Enlighten Canberra is an outdoor annual art and cultural festival held in
Canberra,
Australia featuring illuminating light installations and projections, performances from local and interstate musicians, a short film festival and the Canberra Balloon Spectacular.
The festival is an
Australian Capital Territory
The Australian Capital Territory (commonly abbreviated as ACT), known as the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) until 1938, is a landlocked federal territory of Australia containing the national capital Canberra and some surrounding townships. I ...
(ACT) Government initiative held annually in early March, encouraging people to "See Canberra in a whole new light." The centrepiece of Enlighten Canberra is the illuminating of Canberra's cultural institutions after dark, including
Old Parliament House,
Parliament House and the
National Gallery of Australia
The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...
(since the 2011 event) as well as the
National Portrait Gallery and
Questacon
Questacon – The National Science and Technology Centre is an interactive science communication facility in Canberra, Australia. It is a museum with more than 200 interactive exhibits relating to science and technology. It has many science ...
(since the 2012 event). There is also live music, film screenings and after-hours tours.
Since its inception, Enlighten has become increasingly popular, attracting 115,000 visitors in 2013 and 131,500 in 2014. Attendance rose again in 2015, to 287,874 visitors.
History of the event
2008–11: Lead-up to the first Enlighten
![NLA Enlighten Festival March 2012](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/NLA_Enlighten_Festival_March_2012.JPG)
In 2008
ACT Labor
The Australian Labor Party (Australian Capital Territory Branch), commonly known as ACT Labor, is the ACT branch of the Australian Labor Party. It is one of two major parties in the unicameral Parliament of the Australian Capital Territory.
Or ...
made an election promise to deliver a new autumn event for
Canberra,
Australia—this was the beginnings of Enlighten Canberra. In December 2010,
Australian Capital Territory
The Australian Capital Territory (commonly abbreviated as ACT), known as the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) until 1938, is a landlocked federal territory of Australia containing the national capital Canberra and some surrounding townships. I ...
(ACT) Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation
Andrew Barr
Andrew James Barr (born 29 April 1973) is an Australian politician who has been serving as the 7th Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory since 2014. He has been an Australian Labor Party member in the ACT Legislative Assembly sinc ...
, announced the ACT Government Enlighten would be a major annual event, commencing in March 2011. He said national attractions that would participate with lit facades after dark included the
National Gallery of Australia
The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...
,
Parliament House and
Old Parliament House. Ticketed events were also announced, including headline international acts in concert.
2011: The first Enlighten
In its first year, along with other events, Enlighten hosted rock band
INXS, jazz guitarist
George Benson
George Washington Benson (born March 22, 1943) is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He began his professional career at the age of 19 as a jazz guitarist.
A former child prodigy, Benson first came to prominence in the 1960s, play ...
, and world-music supergroup
Afro Celt Sound System. To help promote Enlighten, INXS arrived in Canberra in a helicopter, landing on the lawns of Old Parliament House two weeks before their concert appearance. INXS band member Kirk Pengilly told reporters that the show planned for Enlighten 2011 was "probably the biggest production that we've put on at any show in Australia." As part of the festival, cultural institutions in the Parliamentary triangle were illuminated after dark, including Old Parliament House, Parliament House and the National Gallery of Australia.
Despite the big-ticket performances and media stunts, the inaugural festival cost $2.4 million,
and there was poor community interest, with just 8600 visitors. The first Enlighten did however attract 2400 visitors from interstate or overseas who came to Canberra specifically for Enlighten or extended their stay because of it.
The slogan for Enlighten, announced in December 2010, is "See Canberra in a whole new light"
2012: Enlighten made a part of the Canberra Festival
In its second year, Enlighten was made a part of the Canberra Festival. The merging of the festivals was met with criticism from the Canberra branch of the
Liberal Party of Australia
The Liberal Party of Australia is a centre-right political party in Australia, one of the two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-left Australian Labor Party. It was founded in 1944 as the successor to the United Au ...
, with Canberra Liberal
Brendan Smyth describing the Labor Government's attempt to create a new festival as "embarrassing".
The Enlighten entertainment lineup featured in the 2012 event was scaled back significantly from the 2011 event to instead feature local Canberra artists including
Owen Campbell. Of the nearly 100 artists contracted to perform in the 2012 festival, 53 per cent were local artists, paid 11.5 per cent of the Enlighten programming budget that year. In 2012
Questacon
Questacon – The National Science and Technology Centre is an interactive science communication facility in Canberra, Australia. It is a museum with more than 200 interactive exhibits relating to science and technology. It has many science ...
and the
National Portrait Gallery became canvasses for projection for the first time—they had not been lit in the 2011 Enlighten festival.
2013–14: the spiegeltent joins Enlighten
In 2013, along with the large-scale building illuminations featured in the previous two events, Enlighten hosted a
spiegeltent
A spiegeltent (Dutch for "mirror tent", from '' spiegel''+''tent'') is a large travelling tent, constructed from wood and canvas and decorated with mirrors and stained glass, intended as an entertainment venue. Originally built in Belgium during ...
for the first time. The tent put on dozens of shows featuring comics, acrobats and musicians. The festival also included Canberra's first
Dîner en Blanc, a pop-up picnic in which all guests dress in white and bring their own food, table, table-setting and chair. More than 700 people attended the picnic, the third Dîner en Blanc to be held in Australia. Dîner en Blanc was repeated in 2014, with over 800 people attending, but the dinner was not included as part of Enlighten 2015. Film screenings and after hours tours were also offered, and American soul singer
Charles Bradley performed as part of the 2014 festival.
