank you so much for bringing some local live music back.’

“The community is really searching it out. I think they really miss it, and I think now, too, people are aware that there’s a whole generation that haven’t necessarily had the exposure of going to see a band at a pub or anything like that because they missed out on that.”

To Kylie, the project presents opportunities in the live music space both for the brewery and the Mount Gambier community.

“So for us, it’s about a bit of mentoring,” she says.

“Obviously we’re new to live music, the few events we’ve done we’ve been very much helped out by local providers of equipment because we don’t have the infrastructure for bands to play.

“We don’t have the PA equipment and that sort of thing, and to get some mentoring around that, build some networks, build relationships between different venues as well.

“I think the advantage of this project is that it can help our smaller local bands but then it can also maybe put us on the map a bit more for those groups that are touring, so ones that would normally go to Warrnambool and Geelong and Melbourne and Adelaide, it’ll give them one more stop on the way.”

Christine says basing the project in Mount Gambier was a strategic decision made by MusicSA, due to the city having already participated in a live music activation program before the pandemic, upon which this project can now build. But also, because Mount Gambier was once a key stop for bands touring between Melbourne and Adelaide.

The City of Mount Gambier recently refurbished a 2000-seat venue which it hopes will attract more high-profile artists to the region, but also to Adelaide by providing another major stop on the way from Melbourne. It hopes to thereby make South Australia a financially viable national touring option.

Ongoing industry analysis and consultation processes told MusicSA that regional communities had lost a lot of their live music capacity following the pandemic, and that state government resourcing for regional live music was lacking.

A survey conducted by MusicSA for the first time this year indicated respondents wanted the peak body to put more work into regional and remote industry development and support.

MusicSA successfully applied for funding for the project through the Live Music Australia program administered by the Federal Government.