Adelaide City Council has launched a "Live and Local" support program with the national Live Music Office, kicking off with a handy printed guide to city venues.

Australia’s national Live Music Office is partnering with the council for the program, called Live and Local, to consult local musicians, venue owners and operators, creative businesses and audiences to develop long-term solutions to benefit the industry.

It follows the council being told that reforms, not handouts, were needed to save Adelaide’s nightlife, at a roundtable the Lord Mayor hosted earlier this year for the live music and night-time entertainment industry.

The Live and Local program will develop best practice ways to present live music through a comprehensive review of policy, regulation and strategy with experts, creating a Live Music Action Plan tailored to Adelaide.

This includes:

• engaging a venue liaison to engage local musicians and businesses
• conducting a live music census
• creating paid employment opportunities through micro-festival events

One of the challenges the council has heard from audiences and industry stakeholders is that people find it hard to navigate the city and know what events are on.

So, the council produced a pocket guide to music venues, festivals and experiences in the city and North Adelaide, partnering with CityMag to get these guides into the hands of Adelaideans and visitors through our upcoming November edition.

The guide maps out Adelaide venues, music laneways, record and music stores and even karaoke bars.

The guide was launched at a live music forum held last night, which invited venue owners, musicians, cultural organisations, the Save the Cranker group and more to workshop the challenges and strengths of the local industry.

Speaking to the forum, Lord Mayor Jane Lomax-Smith said they know venues are being lost, incomes are being hit and there are a multitude of factors that contribute to these problems.

“We know about the Cranker, but at its peak we had 197 pubs in Adelaide,” Lomax-Smith said.

“It was never a city of churches. It was always a city of pubs.

“Now we’re down to about 47 and falling.”

Lomax-Smith said the Live and Local program amplifies the council’s commitment to live and local music, designed to showcase, support and celebrate Adelaide’s “unique music culture and community”.

Some of the challenges shared by participants at the forum included:

• Unsustainable insurance premiums and excise taxes experienced by venues.
• Lack of public transport between the city and suburbs, particularly running late into the night at peak gig times.
• Inaccessibility of stages at live music venues, restricting options for musicians that are wheelchair users.
• Lack of transparency from organisations choosing grant recipients and the same artists being chosen/booked repetitively.
• Lack of focus on artists creating original music

Adelaide City Council is the fourth South Australian council to work with the Live Music Office, following Port Adelaide, Barossa and Mt Gambier councils going through similar programs to achieve outcomes tailored to their communities.

Researchers from Queensland’s Griffith University will evaluate the usefulness and impact of the Adelaide City Council’s Live and Local program.

This program is starting ahead of 2025, which is the tenth anniversary of Adelaide earning its status as Australia’s first and only UNESCO City of Music.

You can find the pocket guide Adelaide’s City of Music inside the November issue of CityMag, hitting streets soon, or at community service centres, city libraries, Adelaide Town Hall and live music venues within the City of Adelaide.

Go on, get to a gig.