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It’s been more than three decades since Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom was filmed in Petersham town hall. But earlier this year, the 82-year-old building in Sydney opened its doors to the Inner West Theatre Company’s production of the classic, free of charge.

Beautiful brick early 20th-century town halls were once venues for council meetings, award nights and country dances. But in recent decades many have been under-used or left entirely empty as modern buildings serve changing community needs.

Sydney’s Inner West council is the product of repeated amalgamations and, as a result, has an unusually large number of former town halls serving no obvious municipal purpose. Since July it has opened no fewer than seven as arts and culture venues with no hiring fees, hoping both to revive its old buildings and address a crisis in the performing arts sector.

Leichhardt town hall. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian

Since the Covid pandemic about 1,300 live performance venues around Australia have closed, leaving many in the music and arts industries struggling to stay afloat. In Sydney, revered institutions including jazz club 505 have been lost, and the number of people attending popular venues has almost halved.

The cost of hiring a commercial venue for rehearsals and a final show can be as high as $80,000. In the first three months of the council offering its spaces free of charge, it has had more than 1,100 bookings across Marrickville, Petersham, Leichhardt, Annandale, St Peters, Balmain and Ashfield town halls, 72% of them for independent theatre, music or dance productions.

Kane Wheatley is the musical director of the Inner West Theatre Company.

“Being able to have the town hall at no cost means that our money can be spent in putting on great productions and … providing affordable theatre in a cost-of-living crisis for members of the community,” Wheatley says.

Gia Carides and Paul Mercurio in Strictly Ballroom in a scene filmed in Petersham town hall. Photograph: Landmark Media/Alamy

His company has booked two musicals to run at the Petersham town hall in 2025. Tickets will cost $49, which just covers the costs of bringing in sound and lighting equipment.

“It’s such a large town hall with that beautiful, big foyer, which means that we can operate our front of house … we have a theatre liquor licence so we can run a little bar,” Wheatley says.

The council’s mayor, Darcy Byrne, says offering affordable spaces for rehearsal, exhibition and live performance mirrors one of the original functions of town halls.

“Most town halls in Australia traditionally were used for dances, concerts, major events and so, in a way, by repurposing them as arts and cultural venues, we’re going back to their traditions,” Byrne says.

Most town halls in Australia were built in the late 19th and early 20th century. Lisa Murray, formerly the historian for City of Sydney council, says when they opened they were “cutting edge” – many of the Victorian buildings boast Italianate-style exteriors, a clock tower and ornate halls.

Petersham town hall. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian

But after the second world war, Murray says, councils began building civic centres to expand their services and in the 1950s there was an “explosion” of municipal libraries. Town halls were no longer the sole site for council business.

Like many of their counterparts around the country, the inner west buildings have retained Victorian or early 20th-century heritage features (other than Ashfield, where art deco did not survive the 1970s). They offer large performance spaces with elaborate stages and commercial kitchens, and have been fitted out with live performance and recording equipment.

“In a lot of them, the acoustics are challenging because they were designed in the era when people were giving speeches without microphones,” Byrne says.

“There’s acoustic treatments that may be necessary but absolutely, in every town across Australia, there is one of these beautiful buildings that’s currently being greatly under-utilised.”

In Victoria, the state government is also investing in the restoration of town halls to make them fit for modern community purposes, including through the Tiny Towns Fund for regional areas.

Balmain town hall. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian

North of Melbourne (which is home to 30-odd town halls), Clunes is the third largest locality in Hepburn shire council. It has recently restored its town hall, built in 1873, after cracks began to appear in the masonry and the symmetrical facade started to rotate.

The project manager at the council, Sam Hattam, says revitalisation of the building gets the community engaged to start using the space.

Thirty minutes away, the council’s headquarters at Daylesford town hall are also due to undergo restoration and electrical works later this year. Creswick town hall, renovated in 2021, is used for the newly established folk n’ roots music festival CresFest.

Byrne hopes the momentum from such efforts will make other council areas think about throwing open their doors as Inner West has done.

“The councils across Australia are spending millions and millions of dollars every year on the maintenance and repair of town halls because they have enormous heritage and civic value,” Byrne says.

“But the truth is most of them are sitting empty, dormant and unused for 80% or 90% of the time, which is just a waste of a great public resource.”

This article was amended on 25 November 2024 to correct the year Clunes town hall was built.

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