July always feels like there’s a new mountain to climb. One financial year has ended and another looms, waiting to be fed with work and projects and clients and… well, you know the deal. Maybe you’re standing at the base of Mount July yourself! There is of course only one solution. Grab your pickaxe, load up your rucksack and get climbing.
As we head towards base camp, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the systems that hold our creative work together—how we fund them, how we lead them, and what happens when those traditional models simply stop working. This month’s stories all touch on that theme of reinvention.
New Business Models for Music Venues
Let’s start with the fragility of our traditional business models. Jack Tregoning’s piece for The Guardian, “Adapt or die: the Australian live music lovers trying to reinvent an ‘ancient’ and ‘unviable’ industry”, paints a picture of a live music sector where the old model of artists taking door revenue and venues relying on bar sales is no longer viable. With punters drinking less and operating costs soaring, a sold-out show might now only net $400 at the bar. Combine this with the loss of roughly one-third of our small and mid-sized venues during the pandemic, and it’s clear the sector needs reinvention.
Luckily, there are a few examples bucking the trend by turning directly to their communities. Venues like Sydney’s Lazy Thinking and Melbourne’s Lulie Tavern have launched membership models—charging $15 a month or $30 a year for perks, parties, and a sense of belonging—just to take the pressure off the bar. Others, like Mo’s Desert Clubhouse, are diversifying their spaces to include podcast studios and rehearsal rooms. It shows that survival in today’s climate requires us to rethink our primary revenue streams and lean heavily into the communities we actually serve.
As long as you don’t mind one more paid subscription in your life.
Navigating the Scramble for Cash
Talking of fragile business models, finding the right funding is a common headache. A new UK report from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and TPXImpact, the “Creative Industries business growth and access to finance discovery report”, outlines how creative founders are forced to navigate a fragmented and noisy finance landscape. What stood out to me is how creatives employ “mosaic financing”—layering different funding sources to manage risk and uncertainty. Interestingly, many founders actively avoid equity investment for fear of losing creative control or being pushed toward an early sale by investors who don’t understand the creative industries.
The report highlights a productivity drain: founders spend disproportionate time translating their value to generalist investors, or navigating complex grant applications with highly uncertain outcomes. The proposed solution is a “single front door”: an industry-led concierge service to match founders with suitable investors and provide trusted, sector-specific expertise. It’s a reminder that a lack of capital isn’t always the core problem; often, the barrier is a fundamental disconnect between how creatives and investors speak about value.
Funding First Nations Innovation
That gap between creative potential and sustainable funding is something First Nations game developers know all too well, as detailed by Gianfranco Di Giovanni and Francisco Dominguez in ABC News’ “First Nations creators tell Indigenous stories through video games”. Aboriginal Australian creatives are leveraging video games to share their culture globally, often using smart narrative devices to cross cultural barriers. For instance, Wiradjuri developer Ben Armstrong uses anthropomorphism in his game Buru and The Old People to introduce players to Indigenous storytelling in an accessible way. Similarly, Kat Gledhill-Tucker weaves the Noongar Six Seasons into a vibrant rhythm game.
Despite this innovation, these developers face substantial barriers to getting their games made. While government grants might successfully fund a prototype, transitioning to full production requires specialised teams and significant cash flow; a hurdle that locks many First Nations people out of the global market. Leaders like Arthur Ah Chee are stepping in as mentors and philanthropists, exploring new revenue-share models to build self-sustaining businesses. It’s an example of having to build the infrastructure yourself when the existing ecosystem fails to support your growth.
The Price of Speaking Up
In the US, there are growing examples of how the mix of creativity and government expenditure brings up an uncomfortable truth about advocacy in our sector. In Dwell Magazine, Anjulie Rao explores why American architects are notoriously quiet on controversial government projects in her piece, “I Learned Exactly Why American Architects Stay Tight-Lipped About the Government”. She notes that the profession is “fundamentally beholden to capital,” and because municipal procurement processes are so opaque, publicly criticising a government entity can jeopardise a firm’s ability to secure future contracts or even get their invoices paid on time. It’s a risky business that forces many talented professionals to keep their heads down.
So, how do you stand behind your values without threatening your livelihood? Some architects moonlight as activists in groups like The Architecture Lobby, while others are completely restructuring their businesses. Elizabeth Timme, for example, structured her firm as a nonprofit to align directly with community organisations, freeing her from the traditional fee-for-service model that keeps architects quiet in the face of problematic political agendas. But should creatives really have to overhaul their operational models to avoid government bias?
Well, no. But let’s hope they aren’t forced to.
Changing the Story to Build the Market
To wrap this Wrap, let’s look at a masterclass in market creation. A recent Forbes article, “What K-Pop Can Teach Every Business About Market Creation”, recounts a performance by Big Ocean, South Korea’s first K-pop boy band whose members all live with hearing loss, at a Seoul jazz club. The venue had just installed a permanent Auracast Bluetooth system, allowing attendees to stream the performance directly into their hearing aids or earbuds. It’s a seamless blend of culture and accessibility, proving that the barrier to hearing aid adoption in Asia was social stigma, not the technology itself.
The big takeaway here is the interplay between culture and infrastructure. As the article puts it: “Culture grants permission. Infrastructure creates markets”. By proudly wearing their hearing devices, Big Ocean makes a loud statement about accessibility, while the venue provides the physical infrastructure to make that new market a reality. It’s a reminder for all of us that innovation can happen when we change the story first, and then build the systems to support it.
A little bit more writing by me to point you towards this month:
- There’s been some media coverage this month about music festivals struggling to come to terms with payday super. Despite it being early days, I’ve written a brief implementation guide here.
- In June I was delivered a speech at the AGM for South Coast Arts, which turned into a rallying cry for the importance of the Regional Arts Development Organisations in NSW. And everywhere, for that matter. You can read it here.
- Also, my occasional side hustle as a playwright is a bit more visible through the publication of my play, I am Tichborne. Read all about it here and maybe even buy a copy! You can use the code SECRET-15 if you want 15% off. That’s your reward for making it this far into the Wrap!