Adelaide Festival Launches TIME TO TALK Series

Adelaide Festival has announced Time to Talk, a series of roundtable discussions that will take place throughout February and March. Panellists will include artists participating in the 2024 Adelaide Festival program, along with key industry figures.

The series will open with Decolonising Culture, chaired by Adelaide Festival Artistic Director Ruth Mackenzie CBE and with panellists Jacob Boehme (director of Guuranda), Robert Lepage (director of The Nightingale and Other Fables) and Ziyin Wang Gantner (filmmaker and director of Melbourne-based company Playking Productions). Together they will discuss how we can best continue to examine stories from around the world and across different eras, reflecting the age-old connections between different cultures, while also respecting cultural ownership and identity.

Restless Dance Theatre and Adelaide Contemporary Experimental (ACE) will host Diverse Expressions: Dialogues on Creativity and Disability. This event includes a keynote performance from Sam Petersen, lead artist of ACE exhibition Yucky, in addition to conversations on disability and creativity from the teams involved in creating Private View (Restless Dance Theatre) and Yucky (ACE) in the 2024 Adelaide Festival.

Presented with program partner Foodland, Our Climate, Our Future will be held at Adelaide Botanic Gardens and delve into ideas explored through Adelaide Festival’s Create4Adelaide initiative. Attendees at this exciting two-part event will begin by listening to testimonies from young activists and artists, then take a seat at the table for open conversations about climate commitments with young people, artists, economic decision-makers and society as a whole. Create4Adelaide is a year-long participatory project that gave the artistic and curatorial power to young people; asking them to create art that tackles some of our biggest climate issues.

For the final session, Blak Futures, First Nations Artistic Directors from multi-year funded dance companies across Australia will convene for a roundtable discussion co-facilitated by Yalanji dance trailblazer Marilyn Miller and Quandamooka senior arts leader Wesley Enoch. Joining them will be Jacob Boehme (Idja Dance Theatre), Joel Bray (Joel Bray Dance) Thomas E.S Kelly & Caleena Sansbury (Karul Projects), Gary Lang (NT Dance Company), Dalisa Pigram (Marrugeku), Daniel Riley (Australian Dance Theatre) and Frances Rings (Bangarra Dance Theatre). This conversation will examine the structures that underpin a flourishing, vibrant and diverse eco-system of self-determined work within dance companies and organisations. Blak Futures has been generously supported by Adelaide Festival and produced by Australian Dance Theatre and BlakDance. 

Adelaide Festival Artistic Director Ruth Mackenzie CBE says: “One of my favourite parts of any arts festival is for artists, thinkers and above all, audiences to have time to talk, inspired by the work in the Festival. This series is the start of a larger program of talent development for emerging and established cultural workers, and thanks to Arts SA, artists as well. We hope that you will join us at these free events and also of course at Adelaide Writers’ Week, which are all about sharing and discussing.”

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