Adelaide invited to join international festival city network

While Adelaide awaits to see if it will be recognised as a global music city, its long time branding as a festival city has paid off. It has been invited to join the inaugural International Festivals City Network.

The network includes Barcelona, Krakow, Montreal, Berlin and Edinburgh. These cities will work together to exchange ideas and resources, initially in an 18-month trial period.

The invitation was extended to Festivals Adelaide – an alliance of ten of the city’s festivals – after a two-day program in August of meetings, workshops and presentations with representatives of the other cities at the 2015 Edinburgh Festival.

Festivals Adelaide Executive Officer, Christie Anthoney said the invitation marked not only a boost for Adelaide’s international reputation but provided an important opportunity for South Australia.

“Festivals are a growing cultural phenomena that create and cultivate considerable cultural, social and economic benefits and each festival location in this network has its own unique set of issues to deal with to maintain their status as world leaders,” Anthoney said.

“It’s clear that, as festival cities, we also all share similar challenges that can be explored through a common framework and this is a major part of what this network will be about.

“With a group featuring representatives of some of the world’s greatest festival cities, the potential benefits in collaborating and sharing ideas with such esteemed company is very exciting for Adelaide.”

Adelaide’s branding itself as a festival city has been helped by its layout and size, creating a vibrancy in the streets. According to Live Performance Australia, Adelaide sells 56% of the nation’s festival tickets. See http://reports.liveperformance.com.au/ticket-survey-2013/categories.

A study commissioned by Festivals Adelaide found that in 2013/4, its ten biggest festivals injected $62.5 million into South Australia’s economy with $183 million in gross economic expenditure and collective total attendances of 3.9 million of which 980,000 were paid tickets. They brought back a return of $4 for each $1 million spent on them by the South Australian Government.

The ten festivals cover Adelaide Festival, Adelaide Fringe, WOMADelaide, Adelaide Film Festival & Festival of Ideas, Adelaide International Guitar Festival, Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Come Out Children’s Festival, Feast Adelaide Queer Cultural Festival, OzAsia Festival and SALA Festival.

Their boost to tourism and economics were also high. They brought 54,300 visitors to the state for an estimated 280,700 visitor nights. They created 740 full time equivalent jobs (or approximately 7,800 casual staff employed during the running of each respective festival).

An independent study released in June 2015 found that Adelaide Festival alone pumped $74.4 million in associated spending on hotel accommodation, transport and hospitality. This was an increase of 16% from the year before. The Fringe in the meantime contributed an extra $68.8 million. In comparison, the Clipsal 500 V8 Supercars race contributed $60.6 million.