Festival Commons is a new initiative from Sydney Festival that supports the next generation of IBPoC (Indigenous, Black and People of Colour) festival-makers, curators and cultural conveners in Greater Sydney and the Asia Pacific.
We’re assembling community leaders who are already shaping gatherings across artist-led spaces, skate parks, community kitchens, drag houses, garage parties, club nights, Discords, TikToks and more.
Our goal is to connect and empower participants to expand the influence of their work in festivals and beyond. Festival Commons is a structural intervention, offering mentorship and resourcing to deepen existing practices among peers, alongside opportunities for skills development, sector leadership and international exchange.
Four participants from Greater Sydney and two participants from the Asia Pacific will be selected for the inaugural cohort. Together, they will form the first Festival Commons: a collective of cultural disruptors reshaping what festivals can be.
What's involved
Festival Immersion: A 10-day in-person lab from 8 – 18 January 2026, embedded within Sydney Festival’s 50th anniversary program. Dive into masterclasses, roundtables, workshops and provocations with leading artistic and curatorial voices from across Australia and around the world.
Indulge in specially crafted itineraries of informal gatherings and site visits that bring the group together in the height of Sydney’s summer. Engage with headline shows through complimentary tickets and behind-the-scenes access, offering a rare peek into how a major international festival comes together.
Pre and post-Festival online sessions: Digital gatherings shaped around urgent sector conversations, designed to connect the cohort across time zones and extend the learning beyond the lab.
Peer-to-peer exchange: Festival Commons is designed to honour the expertise in the room. The cohort will spark provocations, collaborate on ideas and learn from each other’s ways of hosting, gathering and making with community.
Why we're doing this
In Australia, we only have 5% diverse leadership of our performing arts organisations, and close to no representation across our major festivals. These statistics reflect a national sector out of step with the communities it serves, and hurt us all. Festival Commons is a program designed specifically to support emerging curators and producers who identify as Indigenous, Black and/or People of Colour. This focus is intentional, to redress the historic and ongoing exclusion of IBPoC practitioners from positions of leadership and decision-making in the festivals and cultural institutions.
By centring IBPoC voices, the program seeks to create space for leadership models, curatorial frameworks and sector relationships that emerge from lived experience, community connection and cultural knowledge systems that have too often been marginalised.
We invite you to stand with us in this purpose by championing IBPoC-led leadership in your own circles, organisations and communities.
Who can apply
We invite applications from:
- Curators, producers, cultural organisers and creative workers who identify as IBPoC.
- People based in Greater Sydney (with a specific emphasis on Western Sydney), including those working in or alongside community.
- People based anywhere in the Asia Pacific. International participants are funded by Creative Australia, whose strategic priorities are Japan, Korea, Taiwan, mainland China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, India and New Zealand. If you are based elsewhere in the Asia Pacific, you can still apply, but get in touch if you have any questions.
- Those who may not identify as “leaders” but are already leading from within the community, in informal or self-determined ways.
- People working in ways that are experimental, collective, community-driven and/or interdisciplinary.
We especially welcome those working outside institutions, or who’ve been overlooked by traditional leadership programs.
Interested?
Read more about the initiative and how to apply.
Register for an online information session.
