How Arts and Culture Can Connect People in Public Spaces
- Mar 10
- 2 min read
In 2020, as COVID-19 lockdowns restricted public gathering in Sydney to no more than 20 people, City People convened a webinar asking a fundamental question: how can arts and culture continue to connect people in public spaces?
Hosted by Michael Cohen (City People), the session brought together Fiona Winning — Director of Programming at Sydney Opera House (Vale Fiona Winning Oct 1961 – Aug 2025) — and Chris Fox of Studio Chris Fox and University of Sydney, to reflect on the impacts of the pandemic on arts practice and public life, and to explore what opportunities the moment presented for rethinking how we activate public space.
The conversation drew on a 2.5-day City People Accelerator held in August 2020 — an intensive collaborative laboratory focused on developing innovative arts and cultural responses to the challenges of COVID. Participants and provocateurs included Jean-Frédéric Lévesque, head of the COVID Intelligence Unit for NSW Health, alongside a broader team of artists, producers and cultural workers.
Chris Fox spoke about the experience of completing the Interchange Pavilion at South Eveleigh during the first Sydney lockdown — a project already deep in construction when restrictions came in, with materials delayed from Indonesia and Singapore and crew managing cross-border constraints. He reflected on the broader implications for commissioned public art and the long-term risk to the sector if arts funding were absorbed into general revenue during the downturn. He also discussed COVID-19 as a spatial and design problem — exploring how events could be reimagined as decentralised, pocketed structures that allow for physical distancing while preserving a sense of collective experience and connectedness.
The webinar was followed by the release of a City People Insight Report, drawing together the accelerator's findings on outdoor arts, mental health and the future of public space in Australian cities.
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