Bumper festival crowds prompt tourism rethink
By Linda Morris and Helen Pitt
The soaring popularity of Sydney’s winter cultural events, including its landmark mid-year lights festival Vivid, is triggering a rethink of the state’s tourism strategy.
Vivid Festival defied a crowd crush, a cost-of-living crisis and inclement weather to post its biggest opening night on record this year, according to preliminary figures.
The crowd following the Vivid drone show on June 8.Credit: X/@anth0888
And, the industrial dinosaur of the White Bay Power Station welcomed 172,000 visitors during the three months of the Biennale of Sydney, making it the most visited non-museum venue since the contemporary art festival opened in 1973.
All up, the Biennale’s Ten Thousand Suns drew 771,000 visitors, 25 per cent more than previous years. Biennale’s chief executive Barbara Moore said public fascination with the unique formerly disused venue partly drove its record attendance.
Kaylene TV, an artwork by Kaylene Whiskey, inside the White Bay Power Station.Credit: Max Mason-Hubers
The strength of public support has fuelled talk the city’s autumn and winter cultural festivals could feature in a new Destination NSW tourism push.
A newly formed taskforce has been convened by Arts Minister John Graham to reshape the city’s visitor economy and promote cultural experiences based around “foundation” festivals, including the Sydney Festival and Sydney Fringe.
Tourism promotions could be organised around summer and winter festival cultural programs, paving the way for greater cross-promotion between events, joint marketing ventures and the bundling of tickets.
Graham said winter in Sydney had become a cultural hotspot. “It’s no time to stay on the couch,” he said. “These festivals have audience numbers that are bucking global trends. It’s no wonder, given they all offer unique cultural experiences.”
Vivid had its biggest opening night on record this winter with 142,000 people counted – but its total visitor count is likely to fall short of last year’s record turnout of 3.28 million.
Attendances are currently tracking above 2.2 million visitors, with final figures yet to come in from foreign visitors and some ticketed shows. The Tekno Train by Paul Mac, departing Central Station, sold more than 16,000 tickets.
Such was the popularity of Vivid’s free-to-the-public Love is in the Air drone shows it saw a crowd crush on the King’s birthday long weekend.
Vivid’s first curator Antony Bastic said one way to avoid the overcrowding was to extend the festival’s reach.
“Vivid is an event that you don’t have to speak English to attend and has lights that make you feel happy and bring people together ... we’ve seen that in the crowds in Sydney last week,” Bastic said. “Vivid needs to go west to grow, not just in Sydney but a light trail across the whole of NSW - it needs to go where people live. Western Sydney has untapped potential for Vivid growth, especially along the banks of Parramatta River. Also regional centres around Bathurst and Orange, which have great artistic communities and night skies that are so different. Vivid needs to provide a city view, a country view and a regional view.”
A new venue at the State Library of NSW, a broader digital program, and a roster of international and local prize-winning authors helped the Sydney Writers’ Festival achieve strong attendances, too.
“We’ve seen a 10 per cent increase in attendance compared to 2023, which was a bumper year for us,” the festival’s chief executive Brooke Webb said. “We had an attendance of 91,680 people and that included ticketed, free and digital events.
“This is a huge result. We have six precincts across NSW, but we put a lot more into our digital program this year and worked with the library network. Part of our success was we programmed widely. We were speaking to lots of different communities not just our heartland. The cross-pollination of audiences is something we all should be considering for the future.”
Webb said the surge in attendance came even after the festival increased its ticket prices to cover rising production costs. “We had a premium ticket price we introduced but dropped our prices at the lower end to $15. We had fewer free events, but greater numbers attending these.”
Sydney Film Festival is still counting its numbers but chief executive, Frances Wallace, said this year’s 12-day event saw attendances rise 10 per cent. Some 150 of the 430 sessions were sold out.
“Significantly, SFF in the past two years has increased the attendance by over 30 per cent, really bucking film festival trends worldwide, wherein film festivals are downsizing and having to reduce the number of days,” Wallace said.