"There was a tangible sense of what “live” really meant, and to feel and see the energy feedback loop between performers and audience members was incredible"
UPDATE: PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT FROM DAVID CARBERRY
It is with a heavy heart that we bring you the news that all events for this weekend (12th & 13th December) at Sideshow are to be cancelled or postponed. Due to escalating noise complaints from a couple of neighbours we are now under threat of being shut down. We have been in emergency meetings and the painful decision has been made to cancel or postpone the whole weekend of events at Sideshow until we can rectify the situation with the office of Liquor and Gaming and save the venue moving forward. This is absolutely devastating for us both financially, but also for you our patrons who were all booked to come to the amazing artists we had booked across our final weekend for 2020. The events that are affected are;
Saturday 12th December
2:30pm – Swampy Sessions
5:30pm – High Fi Vol. 7 – Yossa Haile – Nui Moon
8:30pm – JK-47 & the Boy of Many Colours
Sunday 13th Dec
1:30pm – Tablao Flamenco (ALTERNATIVE VENUE PENDING FOR SUNDAY 13th Dec)
6:30pm – East of West & Beier – Griffin – Pollak Trio
We are of course happy to refund everyone once any postponements have been confirmed or finalized. Please get in touch with the Sideshow or me directly if you have any concerns.
The team at Sideshow have been working so hard to support a huge community of artists and patrons and it is such a shame to have to cancel our final events of the year, but hopefully in doing this we will save the venue for the future so that we can continue to do this.
We thank you all for your understanding, and please stay tuned for more information.
Peace and thanks,
David Carberry
ORIGINAL INTERVIEW BELOW:
David Carberry was one of the many Brisbane-based performers who ended up stuck in town when the pandemic hit and left Brisbane’s vibrant scene in tatters. An internationally renowned circus performer, Dave usually spends much of the year travelling Australia and the globe and performing to sold-out audiences. Suddenly he found himself based back in Brisbane for an indefinite period.
Not one to rest on his laurels, David secured funding through Arts Queensland’s Play Local grants and jumped at the chance to perform again and to help support his fellow artists to get back on stage and do what they do best. With the help of the grant, Dave produced the ambitious Sideshow West End Fringe Program, which has programmed over twenty live performance events that have showcased local performers from across the spectrum of the arts, including circus, music, art installations, beatboxing, burlesque and experimental works.
This Saturday, 12 December, marks the closing of the Sideshow West End Fringe program, with a massive program of music headlined at 8:30pm by First Nations rappers JK-47 and the Boy of Many Colours. JK-47 has just won Triple J unearthed artist of the year. The program will also feature the album launch of Yossa Haile and his Ethio Jazz Ensemble from 5.30pm and the Swampy Sessions Cabaret featuring the Hinterlanders at 2.30pm. Virag Dombay spoke to Dave recently about the development of the West End Fringe Program and what punters can expect from this weekend’s closing events.
Nadlib from DancingWater, one of the many featured artists in the Sideshow West End Fringe Program.
VIRAG: Was the idea of creating a fringe program in Brisbane something that recently emerged for you or has it been brewing in your mind for quite some time?
DAVID: I suppose in many ways it has been brewing. I’ve had the privilege and experience of working in some incredible festivals around the world. From Sziget Festival in Budapest, to Teatro Iberoamericano de Bogota in Colombia, Montreal Completement Cirque to Edinburgh Fringe and on and on, with over 15 years of international festival touring. I have been extremely lucky to have had this experience and subconsciously it has taught me so much about the performing arts festival experience. Though up until recently I had never thought about programming as a career, and in some ways it was more by chance, circumstance and opportunism that I’ve ended up doing it this year. Plus of course, a global pandemic.
My initial goal when I started working with the team at the Sideshow West End (in their old space in Montague road) last year was more centred around connecting with local creative space, a place where I could create and teach. When they moved into their new space at 49 Vulture st I started to become more involved and when the pandemic hit 2 weeks prior to the new space opening(!!) I shifted to crisis management with the space and started looking at ways to survive and opportunities for the space to take advantage of any funding relief that may help the space weather the storm. I applied for a number of grants (actually just over 20 grants for a number of organisations including Sideshow), one of those was the Play Local Fund. I saw this as a great opportunity, and put A LOT of work into the application, fortunately the assessment team saw this and the fund was awarded, giving me my first chance at writing a venue program.
