Celebrating partners

For the past two years, North-bridge has showcased its diversity and creativity in a weekend of art, music and performance.  

Following a 12-year break, the Northbridge Festival was reinstated last year through a combined effort by the City of Perth and ARTRAGE, a partnership that has been recognised with the 2006 award for community investment.

City of Perth marketing manager Susan Parker said the partnership developed out of the city’s long-term relationship with ARTRAGE, going back to the early 1990s.

“The ARTRAGE ‘persona’ was a good fit with the city’s objectives for a Northbridge festival,” Ms Parker said.

“ARTRAGE is part of the fabric of Northbridge and is therefore in tune with the environment.”

Ms Parker said the partnership was developed to capitalise on the creative expertise of ARTRAGE and to achieve the city’s marketing goals for the Northbridge precinct.

“The corollary of this is that ARTRAGE also ‘exploits’ the vision of the city, to create a festival that exposes ARTRAGE’s own creative depth, wealth of artists and expertise in activating a precinct by way of a unique festival experience,” she said.

ARTRAGE director and CEO Marcus Canning said the festival made a significant cultural contribution to Northbridge.

“It’s also a means to finding ways…for emerging and contem-porary artists, performers and musicians to perform within a very public and popular domain,” he said.

The festival was developed from the City of Perth’s Northbridge action plan 2002-07.