The clock to the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games has been ticking down on Surfers Paradise Beach for five years, its numbers now getting nerve-wrackingly low. It's almost time.
As the stadiums are being prepped to host some of the world's top athletes, stages are being set for the largest arts program the Sunshine State has ever seen, Festival 2018.
It's a colossal 12-day program, mirroring the dates of the games that stretches across four cities (Gold Coast, Brisbane, Townsville and Cairns). It's set to feature hundreds of music, theatre, circus, dance, ideas, visual art and film events, most of which can be enjoyed by locals and tourists alike, as "99%" of the program is free to attend.
Creative director Yaron Lifschitz muses over the process of putting together such a unique and distinctive experience.
"Basically, it started with my co-director [Kate Fell] and me stepping on the stones through the river of possibility and deciding what kind of things we wanted to do," Lifschitz begins. "We both came into this as artists and artist workers so we have a sort of vision of the world that's lovely, but the Comm Games is a very different beast.
"It's a very complex and huge undertaking, so what we did is figure out all the things that we had to deliver; the spaces, the restrictions, the opportunities, to kind of have a really creative dialogue in what we can say about the world. Which, I guess, is what any artist kind of really does," Lifschitz says.
Don't miss a beat with our FREE daily newsletter
"So we looked at what was available, we looked at the things we'd like to see, we engaged with artists, we had a million conversations. We had public meetings, callouts, we ran a website where anyone could just write to us with any ideas, there were just so many different approaches."
When it came time to put together the program, Lifschitz and his team made the decision to do things differently, merging the history of Australia with the modernism of the Gold Coast.
"We thought, 'Let's not do the normal things, let's try to expand and extend.' Even opening the festival with Yothu Yindi's Treaty Project and then closing that night with The Cat Empire. You could see one, no problem, but to see those two things next to each other on the same night is telling you something about the world in which we believe," he says.
"This program has a very strong Indigenous and Torres Strait Island thread. It's very strong international component, a very strong Australian component, a very strong Gold Coast component. All our projects stand for something."
It was almost two years ago that work began on the impressive line-up, with Lifschitz and his team's vision front and centre. After so long in the pipeline, Lifschitz is exhilarated to see it all come to life.
"It is incredible. This is what they would call in sport, 'the pointy end'. The decisions being made are about what stages are actually going to look like and that's always exciting and challenging. The main thing is that at the core of any festival is the program and I think the program for Festival 2018 is very strong."
Lifschitz believes that the sheer enormity and potential success of Festival 18 could act as the catalyst for a cultural renaissance that the Gold Coast has been waiting for.
"The Gold Coast is primed and ready to be one of the really great cities in Australia. The most important, forward-thinking regional city in Australia, possibly the world," Lifschitz says.
"To get there, however, one of the things that's been underdeveloped in the Gold Coast is arts and culture. It needs an ongoing, systematic investment and this is one of those. Seeing work of quality and diversity across the Coast in new places will create a hunger. It takes a while to develop a taste, it takes a repeated exposure. The festival will be like an intense tasting menu for the Gold Coast's artistic future. It's not that they don't have that stuff, they need more and this investment is more."
It's not only the Gold Coast that will see the benefits of Festival 2018. The state's capital is also set to receive an outstanding run of events that will take over the city's picturesque Southbank promenade. This is where Brisbane Musical Curator, Leanne De Souza, started — with a vision of that riverside spot.
"A big thing for me, in my three months of planning, was listening to music and thinking if you were walking from the train to the wheel at Southbank and heard this band playing would you think, "That sounds pretty cool," or are you going to be jarred and offended and run away. So, it was kind of like I was soundtracking Southbank for the Games."
When it came to constructing her program, De Souza built it around a simple three-word mission statement; encounter, change and inspire.
"'Encounter' was about encountering music from Brisbane's past, music from other First Nations' cultures and great Australian storytellers and that's been realised in performances from the likes of Archie Roach and Don Walker," De Souza says.
"'Change' was that I really wanted three days of guitar music — classical guitar right through to guitar hero moments. We're featuring Abbe May, who is one of my favourite Australian guitarists, and Sabrina Lawrie who's local, so that vision is still in there. And then 'inspire' was about youthful energy and looking forward so we've got people like Airling, The Preatures, Bob Evans. The vision is alive."
When pushed for the aspect of the program she is most proud of, De Souza answers without haste.
"The diversity, hands down the diversity. We've got queer artists, we've got young people, we've got elder statesmen, we've got local people. I'm really proud of the diversity and I didn't try to do that, it just came through a proper process. I'm really happy about that," De Souza says.
"That gig with Stella Donnelly and Alex The Astronaut, that's amazing for young women to see that in the current social times. It's going to be incredible."
As De Souza explains, Festival 2018 is an opportunity for everybody, no matter age or background, to create a new community cemented by accessible music.
"All my stuff is free. It is amazing," De Souza exclaims. "For me, I've got two teenagers and that benchmark was having the all-ages shows. The gig with Morning Harvey and The Creases or the Urthboy gig, because it is all free, anyone, young or old, can just jump on the train and head to Southbank and some of the line-up is as good as you're gonna get at Splendour or Woodford, so it's a pretty rare opportunity to be able to do that."
Sports and the arts might stereotypically exist in separate orbits, but with Festival 2018 and the Commonwealth Games, the two worlds are working symbiotically. As De Souza explains, Queensland is sure to be left with a lasting imprint of what's possible with a goal — be that artistic or athletic.
"It's that new generation being exposed to amazing contemporary music. I think if there's a connection to music, song and art, then we've achieved our goal. I think then there's a legacy."
