Amid the finalists announced today for the Adelaide Contemporary design competition, Farrin Foster sees potential for the realisation of the Adelaide arts scene's great white hope of engaging a new generation of audiences.

A couple of years ago, I went to see The James Plays at Adelaide Festival.

The show was long – certainly more than three hours – although I can’t remember the exact duration.

At the start of the play, I drank a glass of wine, and then I placed the plastic cup on the ground near my feet.

A couple of times during the many-hour play, I accidentally stepped on the cup (I am particularly un-coordinated), and it made the horrible sound that hard plastic makes when it’s breaking.

I felt bad each time, but not nearly as bad as I did when – after the play – the woman sitting in front of me stood up, turned and looked directly into my eyes, and then addressed her companion –

“It was a good play, except that somebody thought it would be funny to play with their glass the whole time.”

Under her contempt-filled gaze, I went completely to water. I was transported immediately back to every moment of terror I’d felt as a child trying to work out if I was going to be included or excluded in a new environment. I turned away quickly because tears had sprung into my eyes, and scuttled out of the Festival Centre – toward a soothing something in a (totally not plastic, crackle-free) glass on Leigh or Peel or Gresham, where I knew I was allowed to be.

I’m very lucky that I’m familiar with theatre. My Grandad took me to see shows as a child, I’ve studied it, and even spent some highly ill-advised time on stage. Had I not already known the theatre as a place where I belonged, that woman’s words could easily have stopped me from ever returning.

And these experiences abound in the arts. There’s plentiful galleries where signage is scarce, the space is rabbit-warren-like, and anyone you ask for help looks at you with derision. Then there’s the insistence of every orchestra to stick by a black tie dress code for performers – a fashion that feels a lot more familiar to people over the age of 50 than those in the under-30s bracket.

Often, the arts does not feel like a place for the uninitiated. And that doesn’t only affect younger people, it also affects pretty much anyone who is not white and of a privileged enough background to have grown up in these spaces.

When I was in Los Angeles a couple of years ago, I visited The Broad museum. The multi-million dollar institution had been open for about 12 months, and still there was a line of people – mostly young people – waiting in the blaring LA sun to enter.

There was no blockbuster exhibition on, and the institution’s founding director Joanne Heyler told me that the line was a permanent fixture. She also told me they had worked intensely with the building’s architects and staff to deconstruct the language of an art institution and reconstruct it in a way that made sense to younger visitors.

Those architects – Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS + R) – are part of one of the six teams announced in the short list of the Adelaide Contemporary design competition this morning.

There’s a lot of talented people in that short list, and many of them are local. Khai Liew is in there. But the inclusion of DS + R is significant for me because it sparks a hope that maybe, as Adelaide creates new institutions, we can also create a new way of treating audiences who don’t fit the typical art-going mould.

Maybe as we build a new building, we can also build a new, much more welcoming, attitude.