The ACT should position itself as a destination for music festivals, encouraging investors on private land to hold events that would attract large audiences and boost the local economy, according to industry group Music ACT.
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The call comes after a report prepared for Live Performance Australia, the peak body for the Australian live performance industry, showed a 12.3 per cent increase in ticket revenue in the ACT between 2017 and 2018 was largely driven by growth in multi-category festivals in the territory.
Multi-category festivals, which included Groovin' The Moo and Spilt Milk, accounted for a 1184.5 per cent increase in festival revenue in the ACT between 2017 and 2018.
Festival attendance in the ACT grew by 1455.7 per cent in the same period, which the report attributed to a growth in the number of events held.
The annual survey showed the total revenue for live performance events in the ACT in 2018 was more than $27.8 million and more than 405,000 tickets were sold.
Revenue in the sector grew nationally by 14.8 per cent to $2.2 billion, with 26.3 million tickets issued across the country.
![The ACT should position itself as a destination for music festivals, industry group Music ACT says. Photo: Jamila Toderas The ACT should position itself as a destination for music festivals, industry group Music ACT says. Photo: Jamila Toderas](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/fdcx/doc75476wbwltwsayg2833.jpg/r0_511_5000_3333_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Growth in opera, comedy, theatre and special events categories also helped drive the boost to the sector in the ACT.
Music ACT director Daniel Ballantyne said the ACT would be well-placed to develop festival infrastructure, which provided a chance to elevate new and emerging artists, if it embraced private landholders holding the events.
"The ACT has got an opportunity. It's got plenty of land and there are a number of places, not so much the government has identified, but private investors have identified, where we could establish a really beautiful, rural setting venue," he said.
"And with some pretty elementary investment and infrastructure - roads in and out, supply - could produce a real hot spot for presenting festivals."
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The ACT government's entertainment action plan, released in late October, said, "There could be market opportunities for large private landholders to work with the ACT government in developing entertainment areas".
"This could work where the land uses include entertainment, sport, creative industries and mixed use."
Mr Ballantyne said there was an investor interested in purchasing a property near Canberra in recent months, but pulled out when they could not get the right level of government assurances of support.
"There will be others but the ACT government would need to do a number of things," he said.
"[They would need to work] out that the land is appropriate for festival use, working on what that means in terms of requirements of the owner and what could be brought in to support that venue owner in terms of infrastructure from the ACT government side."
This should be packaged as part of a broader program to encourage people to visit Canberra to enjoy live music and should be seen as a program of economic development, Mr Ballantyne said.