Brisbane Festival 2015

Brisbane festival is a major international arts festival that explodes onto the scene every September with a thrilling program of music, theatre, dance, opera, circus and major public events such as Sunsuper Riverfire.

Brisbane Festival attracts an audience of around one million people every year.

Brisbane Festival has only been annual since 2009, but in that time it’s been embraced by the city and admired by the world.

Our mission
Brisbane Festival aims to connect artists and audiences in ways that lift the spirit, disrupt the conventional and open our city to the world.

A festival needs to be festive. Like a feast, it needs to lift our spirits, our responsiveness and our appetites beyond the everyday.

A festival disrupts the conventional. It inspires us to think differently – about an art form, about city spaces, about how we live in the world. Our collaborations work to make a difference.

A festival looks outwards to the world. It brings the world and its arts to us, and it showcases our city and its arts to the world.

We believe...
We believe in presenting outstanding arts experiences from here and around the globe that expand our sense of the world and of what is possible within it. We program across all art forms, create clusters of linked works, enable creative endeavours that might not otherwise be possible, ensure that we present work that speaks to contemporary concerns, and exploit non-traditional venues.

We believe in helping to grow and develop the Australian and local arts sector. We engage with artists and companies in ways that enable them to think and create beyond their normal borders, whether those borders are artistic, financial or geographic.

We believe in creating a compelling connection between audiences and arts experiences. We aim to remove cultural barriers by embracing participatory work, remove price barriers by offering free performances and innovative ticketing, and remove physical barriers through the use of public spaces and digital work. Our festivals will reflect diverse tastes and cultures and reach out to audiences who might not normally attend arts events. We will encourage a social as well as an aesthetic dimension to the arts experience.

We believe in being an exemplar of how an arts organisation can inspire new ways of thinking about creativity and cultural participation. We wish to create a civic passion for the culturally different. We wish to become an indispensable part of how Brisbane thinks of itself – as a people, as a city, as part of Australia and of the world. We wish to encourage the city to express itself, offering great arts while revealing that we are all artists. We wish to show that public and private space can be newly shared and time can be evocatively slowed. We are determined to show that a festival can live and prosper at the nexus of great arts and great community, local and global, and offer unexpected opportunities for joy, celebration, boundless exploration and honest reflection.