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Moon Lantern Parade at the OzAsia Festival 2015. Photo courtesy OzAsia Festival.
(Department of Education NSW, 2015)
This guideline speaks of the importance of a “collaborative” and “flexible” pathway and is much like the “open architecture” that Critical Path aspires to. Nonetheless the real impact of the dialogical participation between performers and audience at “process-centred” festivals cannot be tracked in engagement numbers and Critical Path has found that the impact of the experiences can often only be relayed anecdotally. On the other end of the spectrum to the Interchange Festival was the OzAsia Festival, hosted by the
Adelaide Festival Centre. I had the privilege to attend this festival courtesy of Critical Path and explore intercultural engagement on this scale. The 2015 OzAsia Festival featured 180 scheduled activities including more than 90 performances, 8 exhibitions, 15 film screenings, 10 speaking events and a variety of workshops and other activities. More than 270 professional artists performed across the Festival and more than 2,500 people participated in a variety of community events, performances and workshops. The festival reached record attendance figures of 230,000. (Adelaide Festival Centre, 2015) The figure