Wednesday, 30 October 2024
Walsh Bay Arts Precinct, Dawes Point
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC

Thank you, Kate^[1],

And thank you Uncle Allen for the Welcome to Country. I too acknowledge the Gadigal, Traditional Owners of the lands on which we gather, and pay my respects to their Elders past, present, and future. I extend that respect to the Elders of all the peoples of the Eora Nation, whose custodianship and traditions of song, dance, and art have sustained and enriched for millennia, and continue to this day, the lands and waterways upon which the Sydney Festival will take place.

Minister^[2], President of the Legislative Council^[3], the Right Worshipful Lord Mayor of Parramatta^[4], Councillors^[5], representatives from the Sydney Festival and Business Sydney, distinguished guests, friends all,

I have often been curious as to how people remain so creative – and particularly so in a Festival context – to have vision, not to be self-indulgent, but rather to think and understand what would appeal to others, to know what will challenge, but also to appreciate that sometimes people simply want to enjoy.

How does one then bundle up all that creativity and find just the right venues in which to bring each piece to life? 

That’s just the creative part. How does the CEO keep the Festival Director in check and how, together, do they keep the Board happy?

These are not merely rhetorical questions. They are part and parcel of bringing a great Festival together. And that is exactly what the Sydney Festival is – it is great Festival bursting at the seams with creativity in big spaces and small. It is as integral to the Sydney summer as the beach and buzzing cicadas.

You will hear and see much this afternoon about this, the 4^th and last Sydney Festival directed by our irrepressible Festival Director Olivia Ansell, so I will not take up time with that. However, I do wish to pay tribute to Olivia, CEO Christopher Tooher, and the Board.  

Olivia, I am sure that when you took over from Wesley Enoch you expected that you were going to build on his wonderful work and make it your own. That you certainly did. I am equally sure that you didn’t expect to stage a Festival during a pandemic, followed by a serious cost of living crisis.

You, along with your team have met those challenges with ingenuity and sensitivity.

Your contribution to Sydney’s global cultural standing has been invaluable, and this year you have taken it into another altogether, with interlocking themes of connection to place and the Pacific^[6]; interrogations of the blurry boundaries between utopian desire and dystopian despair through the re-imaginings and re-framings of tradition^[7] - take Black Noon as just one example – and meditations on memory, identity, and what we leave behind in the musical series Resonance.^[8]

For me, one of the highlights – one of those occasions simply to enjoy – with 12,000-15,000 people each year at Parramatta Park for Sydney Symphony Under the Stars, this year featuring the astonishing brilliance of Egyptian-Australian oud virtuoso Joseph Tawadros^[9].

As Patron of the Sydney Festival, I congratulate Olivia and the team for continuing the 49-year-long legacy of excellence the Festival now represents. Of providing us the cherished chance every January to celebrate, through the best of contemporary art, culture, and music, our city, our connections to each other and to the world, and the stories of who we were, who we are, and who we might become.

[1] Ms Kate Dundas, Chair, Sydney Festival, who will be introducing HE.

[2] The Honourable John Graham MLC, Special Minister of State, Minister for Roads, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Music and the Night-time Economy, Minister for Jobs and Tourism, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Legislative Council, Parliament of NSW

[3] The Hon. Ben Franklin, MLC, President of the Legislative Council of NSW

[4] The Right Worshipful Lord Mayor of Parramatta Councillor Martin Zaiter, City of Parramatta

[5] Cr Jess Miller, City of Sydney; Cr Zann Maxwell, City of Sydney; Councillor Lyndon Gannon, City of Sydney; Councillor Mitch Wilson, City of Sydney

[6] For instance, the ‘Tongpop’ aesthetic of Telly Tuita, the Festival’s Visual Artist in Residence, which draws on and blends the bright colours of Tuita’s Tonga ancestry with his life growing up in Australia and New Zealand: Sydney Festival 2025 Preview Guide, p.9, available here; ‘Telly Tuita: Tongpop’s Great Expectations’, Art Collector online, available here.

[7] Also, Antigone in the Amazon, “a reimagining of Sophocles’ Antigone. Working together with Brazilian and European actors and musicians, they portray the environmental endgame being played out at the edge of the Amazon rainforest in Pará, Brazil": Sydney Festival 2025 Preview Guide, pp.15,16, available here

[8] Aso, the participatory What we Leave Behind project by Cave Urban, which serves as a totem of festival-goers’ hopes for the future: Sydney Festival 2025 Preview Guide, pp.31,44, available here

[9] Sydney Festival 2025 Preview Guide, p.30, available here