As Adelaide marks a decade as a UNESCO City of Music, one of its most important cultural pioneers reaches a milestone of its own. Nexus Arts, officially known as the Nexus Multicultural Arts Centre, celebrated 40 years of championing cultural diversity, artistic innovation, and intercultural collaboration in South Australia.
Founded as a multicultural artworkers committee in the mid-1980s, Nexus quickly became one of the first arts organisations in the state to actively support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, alongside migrant and refugee communities. Early programs such as Café Musica and the Nexus Cabaret Festival gave a platform to artists including Daya Singh, Dang Thao, and Vincenzo Andreacchio; creators whose stories and sounds helped shape Adelaide’s evolving identity as a place where diverse voices could take centre stage.
For many early migrant artists, Nexus offered not just a stage, but a home: a space to experiment, connect, and build community through music.
These foundations led to major projects that still resonate today. The Barngarla Songs Project worked in Port Augusta and Port Lincoln to record traditional songs from Elders while also supporting intergenerational music-making and language revitalisation. Programs such as the ATSI Musician Development Program, supporting artists including Nathan May and Jessica Wishart, and Creative Cohesion, delivered in partnership with MCCSA, nurtured the next generation of leaders through mentorship, community engagement, and intercultural collaboration. Long before “diversity in the arts” became a national priority, Nexus Arts was quietly pioneering it.
Today, as Australia embraces contemporary multicultural storytelling with renewed energy, Nexus continues to evolve. Its flagship music program, Nexus Live, commissions bold new work from leading local and national intercultural artists, inviting audiences into adventurous musical worlds. Interplay, supported by the Music Development Office, provides a dedicated creative space for emerging musicians to experiment, connect with mentors, and develop new work. And the Nexus Art Orchestra, an ensemble of extraordinary global musicians who now call Adelaide home, stands as a living example of what intercultural collaboration can achieve, weaving instruments and traditions from across continents into something completely original.
Nexus Arts is proudly supported by Create SA, Creative Australia, the Music Development Office, the Ades Foundation, and its patron, The Honourable Hieu Van Le and Lan Le.
As South Australia celebrates 10 years as a UNESCO City of Music, Nexus’s 40-year legacy reminds us why Adelaide earned that title: a city where cultures meet, creativity flourishes, and music tells the stories that shape who we are.