Art as Infrastructure: Why Culture Is a City’s Real Power Source

A collaboration with City Power and Far East Consortium, transformed this power station into an iconic outdoor art gallery. Artists featured are Smug, Rone, and Adnate.

Cities love to brag about their infrastructure.

But strip back the concrete and the PR glamour campaigns, and you’re left with one force that actually gives a city its personality

Culture.

Specifically - public art - free to view and endlessly shareable.

Not the safe bronze statue outside a council building - that one’s already been forgotten.
Nor the polite but uninspiring sculpture outside the corporate office - just doesn’t speak to me.
I’m talking about authentic, subversive street culture: murals, installations, and interventions that feel like they are authentically a part of the city's culture.

Most cities treat art like decoration. It’s often the first thing to go when budgets get crushed.

But here’s the truth:

Art is infrastructure.

People Don’t Travel for Good Drainage…

They do travel for art, entertianment and creativity.
And in that, they find identity and relatability and a reason to return.

The local Tumby Bay community gathers around their newly completed Silo Artwork, with a sense of pride, joy, and reassurance in knowing that hard work, determination, and an unwavering belief can make anything happen!

The atmosphere in a new town or city, from the moment you arrive, should grow stronger and more prominent as you begin to explore and weave yourself into the city's or town’s culture. This is when you feel like you are part of something, something unique that can only be felt in the place, at that moment. This is what leading cultural cities create in spades, often without trying hard, and what other places labour to replicate, with varying degrees of success.

But it’s not just for tourism and economic uplift.

• A mural can shift a neighborhood, town, or suburb's identity, far more than a streetscape upgrade ever could.
  A festival can revive a town faster than a major capital works program - We’ve seen it many times - check out our Wall to Wall Festival Case Study
  A single iconic artwork, curated and produced in the right area by the right artist, with the right concept and theme, can often outperform a multimillion-dollar tourism campaign.

If you’ve ever watched a forgotten street come alive after an artist worked their magic, you know exactly how powerful street art can be.

Culture has always done the heavy lifting.

It just rarely gets the credit.

The ROI Cities Never Budget For…

Public art generates measurable outcomes.
Not just vibes, but actual numbers.

Local Kingston Artist Claudio Mantuano, painting in front of an eager crowd on a street art tour at Wall to Wall Mordi Village. This festival transformed the entire industrial precinct into an open-air street art gallery in the space of two weeks.

Tourism
The Silo Art Trail pulled international visitors into towns that people couldn’t even point to on a map.

Dwell time
People linger. They explore. They spend money. Businesses feel it.

Property value
Developments with cultural identity sell faster, lease faster, and age better.

Community cohesion
A neighbourhood with art feels organic, free-flowing, and cultured.

Art builds everything cities say they want:
Connection, momentum, value, identity.

Culture Is a Town or Cities Power Source

Beneath roads and power lines, every great city runs on something else:
It’s creative ecosystem.

Banksy’s iconic “Girl with the Red Balloon” in London. Like many cities around the world, street art plays a huge role in bringing international tourism. With these works so easily shareable online, the PR campaign is done for you.

Tokyo, New York, London, Paris, Melbourne.

Street art.
Design.
Music.
Architecture.

Spaces shaped by artists, not committees.

Ignore art, and your city becomes beige.
Invest in art, and you’re not just keeping up, you’re leading the way forward, and becoming the envy of other cities struggling to find their own identity.

Cities That “Get Culture” Are Winning the Future

When looking at global cities with an enviable reputation for high-end art, fashion, food, and culture.
They’re not doing it through perfect planning or by keeping streets tidy.
They’re doing it through expression, experimentation, and scale, and a willingness to let experts be experts, and take creative risk to produce outstanding results

Another view of our public-private partnership with Powercorp / Far East Consortium in Melbourne, with artowrk by Melbourne legends Dvate, and International superstar Fintan Magee.

They know that creative infrastructure is social infrastructure. And the more freedom you give, the more creativity you get.

It’s economically intelligent.
Emotionally vibrant.

And does something engineering alone never can…
It gives people a feeling that lasts

And those feelings that build are what build a lasting legacy.