FAME 2014 Journal - Ellen

Internship in Adelaide Festival Centre in Australia

July 2014

Over the past month, my work and life in Adelaide of Australia was very busy. Having the opportunities to meet and exchange with the management and frontline staff of every department of the Adelaide Festival Centre (hereinafter called AFC), attend working meetings and participate in different arts and cultural activities every day, have made me feel that Adelaide really lives up to its name as the Festival City.

AFC is the first multi-purpose arts centre in Australia. Established in 1973, it was first built to provide performing venues for the Adelaide Festival of Arts. Douglas Gautier, the CEO and Artistic Director of AFC once told me that Adelaide is good size for hosting festival. The size of Adelaide’s CBD is only about 10 square kilometers (similar size to the Kowloon City District), this makes hosting a series of festival events scattered across the city over a short period of time challenging yet manageable. As sitting at the junction of east-west and north-south traffic, the CBD is easily accessible for everyone, from everywhere.  

Through a recent visit to the SALA Festival – a festival aiming at nurturing and promoting visual artists of South Australia, I found the city layout and the transportation thoroughly convenient. This festival offers over 500 exhibitions. In order to reach wider audience and bring arts to the community, art works are not only displayed in galleries and artists’ studios, but also in city hall, schools, community centers, hotels, bars, cafes, boutiques, furniture stores, salons and even property agency. Even though some of the exhibitions are located along the seaside and the hill district, with the easy grid layout of roads, they are all accessible within a 30 minute drive.

In order to expand and develop a wider audience base, AFC collect and analyze a lot of audience data. Noticing the relatively low percentage in audience aged 18 to 30, they launched a Green Room scheme targeted this age group, and especially the young working adult. This scheme offers low-price tickets, free arts activities and art creation opportunities to its members regularly.

In the just-passed Adelaide and International Guitar Festival, apart from the performances by guitar masters, free workshops and talks, AFC launched a new initiative which assembled 80 young guitarists from South Australia to attend a series of rehearsal workshop hosted by a guitar ensemble specialist, and formed a guitar orchestra performing in the festival. I have never seen such a large scale guitar ensemble before. It indeed provided amateur guitarists a great opportunity to learn and showcase their talents. The Green Room also organized a GuitarART competition and exhibition, encouraging young people to explore their creative side by transforming a guitar into a piece of art. Winners of the competition were given cash prizes and exhibition opportunity.

Responding to the aging population, AFC designed a “Morning Melodies” programme, offering extra morning shows especially to the elderly at a lower price. While bringing joy to the elderly, it also expands audience for the shows and increases box income. In July, I often encountered grandparents bringing their grandchildren to see performances during the Australian winter school holidays.

The seniors also provide the largest pool of volunteer talents for AFC. They take up duties such as tour guides and receptionists at theater lobby on a regular base. I once attended an AFC guided tour for visitors, in which I found the volunteer guides very professional. Not only do they have a comprehensive knowledge of AFC’s history, but they are also familiar with the art collections there. The volunteer scheme of AFC is well-established. They select suitable volunteers according to a set of criteria such as interest, skill, experience, health condition and residential location. Lorraine Douglas, an experienced staff responsible for the programme once laughed saying, “It’s not difficult to recruit volunteers in Adelaide as the retired community is eager to contribute. The difficulty lies in persuading those very senior people to quit the volunteer duties, considering their own safety”.

In the coming weeks, under a tight yet exciting schedule, I am going to work on the OzAsia Festival to be held in September. Let me share with you the programme planning process, detailed division of work and professional working manner of AFC when the festival comes closer.