Together with our delivery partners and funded by the City of Sydney, Reactivate Consulting delivered Surry Hills @Play Festival, a month-long activation programme in Surry Hills, Sydney during April 2023. The mission of the festival was to boost trade confidence and foot traffic in a neighbourhood with a high density of small retail and hospitality businesses underpinned by fun and playfulness. The goal of the festival was to attract local, city-wide, and intrastate visitors to Surry Hills during April 2023, with a focus of increasing the long term frequency of regular repeat visitors to the precinct from across Sydney.
Local context
Surry Hills is an inner-city suburb of Sydney that is known for its love of food, fashion and dogs, where local businesses thrive in a well-connected and supported environment. However, the ongoing effects of pandemic lockdowns, light rail construction and lockout laws have resulted in significant economic decline. Hospitality businesses have also been hit by staff shortages and increased supplier costs.
With this in mind, our goal was to bring back a sense of fun and play to reconnect the community and businesses in a fun and safe way that was inclusive of all ages and diversity of the community.
@Play presented an opportunity to reconnect and reignite through the freedom to play in a non-alcoholic driven way that boosted the profile of local businesses by bringing together the local shops, cafes, pubs, restaurants and community services.
Grant application
To deliver the festival, Reactivate applied for the City of Sydney’s Precinct Activation Grant. This $4 million program encourages collaborations between businesses, creative producers, cultural operators and community groups that renew local neighbourhood precincts within the city.
Festival concept
Surry Hills @Play focused on connecting local businesses and artists and worked collaboratively to create cohesive activations that would support each business individually and the precinct as a whole through fostering stronger local ties and networks to promote economic and social recovery. The concept was based on an understanding of what drives people to Surry Hills now, and what we could add to create new and interesting attractors - it’s inherently creative spirit.
The Reactivate team focused on incorporating a range of innovative, creative and inclusive programs for all ages and local communities across music, arts, performance and interactive experiences.
The festival was designed as a pilot program to showcase how collaborations with local businesses and artists can instigate economic and cultural recovery of a precinct.
Engagement
Two collaboration workshops, led by Art Bomb, were held with participating businesses to draw out ideas and activations that uniquely promote each shop and connect the precinct in a cohesive aesthetic.
Family drop-in workshops were held with local artist Handy with Scissors, to create connections within the community. Families that attended were able to see their crafts displayed at Play Day.
Implementation
Once the City of Sydney had awarded the grant, our team began event planning. Working with an experienced team of placemakers, festival producers, designers, artists, and creatives, we utilised collaborative processes and cultural programming to deliver the festival.
Key events during the month-long festival included:
• Surry Stories Bike Tours: Surry Hills @Play, The City of Sydney’s Cycling Team, and 107 Projects partnered to deliver an inclusive and creative bicycle tour through Surry Hills’ streets and laneways to share local stories on art, community, history and culture. Included in the activation were free bike tune-ups and a station to decorate your bike using repurposed and upcycled materials.
• Free children’s workshops: Zine workshops invited children to tell their own stories, while Brolga Dance Academy hosted dance workshops to explore and embrace contemporary Aboriginal dance.
• Design competition: to showcase Surry Hills’ unique concentration of design and architectural talent, the Play Design Competition engaged local architects, schools, universities and the broader design and innovation sector to create ‘portable playscapes’ that can make inventive use of public space.
• Pub Pups Exhibition: celebrated Dog Portrait artist Annabel Osborne was commissioned as an artist in residence at a local dog-friendly pub, The Carrington Hotel, to capture stories and images of Surry Hills’ local dogs, which were exhibited for the month.
• Perfect Pairing: contemporary artists partnered with 18 local businesses to create one-of-a-kind window displays
The month of activities culminated in Play Day on Sunday 30th April 2023. This full day event included local business and community group pop-ups, live performances, dog-friendly events, a makers market run by children, design competitions on exhibition, and a children’s installation presented by Box Wars.
Outcomes
Overall, Surrey Hills @Play collaborated with over 75 artists (including 25 under the age of 18) and 30 local businesses, community groups, artists, residents and designers. Throughout the duration of the event, the festival drew in a considerable number of attendees, with a notable influx on Play Day, which stood out as a separate entity within the month-long festivities.
The festival forged new relationships between artists and businesses, and demonstrated the benefits of fostering a robust sense of belonging. It is envisioned that collaborations built during the planning and delivery of the festival will encourage the precinct to manage the festival going forward, funding and engaging artists to continue @Play in April each year.
The success of @Play also demonstrates the ability of Reactivate to collaborate and put our strategic thinking and activation ideas into practice.
