Breaking attendance predictions made for every year up until 2019, the 2016 Brisbane Anywhere Festival has cemented itself as one of the most successful in the festival’s history – excellent news, just as cuts to arts funding are already causing damage to the industry’s small to medium sector groups.
Productions this year took place at abandoned skate parks, regional train stations (complete with actual steam train), and quirky West End stores, with 438 performances spread out over the festival’s three week run.
Over 97,000 people attended the 67 productions and events held throughout Brisbane, Ipswich, Logan, and the Sunshine Coast for the festival, with ticket sales hitting 15,446 – a 120% increase from last year’s 7,016 – and, in total, 84% of all available tickets were sold, with several events selling out very quickly.
The main focus of Anywhere Festival is, of course, supporting emerging and independent artists, by offering them a chance to stage productions outside the confines (and the costings) of a standard theatre.
“Anywhere Theatre Festival is enabling the most exciting work in the Queensland independent sector,” said Paul Osuch, CEO of Anywhere Theatre Festival. “From emerging to mid career professionals, with over 80% of the independent artists stating their show would not have been possible without the festival.”
Aiding the independents, nearly 100 reviews were written for the website this year, a festival record, and almost $100,000 of resources were provided to artists throughout the period.
But, as Ally McTavish, Creative Producer for Anywhere Festival, says, “The festival attendance is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s the Producer in Training in scheme, the inaugural audience nominated Anywhere Awards, it’s the artist resources. It’s the long term benefits for the community that flow: creative, social and economic.”
Local venues did well this festival season, with 64% of attendees finding themselves somewhere they’d never been! This bodes well for the businesses involved, who can expect a share in over $1million in new business revenue over the next year, with 73% of audiences saying they’d return to the places they visited over the course of the festival.
This year’s festival also saw the inaugural Anywhere Awards, voted for by show audiences, with winners including all female casts in two shows about Ipswich stories (The Train Tea Society, and I Dated Batman), gender issues (Cassandra and the Boy Doll), feminism in modern Australia (The Foxy Morons), political instability (Underground Ballads) as well as immersive site specific theatrical experiences (Awful/Big Adventure and The Gremlins).
The festival is supported by Arts Queensland, and this year received extra support from Brisbane City Council. That it was such a success is testament to the strength and importance of this support, as much as the passion of the artists involved, and the experiences of the audiences who found themselves at sorts of unlikely spots.
All in all, it’s been a huge year for the Brisbane Anywhere Festival, and one that organisers certainly hope will be repeated next time around, with dates set for May 4th – 21st 2017.
Full statistics are available at the Anywhere Festival website.
———-
