At 47, Leigh Carmichael remains the picture of urban cool, dressed in head-to-toe black: jeans, T-shirt and a relaxed designer jacket. Time has added a few streaks of silver to his shoulder-length, light-brown hair but hasn’t messed with its enviable thickness. The creative director of Hobart’s midwinter festival, Dark Mofo, looks well, but the past couple of years have not been easy.

There was a pandemic to contend with, a health scare and a changed cultural landscape that had Carmichael questioning whether the world even wanted what he had to offer any more. The pandemic, in some ways, was the easiest challenge – Carmichael and his boss, MONA owner David Walsh, quickly cancelled Dark Mofo in 2020. In 2021, the festival was back, but was almost derailed by the mother of all backlashes against Carmichael for programming an artwork that met with widespread disdain.