The Adelaide Festival of Arts, also known as the Adelaide Festival, an arts festival, takes place in the South Australian capital of Adelaide in March each year. Started in 1960, it is a major celebration of the arts and a significant cultural event in Australia.
It comprises many events, usually including opera, theatre, dance, classical and contemporary music, cabaret, literature, visual art and new media. The four-day world-music event, WOMADelaide, and the literary festival, Adelaide Writers' Week, form part of the Festival. The festival originally operated biennially, along with the (initially unofficial) Adelaide Fringe; the Fringe has taken place annually since 2007, with the Festival of Arts going annual a few years later, in 2012. With all of these events, plus the extra visitors, activities and music concerts brought by the street-circuit motor-racing event known as the Adelaide 500, locals often refer to the time of year as "Mad March".
The festival attracts interstate and overseas visitors, and generated an estimated gross expenditure of A$76.1 million for South Australia in 2018[update].
History
The Adelaide Festival began with efforts by Sir Lloyd Dumas in the late 1950s to establish a major arts festival that would bring to South Australia world-class cultural exhibitions. In 1958, Sir Lloyd organised a gathering of prominent members of the Adelaide business, arts and government community. The proposal for an event similar to the Edinburgh International Festival was supported and the first Festival Board of Governors was formed.
The event began to take form when Sir Lloyd partnered with John Bishop, Professor of Music at the University of Adelaide. The two gained the support of the Lord-Mayor and Adelaide City Council and a financial backing of 15,000 pounds.[1] A number of leading businesses sponsored the first festival, including The Advertiser, the Bank of Adelaide, John Martin & Co., the Adelaide Steamship Company, and Kelvinator.[1]
The inaugural Adelaide Festival of Arts ran from 12 to 26 March 1960 and was directed by Bishop with some assistance from Ian Hunter, the artistic director of the Edinburgh Festival. There were 105 shows covering almost all aspects of the arts.[citation needed] In its first year, it also spawned the Adelaide Fringe, which has grown into the largest event of its kind in the world after the Edinburgh Fringe.[2]
After some difficulties under the directorship of Peter Sellars in 2001–2, it was once again regarded as very strong, with its reputation intact as the pre-eminent event in the country, by 2006.[4]
The Adelaide Festival moved from a biennial to annual event from 2012.[5]
David Sefton was appointed as artistic director for a three-year tenure in 2013, then extended for another year. The 2013 program included for the first time, a three-night "festival within a festival": Unsound Adelaide presented international artists playing multi-dimensional electronic music.[6]
Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy were appointed in 2015 and took over from Sefton as co-artistic directors from the 2017 festival,[7] which included the landmark opera production of Barrie Kosky's Saul.[8] Their contracts were extended twice, and due to finish with the 2023 festival.[9] However, the 2021 and 2022 festivals were affected by frequently changing restrictions imposed by the government due to various waves of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Australia, which was challenging for the organisers, and also Armfield had some health issues.[7]
In March 2022 it was announced that Ruth MackenzieCBE would be taking over from 2023, although Armfield and Healy had already confirmed or organised most of the major events for the festival.[9][7] In August 2024 it was announced that Mackenzie had been appointed Program Director, Arts, Culture and Creative Industries Policy within the Department of the Premier and Cabinet, and that former Brett SheehyAO would take over the role as AD until a new one is appointed for the 2026 festival.[10]
Governance and funding
In 1998 the Adelaide Festival Corporation was established as a statutory corporation by the Adelaide Festival Corporation Act 1998 (AFC Act), reporting to the Minister for the Arts.[11] From about 1996 Arts SA (later Arts South Australia) had responsibility for this and several other statutory bodies such as the South Australian Museum and the Art Gallery of South Australia, until late 2018, when the functions were transferred to direct oversight by the Department of the Premier and Cabinet, Arts and Culture section.[12] There is a governing board which reports to the minister. As of March 2022[update] the chair was Judy Potter.[13]
Artistic directors are appointed on fixed contracts for one or more years.[9] There is a separate director of Writers' Week.[13]
Funding is mainly from government sources, but, as a charitable body, the festival also attracts private donors within Australia and internationally. During the tenureship of Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy as co-artistic directors, donations to the festival increased from around A$55,000 a year in 2017 to A$2 million in 2022.[7] In June 2019, it was announced that the Festival would receive A$1.25 million in annual funding over the following three years, to help "continue to attract major performances and events".[14] In August 2023 the South Australian Government announced $2.3 million for the Adelaide Festival over three years for additional performances and events.[15]
Past festivals
Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy hold the record for the most stints as director, with six festivals under their belt.
