On July 1st, Adelaide is set alight. Every year since 2021, Illuminate Adelaide helps keep the darkness at bay and transforms the South Australian capital into a winter wonderland. With light shows, art installations, immersive technology, and programmed music events, the winter festival has it all - and it sounds like no easy feat to put it all together.
“It’s been pretty frantic in the office,” co-founder and creative director Lee Cumberlidge admits over a Zoom call, glancing knowingly at fellow co-founder and creative director Rachael Azzopardi. At the time of the call, it is approximately five weeks until Illuminate Adelaide 2026 officially kicks off.
“We’ve both been doing festivals and events for so long that you kind of just learn to roll with it. We’ve got a great team, and now that we’re on our sixth Illuminate, we’ve got a bit more momentum and more of a track record to lean into.”
That being said, organising a festival is never completely smooth sailing, especially in this day and age. “There are always unknown things coming up. Especially right now, you just have to look at what’s going on in the world and how it’s disrupting festivals,” Cumberlidge says, citing how recent flight cancellations through the Gulf partially disrupted WOMADelaide.
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Azzopardi and Cumberlidge are both originally from Adelaide, though their careers took them elsewhere in the country for a time. When the two returned to Adelaide independently, they caught up and started brainstorming.
“We were fixed on this idea of winter as the opportunity, and came up with the idea of art, light, music, creativity, and technology as our main themes, because we had seen what was happening here in terms of the tech and creative industries,” Cumberlidge explains. “So, we honed in on something that was unique in Adelaide, and that was really important to us, to reflect something that was different about the place.
“I think what sets us apart is focusing on new and innovative technology with immersive experiences,” he continues, referencing major ticketed events such as Night Visions, Universal Kingdom at the Zoo, and Augmented Games.
But there is also a huge emphasis on free programs as a fundamental part of Illuminate Adelaide. “It very much is about dropping the barriers of entry for the whole community, really inviting the whole community to come into the city and experience the city being transformed by this free program of installation and projection. That’s been really key to its growth since year one.”
“We’ve worked with lots of companies and festivals in more traditional performing arts ways, and we really wanted to create something different,” Azzopardi adds, once again emphasising the importance of accessibility in terms of the ways that people can engage in art in public spaces.
“Sometimes festivals can feel a bit exclusive. We want people to just have experiences. Whether they like them or hate them, they’re having an experience about art and are seeing things in a different way. To bring creativity into the public realm is very important. We really want it to shake up the traditional form of a festival and make it accessible, and I think we’ve really evolved that over the six years.”
Illuminate Adelaide’s program is always expansive and unique. This year boasts an explosion of artistic experiences: there is Night Visions, an immersive journey which transforms the Adelaide Botanic Gardens into a vibrant tapestry of cutting-edge light, lasers, projections, and immersive soundscapes; there is Unsound, a visceral plunge into the world of experimental sound programmed across three venues; there is this year’s Luminary Artist in Residence Miguel Chevalier, who will be presenting a range of groundbreaking projects - Digital Abyss, The Origin of the World, Pixel Waves at City Lights.
These events are just the tip of the iceberg - the extensive program can be further explored here.
When putting Illuminate Adelaide together - clearly a massive undertaking - the two have a few specific goals in mind.
“We’re looking for things that push boundaries, that don’t conform to genre,” Cumberlidge explains. “With the immersive experiences we’re creating, it’s also about a site-specific approach, so it’s about taking the cityscape and the music venues and the various venues we work in and reimagining those experiences in the wintertime, which is a particular challenge.
“We wanted to make sure that Illuminate was like those other times of year when you see Adelaide in festival mode, when Adelaide really comes alive.”
“It’s about the layers,” Azzopardi chimes in. “I always think of it as a beautiful cake. Not everyone wants the chocolate. Someone might want the strawberry, some might want it all, the Neapolitan experience. It’s really about giving different experiences to diverse audiences.”
It is an approach that requires serious thought and consideration. “It is a little bit of a mountain,” Azzopardi says, laughing. “Sometimes everything just falls into place, other times it feels crunchy and things are not gelling. We’ve given ourselves the openness to not have too specific a theme. Illuminate is all about not being in the past but looking toward the future. Bright futures - we very much work towards that.”
“The throughlines and conversations that artists want to have with their work emerge organically as we put it all together,” Cumberlidge adds. “We want to facilitate experiences that are meaningful, that have a purpose. There is a lot of work that we see in this world that doesn’t go to that depth, because the access to technology is so great now that everyone can play in this space.”
Chevalier, he mentions, is an excellent example of a cutting-edge artist with depth and meaning. “We’re working very hard to make sure that if you come to Adelaide for Illuminate, you’re seeing a series of things that you haven’t seen before.”
There are benefits to putting on such a program in Adelaide.
“We’re very lucky in Adelaide from a place-making and a geographical perspective,” Cumberlidge says. “It is a walkable city. If you visit, you stay very close to all the venues. When we put together the program, it takes over the key places in the city, an approach which I haven’t really seen in other cities.”
“A smaller city, while some people think it’s not as exciting, can be much more collaborative,” Azzopardi adds. “The community has really rallied behind us. In other ways it can be more difficult because there’s less to go round. But that sense of togetherness has been really great in Adelaide. People really come out in this city and support you; it’s a very loyal city in terms of getting behind events.”
She continues, “We came back to Adelaide for a reason. I think we both felt that we wanted to create something unique for South Australia, because we love it.”
Illuminate Adelaide will take place from July 1 to July 19.
The program and tickets for Illuminate Adelaide are available now.
