the sydney local: kings cross festival

Phew! the re-launched, re-imagined Kings Cross Festival is well and truly done and dusted for 2012 and what a roller-coaster ride it was....... from first pitching the idea to Sydney's Lord Mayor, Clover Moore to developing the various components of the Festival, rallying the community and praying for good weather. A big "thank you" goes to the Lord Mayor for the foresight in seeing beyond politics to what this community so desperately needed. And thanks be to a higher power for giving us brilliant weather!

I was excited and humbled to be appointed as the Festival Director for this first year and our time frame of just under 4 months was extremely daunting but we managed to pull it together with a great team and the help of some very talented locals who kindly agreed to be KX Festival CURATORS. Locals like Jill Dupleix and Terry Durack [food] Amanda Talbot [design] Sebastian Goldspink [Art] Glynis Traill-Nash and Damien Woolnough [Fashion] Warren Fahey [Culture] Mandy Sayer [Literary]. The inimitable Ignatius Jones was our Artistic Director and my buddy Alex from AZB Creative sprinkled his magic all over the event as Creative Director.

The State Government also came to the party with a major pledge of support and of course the businesses and the community really got behind us in all aspects - art, music, design, fashion, retail. The Potts Point Partnership [chamber of commerce] was the driving force behind the Festival and the board were really great in supporting the team 100% in what was a big vision with a short lead time. Our Event Producer, Shane Perdue managed to co-ordinate a multitude of events, fill out pages of DA's and design a rockin' website in under 3 months. Talent wrangler Danielle Johnston kept the all venues and the performers happy [no mean feat].

The whole gig lasted from Wednesday night till Sunday night - 5 nights and four days all up. We had late night shopping and retail specials, art walks, pop-up shops and pop-up art, performance artists, choirs, gospel masses, jazz singers, picnics, a community concert, literary talkfests, cake stalls, a 'recovery sunday', food specials, bar specials, and music and entertainment bursting out of the bars and nightclubs.

Jeremyville designed the creative for our posters, banners and program. Rachael Oakes-Ash wrote one killer of a program guide in the broadsheet style, which everyone in the precinct and beyond was reading AZB Creative 'style bombed' the local stores. Carlotta came back to the Cross and we even had a POEM commissioned by Blueprint Store as a present to the community!

The idea behind the Festival was to change the conversation about our neighbourhood - to show that we have a vibrant, creative and engaged community: I think we managed to do just that.

So much packed into a few days......too much to recount....I tried to keep up with the tweets on TWITTER and the instagramming @lorrainelock #kxfestival but there was so much going on!

Here below is a series of my highlights from the KX Festival.....