Geelong Gallery Punches Above Its Weight in Regional Arts Scene

The Geelong Gallery, established in 1896 and housed in a purpose-built gallery building in the Little Malop Street cultural precinct, is one of Australia's finest regional art galleries, holding a collection of Australian and international art that reflects a century of committed collecting and the philanthropic support that Geelong's business community has provided to the institution. The gallery's collection of colonial Australian paintings, its twentieth century Australian works, and the international prints and drawings that complement the local collection provide the resource that the gallery's education programs and community engagement draw from.

The Geelong Performing Arts Centre (GPAC), operating in the MacKillop Street performing arts precinct adjacent to the gallery, provides the performance infrastructure that sustains Geelong's professional performing arts activity. The GPAC's program combines productions by the Geelong-based companies, including the dance and theatre organisations that the city sustains, with the touring shows from Melbourne companies and interstate productions that fill the larger-scale programming that local production cannot fully supply.

The Music Bowl in Eastern Park, Geelong's outdoor performance venue, provides the summer concert and community event space that the indoor GPAC cannot offer. The combination of the natural parkland setting and the large outdoor audience capacity makes the Music Bowl the venue for the major outdoor events, from classical concerts to community celebrations, that the Geelong calendar marks through the warmer months.

The creative industries and design sector that has grown in Geelong's inner suburb, attracted by the combination of the city's growing professional population and the affordability that allows studio and workshop space that would be economically prohibitive in Melbourne, provides the economic output and the visual character of the activated creative precinct that growing regional cities develop. The concentration of design studios, architects, and the digital creative businesses in the inner Geelong suburb creates the creative economy geography that the arts institutions anchor and the commercial creative sector builds on.