Released: November 2021

South Australia is known for its vibrant arts and culture. Our Art Gallery is home to over 45,000 works, not to mention the array of events and festivals that celebrate art in all its forms throughout the year. Summer just wouldn’t be the same without the Adelaide Festival, Fringe and WOMAdelaide and the winter months bring with it the Adelaide Cabaret Festival and the South Australian Living Artists Festival.

To ensure the vibrancy of our arts and culture, the South Australian Tourism Commission (SATC) and Arts South Australia developed the Arts and Cultural Tourism Strategy through a joint initiative. The aim of the strategy is to grow the sector in South Australia through increased expenditure on our amazing Arts and Cultural experiences.

Arts and cultural tourism plays an important role in the South Australian visitor experience and is vital to our state’s Visitor Economy. Arts experiences have a growing role as a driver for tourism in South Australia, supporting local economies and building stronger regional communities.

With the onset of COVID-19 we’ve seen arts and cultural tourism visitor expenditure fall to $700 million at December 2020. This strategy sets out the plan to return this visitor spend to its pre-COVID level of $1.4 billion by 2025. Further to the loss of expenditure we’ve also seen the social impacts with reduced venue capacities, performance cancellations and social distancing requirements.

The Strategy outlines six strategic priorities, each interconnected and reliant on each other for a successful and thriving Arts and Cultural tourism sector. Industry consultation has also shown that marketing of Arts and Cultural experiences and greater collaboration with and between the tourism and Arts and Cultural sectors were the most important areas of focus.

Through the consultation process we had more than 20 face to face consultation sessions with a range of Arts and Cultural organsations, an industry forum with more than 100 stakeholders and a survey covering 166 interested parties. The Strategy also incorporates key ideas from both the Arts and Culture Plan South Australia 2019 -2024 and the South Australian Visitor Economy Sector Plan 2030.

View the South Australian Arts and Cultural Tourism Strategy 2025.