There were no directors for the festivals of 1966 and 1968, with an advisory board taking on the responsibility. Peter Sellars' brief directorship of the 2002 Adelaide Festival remains the most controversial and he was eventually replaced by Sue Nattrass.[citation needed]
Spike Milligan; Futuresight, an exhibition from the New York Museum of Holography; Peter Brook's Centre for International Theatre Creations; The Acting Company of New York; La Claca Theatre Company of Catalonia; the Ballet of the Komische Oper (Berlin); the Prague Chamber Ballet and the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra.
Opening night spectacular Flamma Flamma; stage adaptation of TS Eliot's The Waste Land; the Australian-Japanese production of Masterkey; Ex-Machina's seven-hour performance of The Seven Streams of the RiverOta by Robert Le Page; the Andalusian opera Carmen, and Sequentia's performances of the Canticles of Ecstasy, composed by Hildegard von Bingen.
2000
Robyn Archer
Peter Greenaway's opera Writing to Vermeer; Ishina presenting Mizumachi (The Water City) in an open-air theatre; Les Ballets C de la B's tribute to Bach in his 250th year with Iets Op Bach, and 5 new Australian works commissioned for the festival.
An indigenous Awakening Ceremony; David Gulpilil; Bangarra Dance Theatre; Windmill's RiverlanD and Body Dreaming; Bryn Terfel; the Prague Chamber Orchestra; large-scale theatrical event The Overcoat, La Carnicería Teatro (Madrid) with I Bought a Spade at Ikea to Dig My Own Grave; Circus Oz, and late night club Universal Playground.
Italian company Compagnia di Valerio Festi's Il Cielo che Danza (The Dancing Sky); Berlin's Schaubühne's Nora; the world premiere of a theatrical music event inspired by the phenomenon of Imelda Marcos, Here Lies Love; the opera Flight; highlights of the Venice Biennale, and the open air festival club Persian Garden.
French maestros of light and fire Groupe F open the festival with À Fleur de Peau at the Adelaide Oval. The festival also included The James Plays by Rona Munro, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch's Nelken, Romeo Castellucci's Go Down, Moses, Canadian dance company The Holy Body Tattoo's monumental accompanied live by Godspeed You! Black Emperor (CAN), and the award-winning 1927’s multi-disciplinary dystopian fable Golem (UK).
Komische Oper Berlin's production of The Magic Flute directed by Barrie Kosky, Russia's revered Sretensky Monastery Choir, Semperoper Ballett Berlin's Carmen, choreographed by Johan Inger, ballerina Natalia Osipova starring in Meryl Tankard's Two Feet, award-winning play Counting and Cracking from Belvoir and Co-Curious (AUS).
2020
Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy
The event's 60th anniversary edition included the staging of Mozart's Requiem by Italian director Romeo Castellucci, co-produced with the Festival d-Aix-en-Provence, the controversial play The Doctor starring British stage and screen legend Juliet Stevenson, local company Patch Theatre's The Lighthouse and Tatzu Nishi's installation A Doll's House dominated social media, the Fire Gardens created a mesmerising firelight in one of Adelaide's favourite spots, the Adelaide Botanic Garden.
