Located less than two hours from Sydney, Shoalhaven City Council’s main shopping and business centre, Nowra, will soon become a cultural hub for the south coast region of New South Wales. Council recently accepted a tender from Edwards Construction Pty Ltd to construct a new multi purpose Cultural and Convention Centre.
Construction of the centre is expected to take around 18 months from start to hand over of the building and will cost approximately $18.65 million. It will complement Council’s Arts Centre and new Multimedia Centre, which will be officially opened in February 2007.
The multimedia centre will include a surround sound room, video and sound editing suites, multimedia training room, recording and broadcast studio, and a film production studio.
Together, the three centres will provide Nowra with the means to showcase the best performing and visual artists in Australia, and an avenue for local people to undertake various courses in performance arts.
Shoalhaven City Mayor, Councillor Greg Watson, said the addition of the Cultural and Convention Centre will make the regional city a vibrant and engaging place to see top class performances – from dance and cabaret to art shows or concerts.
“We already have a fine Arts Centre, which showcases the best of our city’s visual artists and craftspeople,” Mayor Watson said. “Soon we will have a Multimedia Centre that will encourage people to study studio recording, camera operations or other skills that could be used during performances at the new Cultural and Convention Centre. This new flexible and state of the art Cultural Centre will allow exhibitions of many different magnitudes to go on display in Nowra. It will also provide a space for experimental theatre or small performances.”
Council also hopes to attract more visitors to Shoalhaven.
Mayor Watson believes the venue will prove to be the benchmark for regional theatre space.
“The centre will also trigger a resurgence in performances and companies wishing to put on their shows in our city,” he said. “This will lift the cultural activities in the city immensely. We need to ensure that our city planning takes into account this growth and complements it with other activities in the city.”
For further information contact John Wells, Shoalhaven’s Director City Services and Operations, on (02) 4429 3298.
