ABSTRACT
One of the world’s largest youth jazz events has been taking place annually not in a major metropolitan centre but instead in the small regional city of Mount Gambier, South Australia. Generations in Jazz has achieved a substantial reputation within the Australian schooling system. When not temporarily in suspension due to pandemic-management restrictions, it is firmly embedded within Mount Gambier’s civic calendar. Generations in Jazz, and its recent connection with the James Morrison Academy, has added a “jazz destination” dimension to the city’s emergent marketing brand despite somewhat partial and tangential wider Mount Gambier community involvement. Community linkages and engagements arising from the event’s substantive musical content have been cautious in developing despite substantial economic impact. There is, nonetheless, evidence of a slow but important shift as Generations in Jazz, and jazz-related spin-offs from it, have begun to permeate more visibly into Mount Gambier’s public culture and identity. Generations in Jazz has moved from an annual event that instilled local pride and impact to become one of the defining aspects of the city’s identity and community-music culture, celebrating jazz as a performative and participatory art form.
