10/04/2025
🎶 Exciting Progress on Kiama’s Special Entertainment Precinct Journey! 🎶
Last week, our passionate SEP Working Group—local venue owners, musicians, creatives, and Kiama Business Network members —had a fantastic meeting with the Office of the 24-Hour Commissioner (O24HC) and the NSW Senior Advisor for the Night Time Economy.🌕🎤
These guys are in charge of enacting NSW Government's vibrancy laws to get towns like Kiama hopping, year round!
Our Group has been working with Kiama Council staff and the O24HC since last October to help Kiama unlock its potential and get Special Entertainment Precinct covering the Kiama CBD - this is a designated area where Council sets trading hours and sound conditions to support live performance while providing certainty for venues, residents, and businesses. SEPs reduce event costs, administrative burdens, encourage live entertainment, and help create a more vibrant nighttime economy.
And while our initial grant application for funds to kickstart the process wasn’t successful this time, our meeting with these senior staff means we now have clarity on the process and what comes next in bringing our SEP to life!
💡Next steps📮 We are writing to Council about enacting the next steps recommended by O24HC –
1) Start the community consultation now! We want Council to get going so community and businesses can get up to speed about this initiative and everyone can have their say
2) We want to keep working with Council to get our nighttime economic strategy in place so we are READY for the next round of grant funding when it becomes available. This could be as soon as July this year
3) Prioritise this work in the 2025/2026 Council work areas and budget - Councillors voted unanimously in favour of establishing this precinct and we want Council to enact this by identifying the SEP as an Area of Priority for 2025/2026 financial year!
We’re also recommending Council take inspiration from Goulburn Mulwaree’s successful SEP roadmap! You can read more about that here: https://yoursay.goulburn.nsw.gov.au/special-entertainment-precinct-establishment
From the Jazz and Blues Festival, the Illawarra Folk Festival to KISSARTS and the Spiegeltent, people already love coming to Kiama for the fun, food and festivals - establishing a SEP is our chance to support local creatives, keep our much-loved venues, boost the night-time economy, and give live entertainment the home it deserves.
We get that budgets are tight—but we’re committed to reducing pressure on Council by doing as much of the heavy lifting as possible as well as chasing every possible grant to get this done.
Katelin and the Roundtable Group
