Year: 1977
Festival Director: Stephen Hall
Significance: Sydney Festival (then known as Festival of Sydney) was born
Archive type: Photographs
Festival #1 (1977)
Born in a blaze of New Year’s Eve fireworks in 1977, the inaugural Festival of Sydney was an unruly mixed grill. Under founding director Stephen Hall – operating from a rat-infested QVB office, his door perpetually open – the program of 180 events sprawled like a shopping catalogue: clowns, crafts, jazz and jug bands, opera and puppetry, yacht races and poetry readings.
The Festival brought new experiences to Sydney, including the city's first International Children’s Film Festival, the Qantastic Sydney Jazz Festival and the Festival of Folklife. The Festival Club was born at the Löwenbräu Keller, and a Grand Parade worked its way through the CBD at the Festival's finale.
Major retail figures sat proudly on the board, fuelling the myth that the festival existed purely to lure shoppers back to the city after Christmas – but something more enduring was taking shape. From free Domain concerts and adventurous theatre (from the Old Tote and Nimrod), to English Country Dance and pop bands (Air Supply, Dragon and Split Enz among them), Hall stitched together a civic celebration that was bigger, brasher and more ambitious than anything Sydney had seen before. Melbourne’s Moomba, eat your heart out.
Year: 1977
Festival Director: Stephen Hall
Significance: Sydney Festival (then known as Festival of Sydney) was born
Archive type: Photographs
Previous