Lanna Hill: Events will give Perth a leg-up over our east coast rivals

From Fringe, to Perth Festival, to the onslaught of local and international acts storming our venues over the summer, it’s the time of year our outdoor-obsessed city really shines.

If you’re anything like me, it’s a very tempting (and potentially expensive) time of year, as punters try to strike the balance between sticking to some semblance of a budget and not missing out on the big concert, artist or activation of the summer season. Between the mass return to work and the kids returning to school, it can be tricky even to keep track of all of the events on offer — the ever-looming risk being finding out after the fact on our friends or family’s social media feeds.

While we’ve come a long way over the past decade, the “big country town” stigma of Perth still sticks.

We’re famous for our beaches, our way of life and those Indian Ocean sunsets, but we’ve often been seen as more conservative or backward compared to our east coast capital cities.

And while it might seem silly to consider Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane as rivals, they are.

We compete for talent, Federal funding, international media attention, music acts and much more — and the events, initiatives and developments WA chooses to throw its weight and money behind have an impact that flows onto much more than just our immediate engagement with it.

The Cook Government has been clever in hitching its cart to some of the more adventurous initiatives we’ve seen in a long time — the East Perth power station activation as part of Perth Festival, or the recently announced $2.75 million initiative to support the local music industry being great examples.

While not everyone’s cup of tea, Roger Cook’s personal brand aligns with this in a way that paints a clear picture of what a reelected term would look like — decisive, bold and colourful, while still unabashedly Perth.

It provides a valuable balance to our far more traditional, export-oriented economic sectors such as mining or agriculture, that we are similarly so well known for within the national context.

The beauty of these high-profile activations like the power station, or the huge music events like last year’s Fred Again at Langley Park, is that the strong visual point of reference provides a powerful and memorable hook, especially for people unfamiliar with Perth. And let’s face it, eye-pleasing visuals are something we do particularly well. When you throw in the amplification power of social media, we’re feeding a message not only to residents of the city and the State but to the rest of Australia and further abroad that Perth may just be able to delight and surprise in 2025 — as well as serve up those staple Perth characteristics we’ve been known for for decades.

That kind of direction and personality is something this state has been crying out for for a long time and it finally sets us up for the kind of attention our 17.5 per cent GDP contribution should also afford us.

And while the increasingly busy cultural calendar over the summer months can throw up some practical challenges, it also transforms Perth into a city where multiple cultural communities and movements can not only co-exist but thrive — a hallmark of any iconic world city.

Lanna Hill is a strategist, speaker and founder of Leverage Media