Christie Anthoney to Head Festivals Adelaide

Anthoney, who is currently TAFE SA’s Adelaide College of the Arts Creative Director, will begin her three-year position in January. Anthoney says she will continue to be a “strong ambassador” for Adelaide College of the Arts (AC Arts) but says her new role is one that “would not come around that often”. “It’s an extraordinary opportunity. I thought long and hard about it and then put my hat in the ring. It’s a pretty extraordinary job, I have to say.” Festivals Adelaide is an alliance of this city’s 10 major arts festivals (including Adelaide Fringe, Adelaide Festival, SALA and Cabaret Festival) that is based on a similar arts alliance in Edinburgh. Anthoney replaces inaugural Director Tory McBride, who retired after 18 months in the role. “I feel very excited to be working with them [the 10 festivals] to see how I can support them but more importantly be an advocate for them interstate and overseas.” Anthoney was the Fringe Director for four years, the co-founder of the Garden of Unearthly Delights and has worked for many festivals including WOMADelaide, Come Out and the Edinburgh Fringe. Aside from her current AC Arts role, Anthoney is also an Adelaide Festival board member. One of Festivals Adelaide’s main aims is to increase the reputation of South Australia’s art festivals nationally and internationally. “It’s not a public role necessarily. I don’t see myself creating Festivals Adelaide as a brand in any sense – other than to stakeholders and people who need to understand the importance of them to the state. I will be working with them all [the festivals] on a very operational level to some extent to see where there can be some shared resourcing and synergies. Also, I’ll be working to find strategic partners, particularly in the research agenda, because I’m sitting on gold here in terms of data.” Anthoney says her role will be reasonably organic to begin with. “We’ll reflect on what works and what doesn’t and I’ll work with them. There are a couple of key things I want to do. One of them is to mine the data and look at what we have already. I don’t know of any alliance other than Edinburgh that is open to that. There’s a huge amount of information there. Slicing and dicing it in different ways will be very revealing.” Anthoney believes that the festivals are the psyche of this state and she wants that message to be delivered. “We are the city of festivals. We happen to have a lot of churches in our city but frankly what we believe to be the psyche of the state is in fact an understanding and an appreciation and value given to our festivals across the board. I think this alliance will play an important in ensuring that that message is loud and clear – overseas or interstate – in relation to the brand of South Australia. It’s inherent and we know it, but we mustn’t rest on our laurels and let it go by. A strong part of my role will be to ensure that’s loud and clear.” The 10 festivals attracted nearly 64,000 visitors to South Australia last year delivering $63 million to the state’s economy. An interesting observation that Anthoney notes about South Australia’s major arts festivals is that all of them, bar one – WOMADelaide – are homegrown. “With sporting events, mostly one bids for them and they come and land in Adelaide for as long as we can hold the organisers’ here until another state bids for them. These festivals have grown up through the city and state over the decades and they’ve changed custodians now and again but they aren’t something that can be bought off to go interstate. It’s an interesting phenomenon. It’s not that we have to make sure they are secure here. The only one in that mix is WOMADelaide. Its owner is Peter Gabriel and it could be snatched by another state – not under my watch! Other than that Come Out, SALA, Fringe, the Festival, they are all inherent and part of this state’s cultural identity. I find that quite unique and grounding, and everybody in that group of festivals knows that we are the custodians. We’re doing the best we can for them for the future of the city and the state.” festivalsadelaide.com.au