Horizon Festival is a multi-arts spectacular that spotlights the bustling and diverse creative communities of the Sunshine Coast region.
Festival Director Jo Jordan says Horizon in 2017 is building on the immense success of last year’s inaugural event.
“Horizon was started last year by Sunshine Coast Council responding to an opportunity to develop an arts and cultural festival on the coast and designed to be a platform for Sunshine Coast artists to express their art forms and build their capacities through cross-collaboration and building ties with business and government and industry,” Jo says.
“Last year was our first festival and we actually achieved quite remarkable results, with over 35,000 people attending the inaugural festival and right across the coast we had our artistic community involved with the event.”
That success resulted in Horizon Festival securing a three-year outlook for the festival, which Jo says will enable them to extensively develop the creative communities of the region as well as the festival itself.
Arboria luminarium
“What you don’t realise until you actually respond to an opportunity or a gap is how much passion is out there to develop something,” she says. “So this year what we've found, particularly from year one to year two, is that passion has been harnessed and while we're still in the embryonic stage of festival development. We actually have the artistic community stepping up to collaborate, produce and develop some amazing events.
“Nambour is a really great example where last year they staged a one-day event called Colour The Street and this year they put their hand up and have developed what could be described as our emerging Fringe Festival that's running alongside Horizon.”
With this year’s programme comprising 200-plus events from the hinterland to the coastline and spanning music, film, visual art, comedy, performance, street theatre and much more, Jo is particularly proud of what they will have on offer.
“It’s incredible how very quickly we are starting to develop and I often say to people that we're starting to punch above our weight a little,” she laughs. “In our second year, particularly with what we've been able to develop not only with our local arts community but also with our national and international guests, we’ve got some really exciting projects to be delivered.
“Audiences can certainly expect us to kick it off with an amazing event and we've been able to secure an Australian premiere of William Close And The Earth Harp Collective out of Los Angeles. What's exciting about that is not only that we've secured William to bring his earth harp to Australia for the first time, but he's also collaborating with our local artists.”
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Ultimately, Jo’s goal is to challenge public perception of the Sunshine Coast as just a hub for sports and athletics. She says Horizon Festival is a concentrated dose of local arts and culture that gives audiences a sample of creative communities across the region.
“For ten days we'll really put that out for the public to enjoy and what we're really doing is showing what's here all the time, but in a consolidated ten-day festival programme we'll give visitors a taste of what they can expect all year round,” she says.
“And what better backdrop? Because clearly we've got the hinterland right through to the coast, so our programme literally runs from Caloundra to Coolum and Beerwah to Eumundi so the diversity of location and landscape makes us quite unique as well.”
