"By 2020, BIGSOUND will attract 2,500 conference attendees and an additional 10,000 members of the public." This is the vision and goal that BIGSOUND have set for themselves to round out the decade. The man at the helm of this is QMusic executive officer Joel Edmondson, and for 2017, changes are already in place.
With additional funding for the industry event secured until 2020 - $350,000 a year from Arts Queensland and $280,000 a year from the Australia Council - BIGSOUND have this year ventured into visual arts and music technologies in hopes to attract new interest from not only the music industry, but also the wider public.
"The two big changes are the visual arts showcase and the music tech showcase. Their part of a broader strategic aim that we have to, I guess, use the event as a way of opening up the Australian music industry to a broader group of people and in this case, it's visual artists and people who work more on the technology side of things," explains Edmondson. "Year one is us dipping our toe in the water and figuring out how people respond to it, and we'll continue to improve on those things from here but nevertheless we're very excited about it."
When it comes to BIGSOUND furthering itself as a destination event, Edmondson believes it's important for the event to develop in that way.
"I think we really, really believe in the festival experience as people in the industry seem to enjoy it. While we don't ever want to grow to the size of something like a South By Southwest, we really feel like it is in the interest of the bands to expose them to as many people in the public as well. And certainly we'll be kind of keeping limits on that so that it doesn't disrupt the delegate experience but we're definitely trying to increase the amount of public engagement in the event. I mean partly as well, that's about trying to get the general public to also understand the music industry better, because we believe that's really important too."
In addition to the ventures in the arts and tech, BIGSOUND are also planning to expand into other fields that benefit the industry.
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"I think continuing to find new ways of diversifying the event so that it delivers new value for new groups of people that can then create more value for the music industry. Certainly fashion and film are so deeply connected to the music industry and in future, we'll be exploring how we bring them in but at this stage it's really just about seeing how this year goes and to consolidate what we're building right now."
"I'm very, very passionate about the potential of Fortitude Valley as a place. I think BIGSOUND brings this particular flavour into the Valley for those four days and because of the new things that we're doing, particularly around the visual arts showcase, for people who live and work in the Valley that will be a proud moment because it's important to us that we show what's possible with love and investment in the place."
