Creativity, Culture and Cosmopolitanism: Community arts in multicultural Sydney

This paper examines how community arts in Sydney, Australia, have created new narratives of multiculturalism, focusing on the everyday diversity found in Sydney’s disadvantaged western suburbs. These narratives respond to the post-9/11 demonization of western Sydney and its multicultural communities, particularly Muslim and Arab-Australians. In contrast to the largely symbolic multiculturalism of the gentrified inner-city, western Sydney-based artists argue that theirs is a genuine, living, and breathing multiculturalism. This paper provides a case study of Information and Cultural Exchange, a community arts organization that has contributed to the rebranding of Western Sydney as a cosmopolitan hub, brimming with untapped creativity and the untold stories of multicultural Australia.