Festival fans arts revival after ‘the darkest times’

[Pelican Press 0]

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Festival fans arts revival after ‘the darkest times’

The Sydney Fringe Festival may not be as large or as well known as other events but, like the artists participating this year, it has hopes of becoming a global name.

Fringe festivals offer unique experiences for audiences, highlighting the quirkier creative arts with a focus on emerging artists.

That niche can facilitate lower ticket prices, providing some relief for folks seeking a distraction from the cost-of-living crisis.

The festival also hopes to address some more local issues impacting the city’s entertainment industry since it began in 2010.

“The best fringe festivals around the world are ones that are shaped by their city,” Sydney Fringe Festival chief executive Kerri Glasscock told AAP.

Sydney’s shaping of its festival is clear, with event hubs dotted across the sprawling city, and much of the fun wrapping up by 11pm.

“Which isn’t super late, but it’s late for Sydney,” Ms Glasscock said.

While lacking the walkability of famous fringe-hosting cities like Adelaide and Edinburgh, Sydney’s sprawl, and the festival’s precincts, have recently become better connected.

Metro train services now extend to Sydenham, near “heartland” venues in the city’s inner-west, while Ms Glasscock hopes the new Barangaroo station can assist the festival’s “big plans” for the western side of Sydney Harbour.

She hopes festival patrons will see more than one show with the average ticket price around $30 and more than a dozen events free.

South *******’s Soweto Gospel Choir will perform in two shows.

“It’s tiring, yes, (but) what drives me … and what drives the choir, is the passion and the ability to ******** two genres of music,” musical director Dini Ndlakuse told AAP.

The Grammy-winning gospel choir’s concert Hope celebrates songs from the freedom movement of Nelson Mandela’s South ******* as well as the ******* States’ civil rights movement.

In its second show, History of House, the choir teams up with *********** DJ Groove Terminator for a look back at electronic dance music classics.

“It’s quite an exciting way of showing our versatility as a choir,” Mr Ndlakuse said.

Groove Terminator, real name Simon Lewicki, told AAP that cultural shifts meant Sydney may never return to its warehouse rave glory days.

“They were happening here before it kind of happened anywhere else in the world,” he said.

But the end to restrictions on Sydney’s nightlife have brought positive signs, Lewicki said.

“We’ve gone through the darkest times, and it seems like there’s some light at the end of the tunnel,” he said.

Ms Glasscock said Sydney’s arts sector has a renewed sense of optimism, post COVID-19, with lockout laws repealed.

“It’s definitely still hard … but a lot of that is to do with cost-of-living … it’s not to do with the same regulation, restrictions that we had before,” she said.

She describes the fringe as a “ground-up festival”.

“We love welcoming our international artists, and they’re a really important part of what we do, but 90 per cent of our artists are practising, local artists.”

Those artists and their opportunities are the festival’s core focus, especially in the other 11 months of the year, Ms Glasscock said.

Sydney Fringe Festival runs through September with more than 400 events at 12 festival hubs around the city.

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