Opinion Piece for The Courier-Mail: The arts can kick goals for Brissie.

(Published in The Courier-Mail, 10 October, 2019)

The great Australian sport is criticising the Grand Final pre-match entertainment.

OneRepublic was caught offside before the NRL match, after Dean Lewis missed the mark at the AFL. Daryl Braithwaite and Paul Kelly saved the days. Arts criticism is alive and well.

On AFL Grand Final day, I played my own grand final. The whistle blew on my fifth and final Brisbane Festival. It’s been a privilege to be captain of the team, and to curate 3,000 performances and 30 world premieres from 7,000 artists. This year, we broke our box office record for the third year running, topping $4m. More than 1.2 million people turned up, many of them tourists.  

But hey, arts and sport aren’t in competition. We can be passionate about both, and on the same day. In fact, people encounter the arts more than sport, mostly without knowing it.

Every time you mouth the words to a song in a supermarket, or are attracted to an image on a billboard, or enjoy some Netflix and chill, you’re an arts goer. That musician, graphic designer and actor are all artists.

Brisbane thinks of itself as a great sporting city, but is it a great arts city? My time with Brisbane Festival has given me some insight, but I think the question is bigger now. Is Brisbane a great international city? 

Sensational urban transformation is reshaping the face of Brisbane. Very soon, the city won’t know itself. But to make the most of it, the city needs to offer what all great international cities offer: a 24-hour lifestyle, diverse culture, density, welcoming public spaces, efficient multimodal transport, and an indefinable charisma. 

We have a few of those, but lack some.

If the initiative and investment that is driving the city’s physical transformation can also energise arts and culture, then we are also closer to having a 24-hour city and welcoming, mixed-use public spaces. It’s win-win.

The most recent research from the Australia Council tell us that visitors to Australia were more likely to engage with arts (43%) than to visit wineries (13%), casinos (12%) or attend organised sporting events (6%).

So if Brisbane is to become a great international city, attractive to locals and visitors, then its arts and cultural offering needs supercharging.

Brisbane has a lot of top-end arts companies, mostly doing very good work, but it gets patchy elsewhere. Queensland doesn’t have a single contemporary dance company with fulltime dancers. It doesn’t have any fulltime Indigenous performing arts company. There are very few small theatres that give innovative artists a platform and city villages that extra spark.

The seeds are there, but initiative and investment, wherever they might come from, need to be there too.

Did you know that Brisbane is probably the second most important circus city in the world after Montreal? The work of Circa, Casus and others is in huge demand around the globe.

Contemporary popular music is another great Brisbane strength, and getting stronger with the recent opening of The Fortitude Music Hall and the massive $2.1 billion Brisbane Live project still, I hope, somewhere on the cards.

We have great connections with the Asia-Pacific, particularly through the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, QAGOMA’s flagship contemporary art series and one of the world's most significant collections of contemporary Asian and Pacific art. An Asia-Pacific focus is logical for a close, gateway city such as Brisbane.

Brisbane Festival has played to all these strengths, premiering much new local circus work before it tours the world for years, offering significant contemporary music experiences, and creating and sustaining many connections with the Asia-Pacific performing arts, especially in China.

It has also elevated First Nations storytelling, especially through the free River of Light laser show, seen by close to 500,000 people. But there’s more work to do here, because the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures have a great deal to offer.

This year, in particular, Brisbane Festival became a true global player. Invisible Cites and Rite of Spring, both reflections of China in a Western mirror, were two glorious works from global artists redefining the art of the possible. They were both Brisbane Festival commissions. Brisbane has never seen anything like Invisible Cities. Actually, most of the world hasn’t. Our capacity for international leadership was on show.

We did this while also being lovingly local, with three world premieres from Queensland arts companies, engagement of close to 1,000 Queensland artists and arts workers, a celebration of 30 years of Riverstage, and the sharing of many local stories. 

The success of the Festival showed that the people of Brisbane wanted this kind of ambition. It’s clear to me that they want their city to be global player, to be a great international city.

Winning the State of Origin will always be a great thing, no matter if the pre-match entertainment sucks. But it won’t put us on the map. To do that, we need to excel across the field. Are we all up for that?