After dealing with the challenges presented by COVID last year, organisers of SPARK Ipswich feel like they can conquer anything – including potentially bad weather.
A wet bump-in is literally water off a duck's back for the festival's event team, who were coming out of a snap lockdown this time last year.
Lead producer Angie Dunbavan from Red Chair is confident this year's event (7-17 July) will go off without a hitch. "Because the restrictions have been lifted, we're pretty much back to normal in terms of capacities, and people can dance and there's no mask wearing required.
"So it's feeling very much like a return to pre-COVID days," Angie says.
"We're obviously still being fairly heightened in terms of having great hand-washing facilities, making sure that people can distance themselves and putting the message out – which is the message that goes out everywhere – that if you're unwell you can't attend. But other than that we're pretty much back to normal."
Although there's no cap on event numbers, some of the programme's events will remain at similar capacity to last year, because the sold-out crowd was the right size for the event.
For the most part, though, the 11 days of programming will be at full capacity. Children's music festival Little Day Out, along with some of the SPARK After Dark inclusions and the Waghorn To West indie music crawl, have carried on from last year's programme.
Regurgitator's POGOGO Show will headline Little Day Out this year, after failing to make last year's event due to interstate border closures.
"We've got a whole lot of new programming in there as well," Angie says. "Probably our biggest new event is called Luminate, which is 11 nights of live music in an outdoor space in the middle of the city."
Luminate will join with two other elements to form this year's SPARK After Dark programme: Delight, a projection of works on St. Mary's Church; and Pixel, a collaboration with the University of Southern Queensland's Design and Interactive Technologies team using video-based technology on the face of council's administration building.
"From 6-9pm each night we'll have a stage programme – predominantly local artists from all different genres – and there'll be food trucks, there's a bar, there's roving performers, there's light installations," Angie says.
"It's the biggest new addition to the programme this year in terms of creating a space that people can go to every single day of the festival and just hang out and see some great music, eat some yummy food and enjoy the spectacle on the church and also over on the administration building."
This Saturday (9 July) will see key music industry figures come together with locals for free professional development event, Sound The Horn.
"We've worked with some of the key music industry reps, including QMusic, on creating a professional development day for local artists," Angie says.
"It is open to artists outside of the region as well, but it's all about developing networks, getting new information and access to music industry specialists, including Alex Henriksson (Rainbow Valley Records), Braydon Ritson (Mountain Goat Valley Crawl), Kristy Gostelow (Busby Marou) and Maggie Collins (DZ Deathrays)."
Following on from the professional development day is the hugely popular indie music crawl, Waghorn To West that showcases 16 artists in 4 venues, including Bugs, Lisi, Greta Stanley and Asha Jefferies.
"We're really conscious of emerging artists and people working in our industry haven't had a great time over the last couple of years, so making things as affordable as possible – if not free – has been something that we've really tried to do across the whole festival programme,” Angie says.
"Even Waghorn To West, the ticket price on that is $25 for six or seven hours of programming, so we're trying to make it as accessible as possible and really have to thank Ipswich City Council and all of our partner organisations for helping that to happen, because their support means that we've been able to keep tickets free or at very low cost across the board."
Angie says the best thing about SPARK Ipswich is how it showcases the people, places and culture of the city, drawing attention to local artists in the process. "It's celebrating our spaces and places, and the beautiful architecture and park lands," she says.
"Ipswich is a bit of a hidden gem, in my opinion, in terms of its culture and the facilities available to the community.
"So I think the best thing about it is an opportunity to really showcase the culture that Ipswich has, and draw in that wider South-East community to Ipswich, to experience some of that. Because it's not a very far drive or train trip up the road from Brisbane."
SPARK Ipswich takes place throughout Ipswich 7-17 July.
