The Australian’s Australian of the Year: Brisbane Festival’s Louise Bezzina revived life performance
Brisbane Festival artistic director Louise Bezzina has been nominated for The Australian’s Australian of the Year for her two decades committed to Queensland’s live performance industry.
Louise Bezzina has been at the forefront of Queensland’s live performance industry for more than two decades, bringing even the unlikeliest events to fruition.
In September 2020, Ms Bezzina defied the odds and delivered one of the only in-person events to go ahead in the wake of Covid-19.
The Brisbane Festival took place under the banner of Boldly Brisbane and brought art, music, dance and theatre to every suburb in Brisbane.
For her consistent contribution to the arts across the past 21 years and her determination to revive live performance amid a pandemic, Ms Bezzina has been nominated for The Australian’s Australian of the Year award.
Inspired by the invitation by Rome’s mayor at the time, Virginia Raggi, for Romans to open their windows or step on to their balconies and sing every evening during lockdowns in 2020, Ms Bezzina’s Boldly Brisbane was designed to bring live performance to people who had been missing it for months.
Ahead of the event, Ms Bezzina released a welcome statement that said while the impact of Covid-19 had been devastating, the Brisbane Festival was ready to welcome artists and audiences.
“I am proud to say that this year we will employ more Brisbane artists than ever before. We will invite audiences back into our beloved venues … And we will fill the city with music and be proudly Boldly Brisbane,” she said. “These messengers of hope are our gift to you and an invitation to look up and smile.
“Please enjoy our special, mostly free springtime celebration made for these unusual times.
“I invite you to ‘do as the Romans do’ and sing and dance in the streets of Brisbane. It’s time to have some fun.”
Brisbane Festival 2020 in Review said the event “took the art to the people, filling the streets, parks, walking paths, cul-de-sacs, and local businesses with a Boldly Brisbane live performance program” via Street Serenades, Exercise Surprises and All You Need is Love initiatives.
“(Street Serenades) was the largest music project in Brisbane’s history, with almost 400 local artists and arts workers traversing all 190 suburbs of Brisbane on four bespoke stages covering every music genre,” the review said.
While Street Serenades brought music to Brisbanites’ doors, Exercise Surprises delivered impromptu puppet shows, acrobats and cheer squads, and All You Need is Love provided “flash-mob fanfare” including drag performances and a marching band.
The festival was beloved by locals and celebrated by the international arts industry. The Big Idea New Zealand, an online platform dedicated to the arts, commended the event for facing the “impossible task of staging an event when borders were closed”.
After kicking off her career as director of the Mackay Festival of Arts in 2004, Ms Bezzina worked in the industry for seven years in several Queensland cities. In 2011, she founded Bleach Festival on the Gold Coast, where she continued as artistic director until 2019.
She was part of the creative lead team for the Commonwealth Games cultural program, Festival 2018, for which she was named one of 11 inspiring women of the Games. After she was made artistic director of Brisbane Festival in May 2019, she oversaw the event for five consecutive years.
For her “distinguished service to the Queensland arts industry”, Ms Bezzina was awarded an honorary doctorate from Griffith University in 2023.
She remains at the helm of the Brisbane Festival as it gears up for the 2025 event in September.
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