Kris StewartJust a couple of months ago, former QMusic CEO Kris Stewart announced that he'd landed a new gig.
That position – the newly-created role of Precinct Manager at South East Queensland's Kingston Butter Factory Cultural Precinct – was an exciting one which the industry stalwart was undoubtedly suited for, but there's a good chance that a lot of onlookers around the country – and even Queensland – may have been unfamiliar with the precinct itself.
As the name suggests, the Kingston Butter Factory was once a working factory which produced a vast output of the eponymous dairy product. Originally built in 1907 to capitalise on Logan's major dairy industry, the factory remained open for close to eight decades, ultimately shutting its doors in 1983.
While the Logan City Council would take it over, it reopened as a community centre in the late '80s, becoming both a museum and a community arts centre. However, it was in 2022 that it would reopen as the Kingston Butter Factory Cultural Precinct, offering myriad artistic and cultural options, including an 8,000-capacity purpose-built outdoor concert stage, its 220 seat Butterbox Theatre, and much more.
"It gave the council a chance to create a few things the community hadn't necessarily had before," Stewart explains as the hustle and bustle of BIGSOUND kicks off. "There's the black box that you can do theatre work in alongside contemporary music and cabaret and comedy, but also there's the big outdoor festival space which was the kind of thing they just never really had.
"And it was a great opportunity to put something out there that can be a bit of a commercial motor for Logan as well."
A live event at the Kingston Butter Factory. (Credit: Simone Gorman Clark.)
Located roughly 25 minutes south of Brisbane and about 40 minutes from the Gold Coast, Logan and the Kingston Butter Factory might not yet be the first location that those interested in cultural activities may think of when Queensland comes to mind.
However, Stewart explains that this is far from a problem, in fact, Logan is a bit of a hidden gem when it comes to cultural diversity and artistic endeavours, putting it in prime position for discovery. In fact, as he points out, Logan is one of the most diverse communities in the country, and holds a reputation as a city that hosts one of the largest populations of New Zealanders – and that includes cities in New Zealand, too.
"It gives you a really interesting density of audiences," he notes. "If you wanted to do New Zealand rock, Asia pop, or whatever you may be looking at, there's actually a capturable audience nearby, and that's really important."
Add in the fact that Brisbane, Logan, and the Gold Coast are being connected even better thanks to the aptly-named Logan And Gold Coast Faster Rail Project, and it's placing the cultural precinct in a solid position for not just discovery, but accessibility for Queenslanders across the board.
"That will really open up a lot of opportunities for people from Brisbane to Goldie to get there very easily and very inexpensively," Stewart adds. "And for those people that would rather drive, it's a genuine thirty-five minutes from Gold Coast and Brisbane, it's just off the Pacific Motorway.
"It's also a really interesting site because it's in a more reclaimed industrial area. So it's cool, surrounded by trees on all four sides, there's great old eucalypts and stuff that surround the site, and it's just this amazing mix of positives.
"The thing that's mostly on my mind is giving people chances to discover it," he adds. "Making sure we're working proactively to partner to make it really viable for an increasing amount of music to be presented on the site.
"And obviously we're interested in Australian artists as probably the central part of that, but it's also an opportunity for touring works to look at different ways of playing into Southeast Queensland."
A role such as this also seems like a perfect fit for Stewart. Before his time spent in the top job at QMusic, he also spent eight years as the Artistic Director of the Brisbane Powerhouse. By his own admission, the role of Precinct Manager feels like an odd one, but it's a does-it-says-on-the-tin sort of title which combines what he loved about both of his prior roles.
"There's a lot of really practical music industry presentation opportunities at the site, which sort of leans into a lot of the stuff that was coming out of BIGSOUND, but equally it captures the sort of work I did at the Powerhouse, producing work there," he explains.
"Realistically, they want someone who is proactively programming and partnering in order to get as much content as we can on the site. We want it to be as active as possible.
"So I'm someone who is there to oversee the precinct itself, to be able to knit together good opportunities and make sure it really works for members of the industry, and works for audiences that wanna come and participate in things as well."
Upon his appointment to the role, Stewart praised the Kingston Butter Factory as a venue with "genuine energy, genuine character, and a community around it that is ready for more", while also noting his plans were to bring in more local and international acts, develop events that reflect Logan's cultural diversity, and ultimately lead the precinct's commercial vision into the future.
