"The artists should be at the centre" - Anywhere Festival widens it's scope for 2021

Brisbane’s favourite indie arts festival is putting itself into gear and readying itself for another stellar season in 2021. Yes that’s right, it’s Anywhere Festival application time again! Nadia Jade got the lowdown from Artistic Director Paul Osuch about how they are putting artists front and centre.

Here at NEHIB this is hands-down our actual fave performing arts festival of the year. No other festival in Brisbane (Queensland? Australia?) is so supportive of indie artists, from facilitating production, to teaching marketing skills, to opening access to unseen corners of our city, to streamlining the festival administration to truly create an equitable access opportunity for independent creators. The end result? A line-up of fresh, innovative, and utterly original works performed by artists from absolute first timers to seasoned stars, presented across the length and breadth of Meanjin, extending up to the Sunny Coast. And we are pleased to find out, that this year the festival will extend into Ipswich and Moreton Bay as well!

In Bloom at Mappins Nursery presented by Underground Productions (2019 Anywhere Festival. Image: Nahkana Earth & Art (Krystal Beazley). Cover image: Comedy Lounge on the Sunshine Coast. Photo by Travis Macfarlane

The festival has been running for nearly ten years now, and every year avid fans watch them digest the year before, and return with new innovations to better facilitate independent theatre makers at all stages of their careers. This year, there’s going to be a new festival hub in Fortitude Valley. Anywhere have just secured a new space at the Judith Wright Centre which is going to be a coworking space and drop-in centre for artists and producers to gather, workshop and use as an office-away-from-home.

Anywhere usually run a series of key workshops to support artists, starting with creative development, and ranging up to more practical front-of-house and nuts-and-bolts production. This year, they are looking to run First Nations-led workshops that will investigate the way that artists are doing their storytelling, and their connection to place. The ‘anywhere’ aspect of the festival means that shows invariably have an opportunity for a stronger connection to place than those presented in the traditional theatres. Paul saw an opportunity for artists to better interrogate the relationship between place and production, and how that might inform the show creation on the ground level.

Wondered by Mira Ball Productions at Sideshow West End (2019 Anywhere Festival). Image: Nahkana Earth & Art, (Krystal Beazley)

Paul said, “Even with shows that are not specifically site-specific, how do you take a work that can evolve or change or be adapted, and how do you build that connection with place and the people there. As opposed to going, we have this show and we are going to force it into this space. This is a different relationship, where we build adaptation into the work. We want people to investigate how they are doing their storytelling and their connection with place, and by its very nature because it is First nations led, we are hoping this will just become part of everyone’s thinking on how to respond to location, and to the local people.”

The festival is enveloping the digital era too with online offerings presented from both Australia and internationally, with a number of shows that have either an online component or are designed for online. Embracing the hunger for accessible offerings, they are exploring how to avoid Zoom fatigue and offer truly engaging online works.

“We are very much looking into the VR space, and the 360-degree immersive experience. What’s going to happen, we don’t know yet, but we are having those conversations. We’ve gone through the process of looking at web series and subscriber models, and we couldn’t see how that was going to work for independent artists, how to make it pay, so we decided to leapfrog that and look into new technologies that can offer a unique experience, and allow people to really be in the work. When you are in the theatre, it’s not a two-dimensional experience.”

As ever, Anywhere is looking at how to streamline the festival experience for the creatives, offering a range of ways that artists can pay for or skill exchange their registration. They offer the traditional pay your fee and small box office split (which is incidentally among the lowest seen around the world for a festival of this scope of supports). This year they also offering artists the opportunity to engage in a skills exchange. For registration and festival support, artist who have time but not money, might have the opportunity to trade administration tasks for registration and production support. There is also a mentorship program, to further cross-pollinate the emerging artists with the experienced creators. Paul loves the idea of mixing up the arts eco-system, and draws back from the idea of Anywhere as a fringe festival.

“I’ve always struggled with the term ‘fringe’, because I’ve always thought that the artists should be at the centre. As artists we are already seen to be on the fringe and I don’t know if its useful to label ourselves that way.”

So get your applications in without any further delay. The application process does not require fully-fledged productions, but can be a wild idea or a wonderful vision. The creative supports offered for producers to get their ideas off the ground are broad in nature, so even those venturing into the creative space for the first time will find a wealth of knowledge to draw from. Brisbane and Sunshine Coast applications close Sunday December 6, and Moreton Bay and Ipswich applications close December 20.

Don’t delay! We here at NEHIB can’t wait to see what you make next May.

General applications for the festival close Sunday 6 December – but applications for Ipswich and Moreton Bay have been extended to 20th December.