Weathering the storm: Rachael Azzopardi – Illuminate Adelaide

Weathering the storm

Story by Kate Le Gallez.

Page left: East End Echoes by City Lights. Photo by Frankie the Creative. Above: Rachael Azzopardi, co-founder and creative director of Illuminate Adelaide. Photo by Shane Reid.

Rachael Azzopardi, co-founder and creative director of Illuminate Adelaide, has just arrived on the other side of a literal and figurative storm. In the winter festival’s first year, Rachael and her team were forced to delay the opening night as severe storms lashed the city.

And then of course, Delta came calling, sending the state into lockdown. When we speak in early August, Rachael is still holding her breath, hoping the final weeks of the event can proceed uninterrupted. But she’s just about ready to exhale, in the peaceful surrounds of the home she’s made for herself in Normanville.

Born in Western Australia, Rachael moved to Adelaide at thirteen. Despite having spent a large proportion of her adult life living interstate and overseas, Adelaide has always been home. ‘I’ve always had a great pull to Adelaide,’ Rachael says. ‘It’s where I’ve grown up, where I’ve created a lot of what I’ve done – the foundation of what I’ve done – before I went on and furthered my career.’ Working in production and programming, Rachael’s CV reads like a greatest hits list of Australia’s arts and creative scene. The highlights of the highlights reel include working on Barrie Kosky’s Adelaide Festival, the Olympiad Cultural Festival for the Sydney Olympics, five years as executive producer at Melbourne dance company Chunky Move and a further five years as director of programming and artistic operations at the Sydney Theatre Company.

Then came a time of reflection. ‘I was in Sydney and I sort of came to a bit of a professional and personal decision that I wanted to have more of a balance,’ says Rachael. ‘When I worked at Sydney Theatre Company, it was pretty much 24/7. But also I felt like I’d done what I needed to do in terms of organisations; I didn’t see any other pathway for me and I wanted to create something new.’

She decided to return to South Australia for a sabbatical year. As her plan to return was taking shape, so too was the idea that the change she was looking for could embrace a completely new lifestyle. ‘We’d spent Christmases at Carrickalinga every year, renting a beach place. So I had always dreamed of having a place down at Carri or Normanville,’ she says. ‘Rather than buy something in the city, it actually was a great opportunity to create the different lifestyle that I wanted.’

Top left: Big Picture Series by Filip Roca. Middle: Airship Orchestra by Studio Eness. Bottom and right: Light Cycles by Moment Factory. All photos this page: Frankie the Creative.

And then, like so often when we make one of those big life decisions, things just started to fall into place. Rachael quickly found a house she loved in Normanville. It hadn’t been lived in for two years and was overgrown, but nothing could detract from the views over the township out to the sea and the peaceful tranquility of the rolling hills. She oversaw renovations through her sabbatical year and now splits her time between her mum’s place in Adelaide and Normanville.

South Australia had undergone its own form of renovation in Rachael’s absence. ‘It has a different energy. It’s become very entrepreneurial and very forward-facing. That year that I was around but not working...I just really got intoxicated and I thought, wow, this is where I want to be,’ she says. In this environment, Rachael’s desire to create something new could expand and crystallise into a specific idea. She reached out to former colleague Lee Cumberlidge and floated her idea with him over coffee. ‘He was really into it and so we decided to work together on it. And that’s where Illuminate Adelaide started,’ says Rachael. Big things can grow from small conversations, and these two immediately were thinking big. of it now. After a delayed but successful festival launch, the worst happened. ‘I don’t think we ever thought we’d be having to navigate a lockdown,’ says Rachael. While some events had to be cancelled, the festival has undoubtedly been a success.

‘We’ve just been so blown away by how South Australia has embraced the event and got out, really explored it, got amongst it,’ she says. My own family joined the long and snaking queue to view Light Creatures at the Adelaide Zoo – where giant pandas lolled in the grass, delicate jellyfish descended from the sky and my son imagined himself into a projection of strange and wild creatures in silhouette. Following lockdown, both Light Creatures and Light Cycles at the Botanic Gardens were extended to allow more people to experience the beautiful interplay of technology and nature presented by these events.

Already Rachael and Lee are beginning to program the 2022 event, with the festival supported by a major sponsorship from the South Australian Tourism Commission through to 2023. But for the moment, Rachael is looking forward to heading back to Normanville for the weekend having – touch wood – successfully shepherded her festival through a Covid-crazy world. The hills and the sea are calling.