So to be blunt, what does the future look like? Or what sort of future does Stewart foresee for the Kingston Butter Factory?
"What's really interesting is that it's actually very rare to get sites where you can comfortably house 10,000 people," Stewart begins. "It's pretty much turnkey for people to use. There's two fully specced out PA lighting rigs, so both the internal stage and the external stage are fully kitted out, meaning you've got a really good setup there that makes it easy for people to come and commercialise it.
"For me, I think I really want to make sure there's some real signature outdoor music events that are taking place there. But I also think the outdoor space speaks so well to food and wine events, cultural festivals, and other things as well that I'm trying to keep a really open mind to what there's an audience for and what people would like to see.
"The most important thing for me, though, is that it becomes a really widely used space," he adds. "I think Logan's the fastest-growing community in Queensland, and I think that the interesting opportunity here is that the population of the surrounding area is growing really fast, and it's pretty young."
Indeed, Stewart notes that a lot of the audiences that have been patronising the area are from between the Brisbane and Gold Coast areas, meaning that travel has already been part of their journey to taking part in cultural events. So whether they're locals, they're set to use the Faster Rail Project, or they're enjoying a shorter travel time to a location between the two main Queensland locations, the idea now is to make the trip worthwhile.
"A lot of it at the moment is really defining what are the kinds of things we can do on this site that aren't being done elsewhere," Stewart adds. "Or what are things we can do that there's a real demand for and how can we really be proactive in scaling up and seeing a lot more volume of that happening."
A live event at the Kingston Butter Factory. (Credit: Simone Gorman Clark.)
What about the sort of live events or cultural undertakings that the Kingston Butter Factory provides?
Already, artists like Guy Sebastian, The Whitlams, Dami Im, and more have graced the stages, and given that the precinct boasts an impressive total capacity (for comparison, the sizeable Riverstage in Brisbane offers a capacity of 9,500), it's well-placed to turn into a veritable hub of activity across the broad cultural spectrum.
Currently, Stewart explains that the goal is convincing people to discover the space. After all, it's hard to get people to commit to something they've not seen before if there's no reason for them to actively check it out.
Thus, it's providing a diverse offering that is the key to their current goals – even if some of those diverse offerings may still be a couple of years away.
"We really see this site as a real centerpiece of what Logan will be offering visitors for the Brisbane Olympics," Stewart muses. "It's going to be so easy to get to and explore, so we really want to make sure the site's really ready for that as well.
"The other thing that comes with the approaching Olympics, as well as that being an opportunity, there's also a lot of things happening in Brisbane, there's potentially some sites being offline for periods of time, or there's the potential of the Olympics construction kind of making our ongoing presentation between now and 2032 a little bit more difficult than it had been.
"But we see that as sort of an opportunity as well," he adds. "There might be some chances to really step in and make sure that artists or concerts that are touring can still find a space to be. I certainly think as well as playing Goldie and Brisbane, and you absolutely could play Logan like you'd play Eatons Hill (20km north of Brisbane) or Sandstone Point (52km north of Brisbane) .
"I do think one of the things we'll start to see is a little bit like an increasing decentralisation of those things in Southeast Queensland as people get more comfortable with where things are. And, frankly, we need it. With the population growth, we actually need the venues to come online; we need places for things to be staying.
"So we are really seeing that there's going to be increasing demand, and we just want to be a visible partner in serving that."
Ultimately, the Kingston Butter Factory Cultural Precinct is a comparatively nascent addition to the Queensland creative scene, but it's one which is eager to impress, and one that aims to serve the diverse makeup of not just Logan, but the nearby major cities and the state at large.
"I do think it's rare to have a site that has a sort of like smaller bespoke music space – around 220-300 cap – and that one we've had the likes of Troy Cassar-Daley, Ben Lee, Meg Washington and people like that," Stewart explains. "That's one really nice offering for audiences and for artists.
"But then to have something that is much larger as well on the site, it's actually interesting – you couldn't be more diverse with the offering, which is a bit of a Logan thing.
"Wanting to sort of capture really different things, knowing that the audience and the community can be really different with what it's looking for, it means that we can do some smaller, really beautiful, artful things inside if we choose. Then we can also do large scale festivals outside as well.
"It's a site that can actually service a lot of different outcomes."
Head along to the Kingston Butter Factory Cultural Precinct’s social media pages to stay up to date with their current and upcoming offerings.
