About

Salamanca Arts Centre is a vibrant arts community located at Hobart’s Salamanca Place, close to Hobart’s waterfront and a short walk from the city’s central business district.

Salamanca Arts Centre includes artist studios, galleries, venues, retail outlets, arts organisations and public spaces, housed in the historic sandstone warehouses of Salamanca Place. You can wander through alcoves lined with galleries and shops and join the locals for live music in The Courtyard each Friday evening. The Founders Room is a dedicated live music venue with music every week.

Upstairs at the Long Gallery, you can see contemporary Tasmanian, National & International visual arts and design exhibitions. The Sidespace Gallery is a subsidised exhibition space for professional artists to show their work. Kelly’s Garden hosts our outdoor exhibitions and offers a space for reflection and The Peacock Theatre offers contemporary theatre, film, music and performance year-round. Along Salamanca Place sits our newest multi-modal contemporary space, SOCIAL which hosts exhibitions, workshops and artist talks and presentations.

Our Vision

Enriching Community through Contemporary Arts Practice

Our Strategic Priorities

Salamanca Arts Centre has identified four Strategic Priorities:

Our Support of Art and Artists

Our Buildings and how we use them

Our Capacity to Connect with Communities

Our Governance, Sustainability and Viability

Our Purpose and Aims

To enrich creativity throughout Tasmania.

We support contemporary artists with resources and opportunities to make new work, to engage with other artists and to share their practice with the world.

We enliven our spaces with activities of creating, innovating, making, communicating and connecting, to ensure the continuing relevant and value of the nationally significant Salamanca warehouses.

We enable diverse communities of artists, producers, audiences and visitors to engage with the arts in ways that enrich their lives and expand their vision.

Our Aims

SAC’s aims are to enable artists to create new works of national significance, to enable artistic entrepreneurism, to manage our buildings responsibly and ethically, and, through respect, guidance and inspiration, to foster connections between artists and audiences. Central to achieving our Purpose are the individual artist’s studios, our art and design retailers and other arts organisations who choose to make their home within Salamanca Arts Centre’s buildings and beyond, through our programs and support.

Our Core Values

In everything that SAC does, we adhere to the core organisational values of:

Stewardship

Diversity

Integrity

Excellence

Dynamism

What SAC is and does

SAC is a not-for-profit Arts Centre formed in 1975 as an incorporated association and established in 1977 in buildings owned by the Government of Tasmania and leased to SAC to manage as a Community Arts Centre. In 2009 Salamanca Arts Centre became a Company Incorporated by Guarantee.

Salamanca Arts Centre (SAC) will continuously strive to be locally valued and universally recognised for our support of artists and the development and presentation of new works of national significance.

SAC is the custodian of seven heritage buildings and manages these buildings on behalf of the people of Tasmania. SAC is home to studio artists in residence, numerous arts organisations working across the visual and performing arts, festivals & events, literature, writing & film, and to designers, makers, retailers of, and commercial galleries for contemporary art and design.

SAC also manages a suite of venues including the Peacock Theatre, Long Gallery, the Founders Room, Sidespace Gallery, Kelly’s Garden, The Courtyard, Top Gallery and the Lightbox. Our venues showcase SAC’s curated and programmed events as well as our Access Programs for community and independent performances, art exhibitions and other arts themed events and projects.

Operating parallel to the management of the buildings and venues, SAC works with local, interstate and international artists, working across all art forms, to conceive and develop new works, and to present those works to local and visiting audiences. We work to connect the local and the global.

The staff at SAC are a team of dedicated, passionate and committed arts administrators, whose collective skills, qualifications and experience are invested into supporting artists to realise their creative endeavours and to generate a livelihood from their art practice.

SAC’s arts and public programs are supported by City of Hobart, Australia Council through their RISE program and philanthropic trusts, donors and sponsors. An estimated 280,000+ visitors and locals pass through SAC’s doors every year, visiting galleries, exhibitions, performances and community events.

Approximately 200 people are now directly employed by the 60 arts organisations based at SAC.  These organisations, resident artists, retail galleries and their activities collectively contribute an estimated $50M annually to the Tasmanian economy. An estimated 6000+ artists are represented across a year through the combined activities of all SAC’s resident organisations, venues, events, exhibitions, projects, residencies and memberships.

An estimated 6000+ artists are represented across a year through the combined activities of all SAC’s resident organisations, venues, events, exhibitions, projects, residencies and memberships.

Download An Intro & Overview to the Report on the Value of SAC – 2017

SAC’s Governance Approach

The Board of Salamanca Arts Centre works within the frameworks of AICD Guiding Principles of Good Governance and Essential Governance Practices for Arts Organisations.

The Board comprises members from Tasmania’s arts, business, education, legal, and social service communities, who, together have developed a formal Governance Charter which describes the steps necessary to fulfil the Board’s mandate, and they meet regularly to review skills, structures, attributes and instruments.

The Board also meets in sub committee formats (outside of the board meetings) to review:

Finance & Risk

Arts Policy & Programming

Facilities & Heritage

Tenancy & Stakeholder Relationships

Along with these responsibilities, the Board is committed to staff liaison, to supporting staff wellbeing, and to inclusivity, arts policy and program support, as well as the monitoring and review of the CEO’s performance. Salamanca Arts Centre Board has recently undertaken a Skills Audit to ensure that all relevant skills required within the Board are either currently held, or can be brought onto the Board.

The Company continues to measure its reporting obligations and performance to ensure it meets all risk and compliance by reporting required by its funding agencies and other government and non-government agencies.

In appointing a new CEO in 2016 Salamanca Arts Centre has a leader at the helm with 25 years’ experience in arts administration, management and accounting. SAC’s Creative Producer has broad experience in performing and multi-arts, festival and other event programming and management, and artistic programme development and delivery across a diverse array of art forms and practices.

Annual Reports

Salamanca Arts Centre Annual Reports can be downloaded below (more to be added soon):

Comments are closed.