Yossa Haile and his Ethio Jazz Ensemble. Image: Jaron Walker
VIRAG: What has it been like to create and program a local fringe festival in a pandemic climate? Did it make the process of applying funding, getting a team together and finding volunteers harder?
DAVID: I think in retrospect there has been some real benefits and positive ways of looking at our situation, both as a small independent venue, and with the current climate. On one level I believe that Arts Qld and the Arts Minister Leanne Enoch have done an incredible job of responding to the pandemic, moving quickly to spread the funding out across a number of sectors and offering multiple small scale grant funding opportunities with quick turn arounds. I personally believe that this has had a hugely positive effect on the performing arts in Qld. Also given the fact that all the Qld Artists who would normally be on tour and not in Brisbane were suddenly back at home and out of work. In addition to this all of the major venues were not quite as nimble or were too large to move quickly, and so I believe we were able to offer an opportunity to these incredible artists who were available and keen to do something.
A scene from Red Light Distancing. Image: Cassandra Sutton.
VIRAG: What has been the most challenging part of programming a festival at this scale?
DAVID: Unfortunately the funding was only designed to cover artist fees, this meant that no funding was able to contribute to venue staffing or support staff for any of these gigs. The hardest part has been the mountain production, technical and marketing work that goes along with each event, this along with the running of each event has been heavily subsidised by volunteer labour from the core team at Sideshow. As well as for some events a heavy team of volunteers from the wider Sideshow community who have all made massive contributions to keeping this space running and propping up a huge section of the arts community in West End. I think there needs to be some acknowledgement of how much work has been donated by this community to not only keeping the space alive but enabling all of these gigs to happen.
A scene from We The Aliens. Image: Billie Wilson Coffey.
VIRAG: You mentioned that you are really proud that you are able to provide a platform to such a diverse range of artists, from LGBTQI to artist with disability and indigenous artists, which I think is fantastic. Did you reach out to members of those communities specifically? How did you start the conversation?
DAVID: As I mentioned I have never developed a program like this before but was acutely conscious of the balance that was required when considering diversity on all levels. I really wanted to make a considered effort to include a wide range of artists in the program and reached out to a number of contacts through my network to try and achieve this. Asking for references and opinions on the draft program. And really trying to find a balance between quality, diversity and providing opportunity. Whilst I know it wasn’t perfect I wanted to try and make sure that we included an equal gender balance. As well as having representatives from the LGBTQI community (ex. in Redlight Distancing & Party Ghost), Artists with Disability (ex. Lauren Watson/Redlight Distancing), Artists of Diverse Cultural Backgrounds (ex. Yossa Haile, Nui Moon), Indigenous Artists (Dancing Water) and with our final shows this Saturday December 12th we have two incredible indigenous artists the Boy of Many Colours and JK-47 who just won Triple J Unearthed Artist of the year.
Tom Thumb and guests. Image: Jaron Walker.
VIRAG: What has it been like seeing artists at play after having spent most of this year without having access to live events? I imagine it must be quite liberating….
DAVID: The first event we had on July 31st, just a week after restrictions had lifted was incredible. There was a tangible sense of what “live” really meant, and to feel and see the energy feedback loop between performers and audience members was incredible. I think everyone was feeling it, and pretty much all of our events were sold out from July onwards. I feel like generally people missed it, and there was a renewed sense of appreciation, and I sincerely hope it can continue.
VIRAG: Lastly, how can we support your program and its artists? And do you plan on making this festival an annual event?
DAVID: Coming to these live events is the best way to support them, you can also get in touch and offer to volunteer time for an event, or come down and say hello. It’s been amazing to see how connections within the community quickly enable opportunities. The amount of times someone has come down and introduced me to someone kicking off a chain of events that results in an opportunity for an artist or for the space. Just connecting with the space as an energy exchange can sometimes be enough.
I would love to continue to develop the program, and have considered trying to develop it further and create and annual fringe program for Brisbane. This would be amazing, but would really be a long term goal. At this stage I’d just really like to thank the team at Sideshow and all of the incredible artists in the program for making something special out of a year that as been so challenging. Art is a means of processing our existence, and 2020 has left us with a lot to process. I believe that the program this year has really helped me to survive and thrive this year, I hope it has done the same for those who have been part of it too. For now though I’d like to end the program for 2020 on a high with a massive weekend of events on the 12th & 13th Dec. Please head over to my FB page and the Sideshow’s to check it out and be part of the send off.
A snapshot of the Sideshow West End Fringe program.
