The Enlighten Festival, Canberra’s annual celebration of culture and creativity, finished on Monday, and although the attendance and visitor numbers are still being analysed, they seem to have been higher than last year’s.
The busiest night at the Festival Hub surpassed the busiest night in 2023, and attendance was up by 27 per cent on last year, which was itself a record, an ACT Government spokesperson said.
“Happy crowds” thronged to the main food venue, the Festival Hub, for all 11 nights of the festival.
The crowd’s favourite installations were the Mycelium Network, replicating fungi through thousands of colourful animated fibre optic strands, and MAPP, an interactive mobile point and shoot video mapping system.
The digital art projections on Canberra’s national institutions were well received, the government said.
“We are privileged to be able to collaborate with the National Cultural Institutions to involve artists of the calibre of Vincent Namatjira and Dylan Mooney to tell our nation’s stories in a unique, compelling, and visually spectacular way.”
The National Gallery launched Vincent Namatjira’s Australia in colour, a commissioned projection and sound-based work, looking at the politics of history, power, and leadership from a contemporary Aboriginal perspective. At the National Portrait Gallery, each night a different portrait by Dylan Mooney, a blind Indigenous and South Sea Islander artist, was projected in real time onto the building as he painted.
Symphony in the Park, featuring iconic Australian band the Hoodoo Gurus and the Canberra Symphony Orchestra, was “very well attended, with an incredible atmosphere in the park”, the government said. However, many concertgoers were left stranded: the free public transport the government had promised stopped running before the concert ended.
National institutions hosted special night-time events in the Enlighten After Dark program. The most attended events were the Museum of Australian Democracy’s ‘People’s House, back to the 80s’, an evening of music, adventure, dress-ups, and dance aerobics celebrating unsung heroes of Old Parliament House; and the National Gallery of Australia’s ‘Up Late Street Party’.
The NGA and Canberra Theatre Centre’s Up Late Music Program featured an all-star line-up of First Nations musicians, including Thelma Plum, Jem Cassar-Daley, Dan Sultan, Briggs, and Jeremy Whiskey. It received hugely positive feedback, the government said.
Seven hundred people raced in the Canberra Day Appeal Fun Run, and raised $5,000 for Hands Across Canberra, which will distribute the money to 360 local charities and community organisations.
Enlighten overlaps with the Canberra Balloon Spectacular, which finishes on Sunday. (Prime Minister Anthony Albanese enjoyed the spectacle.)
“Of course, the balloons have been hugely popular again this year,” the government said. “They will keep flying for another few days, so if you haven’t checked them out yet make sure you do! There are great views around the lake and from the Arboretum.”
