The Art of Politics

Before she became Lord Mayor of Adelaide City, Sandy Verschoor had been heavily involved in the Adelaide arts scene. To go through her resumé is to list many of the major festivals the city plays host to: CEO of Adelaide Festival, CEO of Adelaide Fringe, Executive Producer at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas. She helped make WOMAD annual and was involved with the Vibrant City program which made the micro-bars possible and activated laneway spaces.

It's no surprise that many people involved in the arts and cultural transformation are eager to see what Verschoor will accomplish as Lord Mayor.

"It's a bit scary!" says Verschoor, "I don't know what it is that they think I'm going to do! But they all seem pretty excited about it."

Does her background mean artists see something of an ally in her?

"I think it's actually that they think that I get it. Because artists and creative people have to spend a lot of time explaining what they do and what their value is, but they don't have to explain that to me. They don't have to try convincing me that their views are worth hearing, or that they're worth listening to," she says, adding: "I already think that they are."

In a 2017 interview with the Adelaide Review, Verschoor expressed that there were cultural changes she still wanted to push through. But when she talks about culture she doesn't just mean the arts, but also what it's like to live in the city. "I still am really proud of the work that my teams did in that space while I was [in the Adelaide City Council] as a general manager, and when I was here as a councillor, because we developed a really comprehensive and aspirational cultural strategy for the city."

She cites the concert and live music action plan she helped develop. But she uses the example of Ten Gigabyte Adelaide, which offers 10Gbps data connections to businesses in the city, as a template for how to create cultural transformation in an urban environment. "It doesn't matter whether [your motivation] is 'let's be adventurous, let's be curious, or let's not be afraid to be a leader in a particular space.' We look at what we offer jointly as a city and we've got Ten Gigabyte, we've got GigCity, you've got free WiFi for visitors, you've got the the NBN rollout which is for the household: you look at all these things and you go, this is telling a pretty good story here. And we are very likely to be, in a short space of time, the most connected city in Australia. No matter what your entry point – whether you're a business, a cultural centre or an educational institution – whatever solution that you need, jointly we're able to provide it."

The change that she's really happy with, however, emerged from the Stretch RAP (Reconciliation Action Plan). "I think the work that we've delivered is really excellent and the Adelaide City Council has been a real leader in this area in terms of councils. I worked with the team who looked after the Reconciliation Committee, that I now co-chair as Lord Mayor, and we were able to lift the celebration of NAIDOC week, do open morning teas, do public acknowledgements in the city. One of the things that I started almost immediately, when I took over as Lord Mayor, is the Acknowledgement of Country and a 'hello' in Kaurna language. And what I love about it is that it’s not lip service. It's embraced by everybody and it’s something we really want to do."

Adelaide's March festivals have been growing each year, and that growth hasn't been without its pains. When asked where she sees the festivals going in the next few years, she doesn't see any problems the festivals can't manage. "Every year the festivals are trying something new or different. Art by its very nature has to continually reinvent itself, so it's part and parcel of the industry that artists are in. You might not notice it much, because it's so incremental and organic, and it's such an iterative process, but the content of a theatre piece will be something that you wouldn't have heard five or ten years ago."

Rather than advocating for the city to save the arts, Verschoor values the contributions that artists can make to the city. "I'd love to think you could have artists as board members so that they can give you a completely different perspective to what you're doing. I'd like all the infrastructure in the city, whether it's a bollard or a bench or a streetlight or a bus shelter, to have an artist involved in its design so that we can integrate art into everything that we do.

"Because then it becomes normal to have a really creative, beautiful, artistic, aesthetic city."