2015–16: Enlighten debuts the Night Noodle Markets in Canberra
![Enlighten Night Noodle Market, Canberra 2016](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Enlighten_Night_Noodle_Market%2C_Canberra_2016.JPG)
In November 2014, the ACT Government announced the Night Noodle Markets would be coming to Canberra during the Enlighten Festival in 2015. The Night Noodle Markets feature Asian-themed street-food vendors. ACT Tourism Minister
Andrew Barr
Andrew James Barr (born 29 April 1973) is an Australian politician who has been serving as the 7th Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory since 2014. He has been an Australian Labor Party member in the ACT Legislative Assembly sinc ...
told media that Canberra's Night Noodle Markets were expected to host up to 25 hawker style food stalls, and that the ACT Government had committed $200,000 to bring the 2015 noodle markets to the city. Around 156,000 peoples visited the inaugural Enlighten Night Noodle Markets—of whom 24,000 visited on the opening night, far exceeding expectations.
In 2016, alongside the Night Noodle Markets, Enlighten featured an installation by Amanda Parer of five illuminated white rabbits standing at . Parer described the rabbits as metaphors for the mismanagement of the environment. Free concerts held over the consecutive weekends featured indie rock Australian band
Augie March
Augie (sometimes spelled Auggie) is a nickname for variations of the name August, which derives from the Latin name Augustus. It may refer to:
People
* Augie Auer (1940–2007), meteorologist
* Augie Galan (1912–1993), Major League Baseball p ...
and American alternative country musical group
Calexico
Calexico () is a city in southern Imperial County, California. Situated on the Mexican border, it is linked economically with the much larger city of Mexicali, the capital of the Mexican state of Baja California. It is about east of San Diego ...
.
Ahead of the
2016 ACT election the Labor party committed to spend $3.72 million to continue Enlighten in 2017, 2018 and 2019.
2020–21: Pandemic
Enlighten in 2020 just missed the start of the
COVID-19 pandemic in Australia
The COVID-19 pandemic in Australia is part of the ongoing worldwide pandemic of the coronavirus disease 2019 () caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (). The first confirmed case in Australia was identified on 25 Januar ...
. It still went ahead in 2021, under some restrictions as most events and installations were ticketed and required online pre-registration to allow
contact tracing
In public health, contact tracing is the process of identifying persons who may have been exposed to an infected person ("contacts") and subsequent collection of further data to assess transmission. By tracing the contacts of infected individua ...
. The Night Noodle Markets were not held, replaced by "Late Night Treats". The
Skyfire fireworks show was also cancelled that year.
Criticism
Enlighten has come under severe criticism in the Australian media for not paying professional artists for their work and labor producing installations and artworks (despite being a well-funded government festival). For the 2020 festival the EOI proposal request published on Artshub and Visabel suggests four remuneration options to artists, three of which indicate artists should fully self-fund, partially self-fund or find sponsorship for exhibition of their own work. One indicates that the festival will pay for some projects but stresses a very limited budget for artworks.
Projections
For its first six years, the large-scale projections for Enlighten were coordinated by Electric Canvas. Electric Canvas's managing director Peter Milne has also worked on the
2000 Sydney Olympic Games and the
2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games
The 2006 Commonwealth Games, officially the XVIII Commonwealth Games and commonly known as Melbourne 2006 ( Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm 2006'' or ''Naarm 2006''), was an international multi-sport event for members of the Commonwealth held ...
.
Budget, attendance and visitor expenditure
Since its inception, Enlighten has become increasingly popular, attracting 115,000 visitors in 2013 and 131,500 in 2014. Attendance rose again in 2015, to 287,874 visitors.
Energy usage
![Entrance to Old Parliament House during Enlighten 2013](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Entrance_to_Old_Parliament_House_during_Enlighten_2013.jpg)
In 2012, projections for Enlighten were predominantly powered using
diesel generator
A diesel generator (DG) (also known as a diesel Genset) is the combination of a diesel engine with an electric generator (often an alternator) to generate electrical energy. This is a specific case of engine generator. A diesel compression-ig ...
s and consumed 2423 litres of diesel, resulting in an estimated 7.0 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gas emissions.
See also
*
Art of Australia
Australian art is any art made in or about Australia, or by Australians overseas, from prehistoric times to the present. This includes Aboriginal, Colonial, Landscape, Atelier, early-twentieth-century painters, print makers, photographers, an ...
*
Vivid Sydney
Vivid Sydney is an annual festival of light, music and ideas, held in Sydney, Australia. It includes outdoor immersive light installations and projections, performances by local and international musicians, and an ideas exchange forum featurin ...
References
{{reflist, 30em
Art exhibitions in Australia
Arts in Australia
Australian sculpture
Festivals established in 2011
Festivals in Australian Capital Territory
Light festivals
Recurring events established in 2011
2011 establishments in Australia