The organisers of SXSW Sydney called members of the media to UTS this morning to make the first of many announcements about the upcoming futurist conference and festival, which will decamp from Texas for the first time ever for the inaugural Harbour City edition this October. The first “badges” that allow entry to the “South by Southwest” festival are also on sale now, with early bird prices ranging from $895 to $1,295 AUD.
As announced earlier, the SXSW Sydney 2023 Music Festival will take over multiple live music venues in central Sydney, where official showcasing artists will perform in front of industry reps, media and thousands of fans and fellow musicians from across the globe.
The rest of the festival will be encompassed in a “walkable footprint” within the Sydney CBD and surrounding neighbourhoods – including Haymarket, Darling Harbour, Ultimo and Chippendale. With the support of TEG and Destination NSW, which helped secure SXSW as an annual event for the next five years, SXSW promises the city will “transform into a vibrant, interconnected hub of event formats, including festivals, performances, premieres, exhibitions, meet-ups, speakers, pitches and networking opportunities, with ideas and surprises to uncover on every street corner”.
The first keynote speaker to be announced is Amy Webb, the CEO/founder of Future Today Institute. Colin Daniels, managing director, SXSW Sydney said:
“In choosing our first keynote, we wanted to make sure the person represented exactly what South by Southwest is – a futurist event designed to educate and inspire, showing you what tomorrow could look like, promoting challenging conversation and thinking. Futurist, author and thought leader Amy Webb is the perfect choice. She will be joined by fellow changemakers and innovators, including the de-extinctionists Ben Lamm and Dr. Andrew Pask, [chief] evangelist [of Canva] Guy Kawasaki, and many, many more.”
Photograph: Supplied/SXSW Sydney
Other featured speakers announced today include Bundjalung woman Kyas Hepworth, the head of Screen NSW, and Manal al-Sharif, a Saudi women's rights activist who helped start the right to drive campaign in 2011.
The first international music acts to drop include English singer-songwriter Connie Constance, moody post-punk Canadian artist Ekkstacy, indie London band Los Bitchos, all-women Japanese punk rock band Otoboke Beaver, and American rapper, songwriter, and record producer Redveil.
As Daniels, a SXSW die-hard who has travelled to the original Texan festival 16 times, put it: “[You might not see BTS], but you’ll see the next BTS at SXSW.”
Speaking on how Sydney will hold up to taking on the baton from the OG SXSW, which will continue to run in March every year, Daniels had this to say:
“Flume started in Sydney. Atlassian, Canva – our tech industries, our gaming industries, our directors, producers, writers in film. We have such incredible talent in our country, in our region. And it starts by amplifying that talent, giving them a stage. I’ll give you an example. When we say Billie Eilish, we think of Billie Eilish now. Claire Collins, our head of music, who ended up being Billie Eilish’s publicist for this side of the world, saw Billie Eilish play to 200 people completely unknown at South by Southwest. Everyone starts somewhere, and our role is to amplify, to show the world the great talent we have.”
So what can you expect from a typical day at SXSW? Daniels says:
“You wake up in the morning, you might have a breakfast meeting, then you will head off to a networking brunch for a technology company. You'll see a screening, and on the way you'll pass five or six incredible activations, whether it be a film launch, or a new technology launch. After lunch, you'll start seeing bands at day parties, then you might go to a gaming launch. Then you'll see more bands and more screenings. The parties, the networking events every day, from morning to night – there are meet-ups, happy hours, late-night parties, and all of the brands and organisations, so many of them have already reached out and confirmed that they'll be involved in doing that.”
Sydney is in a full-on year of festivals, with barely any time to catch breath in between. Sydney Festival kicked off the year with a valiant return in January, and Sydney WorldPride will turn the city rainbow with an Olympic-sized festival from February 17 to March 5, then Vivid Sydney is back in action from May 26 to June 17, following on from lighting up the city with its biggest footprint ever in 2022. On a smaller but also impressive scale, Human Kind Festival will bring together some of the world’s brightest minds at Luna Park over three days in March.
To access what SXSW Sydney has to offer, you need a badge. Platinum and Industry badges are now available at Early Bird prices, here.
Applications are now open for SXSW Music Festival performances, Screen Festival screenings, and panel proposals. SXSW Sydney will take over from October 15-22, 2023. Find out more at sxswsydney.com.