You Are Here Festival

Canberra’s You Are Here Festival (March 13 – 23) is in its fourth year running at locations around the CBD. The festival’s hub is located at the old ANZ branch in Petrie Plaza, appropriately named “The Money Bin”. The curated festival showcases the best of Canberra’s diverse independent and experimental arts and culture; ranging from theatre, dance, visual art, music, poetry and more. Originally commissioned by Robyn Archer as a lead up to the Centenary of Canberra,  it has grown into a cultural event for Canberra.

Canberra has a lot of quality art to offer, which is one of the reasons why You Are Here has grown rapidly each year. This year’s festival program featured 50 plus pages of an enticing range of planned events.

Vanessa Wright, one of the five producers of the festival, thinks it’s important for Canberra and Canberrans to have a festival such as You Are Here.

“It’s important to have a space in which people can share what they do,” she says. “To take it outside of their bedrooms or their garage or wherever they’re doing their work at the moment and have a place to show that and to create a since of activity and a sense of energy around what’s happening in Canberra.  By pulling everything together into a ten day festival.”

The festival not only provides artists with a platform and a forum set in the middle of the city but it helps them as well. “We support them to do something a little bit different, to challenge them, to maybe step out of their comfort zone or to extend something that they’ve already been doing.  We like it to be a place of experimentation and growth,” says Wright.

Canberra CBD Limited has supported and sponsored You Are Here since it began in 2011. It is one of the many events they sponsor to help bring more people into the city. CEO Jane Easthope believes that You Are Here has the potential for the making of a bigger festival.

“They to us appear like sort of the embryonic start of something wonderful like the Adelaide Festival,” she says. “It’s the next generation and its loads of fun.  It’s more than just experiencing theatre and music and things, its community connection in its prime.  It gives these kids meaning and reason to stay as Canberrans. To not drift off into Melbourne or Sydney because they just can’t pursue their creative dreams here, so let’s try and create Canberra as the cultural capital.”

The art scene in Canberra may not be as big as Sydney or Melbourne, but Wright believes that the festival helps to reveal it.  “It’s an exciting city that’s full of culture, experimentation and emerging artists.  The art scene here is a little bit smaller and harder to find sometimes but it definitely exists,” she says.

Wright explains that the curation process is unlike other festivals, as there are no strict application guidelines. The producers seek out artists they are interested in or artists approach them.  “A lot of artists approach us with ideas that they have and things that they would like to do,” she says. “They may have seen the festival the year before and thought this is a really good place for me to try out this idea that I’ve had for a while and they come to us.”

The festival featured many ongoing attractions at key city venues – including Smiths Alternative, the Phoenix, Canberra Museum and Gallery and the festival’s headquarters for this year, the Money Bin. “It creates a bit of hype and a focal point.  A meeting point for people, for audiences and for artists.  They know they can come there and see something on or they can grab a program and see something later,” says Wright.

The future for You Are Here looks bright with the festival becoming bigger each year. “Hopefully one day we’ll support them throughout the entire year, so that there are popups and events spaces happening all year, with the focus on the March event,” says Easthope.

For more information on the You Are Here Festival visit their website.

Text and images by Vanessa Lam.