Sydney Festival director poached by prestigious international competitor

Sydney Festival chief Olivia Ansell has been appointed artistic director of Toronto’s prestigious Luminato Festival.

Ansell, who has directed the past three Sydney Festivals, will present her final Sydney program in 2025 before taking up the new Canadian role the same year. Her contract there runs for four years with a one-year renewal option.

Bound for Canada: Olivia Ansell will present one more Sydney Festival before departing for Toronto.Credit: Rhett Wyman

Ansell said she was “honoured” to join Luminato.

“Toronto is a remarkable city and I look forward to fostering creative exchange among artists, organisation and communities locally and worldwide,” she said.

There were, she said, many similarities between Sydney and Toronto, including their relative size, and she was looking forward to encouraging people there “to discover their city differently”.

Luminato, which was founded in 2007 and happens in June each year, claims to be an arts festival that knows no bounds. Luminato chief executive Celia Smith said she was “immensely excited” to bring Ansell on board.

“Ansell’s dedication to cultural storytelling, audience engagement and animating place will help deepen Luminato’s impact as a cultural city-building organisation,” she said. “She has a natural talent for understanding the pulse of a city and presenting it in an authentic manner.”

In a mark of how keen the Canadians were to secure Ansell’s services, they have agreed to keep the position open for her, leaving their upcoming festival without a formal artistic director following the resignation of former director Naomi Campbell.

The 2024 Sydney Festival, which officially closed on January 28, has been generally warmly received both by reviewers and patrons. Official attendance figures will be released next month. Last year’s festival drew more than 420,000 attendees to a broad range of venues, large and small, around the city.

“One of the comments that I hear quite a lot is an appreciation of the breadth of the program and the diversity on offer,” she said.

One innovation at this year’s festival was the adoption of the wharves at Walsh Bay as a festival hub dubbed the “Thirsty Mile”. Ansell hinted the precinct might be open for business again next year.

“We’re very, very thrilled with how the precinct went,” she said. “We’d love to be back there, bigger, bolder than ever, so watch this space. We do feel like we’ve found a wonderful new home that we can now expand and build upon.”

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