Is Busking a Cultural Right or a Public Order Problem?

Busking is often discussed through the language of permits, complaints and noise. But street performance can also be understood as a form of cultural participation in everyday public space. That is what makes busking a useful cultural policy question. The issue is not simply whether busking should be regulated. The issue is how a city decides which forms of street expression count as legitimate culture, and which are treated as nuisance, disorder or something else entirely.

Melbourne’s own policy language makes this tension clear. The **Melbourne Busking Handbook** says the city is proud of its reputation for supporting “lively street culture” and “greatly values the diversity of entertainment that buskers provide.” It also states that busking makes “an important contribution to the cultural life within the city of Melbourne” and should “continue to flourish.” On the surface, this is a generous and recognisably cultural framing. Busking is not being described as marginal or merely tolerated. It is being presented as part of the city’s character, culture and vibrancy.

City of Melbourne busking permits webpage. Source: City of Melbourne.

But the same document also draws clear boundaries around what kinds of street performance qualify for that recognition. Some exclusions are striking. Activities involving fundraising, promotions, surveys or advertising are not considered busking, even if they include performance. Neither are “religious spruiking or street preaching,” “political rallying,” or begging. This matters because it shows that the city is not just regulating how busking happens. It is also deciding what kinds of expression can count as busking in the first place. In other words, not all public performance is recognised as culture.

The exclusions are not only about content. They are also spatial. Melbourne requires permits for busking in public places, limits some performers to particular categories and sites, and designates premium areas, restricted areas and no-go zones. Busking is not permitted in some places at all, including outside Parliament House, near memorial sites, in residential zones, and in various privately managed or otherwise excluded locations. It can also be suspended or relocated during major events. Cultural participation, then, is not simply protected in public space. It is selectively distributed across space.

A rights-based perspective sharpens the point. **Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community. The UN’s General Comment No. 21** goes further by describing participation as the right to engage in one’s own cultural practices, to express oneself, and to act creatively. From that perspective, busking looks like more than a matter of urban management. It is a visible and ordinary form of cultural participation.

None of this means Melbourne’s policy is simply wrong. Public space is shared space, and concerns about pedestrian access, excessive noise, safety and harassment are real. Some regulation is clearly necessary. But the policy framing still matters. The stronger question is not whether busking should be regulated at all, but how that regulation draws boundaries around public expression. Melbourne’s rules do not simply manage performance; they distinguish between forms of street expression that can be recognised as busking and forms that are excluded as nuisance, promotion, political speech or other unacceptable conduct. Once an everyday cultural practice is governed mainly through amenity, compliance and exclusion, it risks being narrowed into a problem of order.

This is what makes busking such a revealing cultural policy case. If street performance is understood as a form of everyday cultural participation, then the issue is not only how cities maintain order, but also how participation is allowed, limited and distributed in public space. Cultural policy is not only about funding museums, galleries or major arts organisations. It also shapes who can perform culture in public, under what conditions, and which forms of expression are recognised as culture in the first place. In that sense, busking should be understood not only as a public order issue, but also as a question of cultural rights.

References

City of Melbourne. (2018). Melbourne busking handbook. https://mvga-prod-files.s3.ap-southeast-4.amazonaws.com/public/2024-05/melbourne-busking-handbook.pdf

City of Melbourne. (n.d.). Busking permits. https://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/busking-permits

Quilter, J., & McNamara, L. (2015). ‘Long may the buskers carry on busking’ : street music and the law in Melbourne and Sydney. Melbourne University Law Review, 39(2), 539–591.

United Nations. (1948). Universal Declaration of Human Rights. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. (2009). General Comment No. 21: Right of everyone to take part in cultural life. https://www.refworld.org/legal/general/cescr/2009/83710