It’s taken me a hot minute to digest my relationship with SxSW Sydney, which can only be described as “it’s complicated”.
On one hand, the event itself took me to five nights of incredible live shows, allowing me to consume immeasurable amounts of creative talent across dozens of venues. Being surrounded by people who love art, who show up for each other’s projects, who swap stories in smokers areas or share their last sip of water in a packed and heaving crowd (those who saw Ninajirachi at the Chippo, IYKYK).
Everything was magic… But somewhere between the brand activations, the kickass lineups and those God awful lanyards, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of dissonance, as I sensed something that was built to look like culture, but which harboured ulterior motives.
South by Southwest Sydney is billed as a catalyst. Australia’s great collision point for technology, creativity and ideas. The NSW Government reportedly poured more than twelve million taxpayer dollars into securing the rights to SxSW’s brand… And sure, the city came alive. On the surface, SxSW Sydney is a utopia of innovation and creative excellence, but I can’t help but wonder: Who is benefiting the most from all of this?
Without discounting the genuine displays of creative brilliance and innovative experiences I did encounter, SxSW Sydney represents corporatocracy in festival form. It’s a glossy system masquerading as disruption, a brand that sells “creativity” like cupcakes at a school fete. It partners with the same institutions that quietly shape the markets they claim to liberate: governing bodies, multinationals and major labels. Paradoxically, Sydney’s true innovators: independent musicians, small-venue owners, the community collectives that have held this city’s culture together through lockouts, lockdowns and everything in-between, were largely left to orbit the fringes of the event.
And yet, somehow (and true to form), that fringe still found its way in.
I encountered it in the unofficial showcases; the pop-up jams hosted by friends of friends in the sharehouses around the corners from the main venues; in the moments between panels, where old friends embraced and recounted their collective memories from the trenches of a creative venture. The people who’ve been making something out of nothing for years still showed up to SxSW Sydney whether invited or not, unwilling to let a corporate funded festival define Sydney’s creative ecosystem.
That’s the thing about creative communities: they don’t wait for permission. They start fires on the fringes of society that grow to engulf the mainstream (something that many of SxSW Sydney’s panel speakers will attest to). Real innovation doesn’t need a keynote stage… It needs connection, curiosity, and a little chaos. Although I encountered examples of innovation and community on my five incredible nights out, they sometimes felt like byproducts to the main event. This made me wonder, does it really take a multi-million dollar festival like SxSW Sydney to make the magic happen?
So, what do I think SxSW Sydney has done right this year? Its mobilisation of local venues within the geographic scope of the event, and a program that both empowers local talent and invites others to the Australian market to foster a global network of creatives. How do I think it can be even better? By remembering its immense power and responsibility to amplify the innovation that can’t be found in the corporate glow of a festival, and to celebrate the communities behind it.
I’m so thankful for the opportunity to experience an event like this, but I feel like it’s more important now than ever to recognise the difference between cultural and economic ventures, and resist the temptation to conflate these two intrinsically linked, yet vastly different, concepts.
What happens when innovation becomes a brand, not a belief?
