While many fans were elated at the news that The Flaming Lips would be playing a free show at The Domain in Sydney as part of the recent Sydney Festival, the show itself was not quite as ‘free’ as advertised.
Obviously, there’s no such thing as a ‘free’ show. Anytime a concert is held there needs to be a certain infrastructure in place and someone is footing the bill to ensure everything goes according to plan.
It’s that infrastructure that’s proving quite burdensome for the organisers of Sydney Festival. As Fairfax reports, organisers are questioning the suitability of The Domain as a large-scale music venue.
The space is frequently used to stage live music events such as the Field Day New Year’s Day festival, but since live music was not The Domain’s original intended purpose, it has to be converted into a music space for each event.
“The cost of setting up a stage, toilets, all of the equipment that needs to be brought in to stage an outdoor concert is very prohibitive particularly when it’s only for a fairly short-term event,” Sydney Festival board member David Borger told Fairfax.
Meanwhile, Sydney Festival director Lieven Bertels is calling for a permanent stage to be built in The Domain, arguing that staging free concerts in the space is costly because of the lack of proper infrastructure, including the lack of a stage.
“That comes at a real cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars to make it a safe environment, to provide the facilities,” he said in 2014. “It’s a big thing and there is no income against it.”
“The report also claimed outdoor concerts in The Domain cost 117 percent more than similar-sized concerts in Melbourne.”As Fairfax notes, a 2011 report into Sydney’s cultural facilities estimated the cost of erecting stages, temporary fencing, toilets, and other temporary facilities at $730,000, with a further $200,000 on for each event.
The report claimed the lion’s share of the cost and the risk of staging the outdoor shows was footed by Sydney Festival. The report also claimed outdoor concerts in The Domain cost 117 percent more than similar-sized concerts in Melbourne.
A 25-year redevelopment plan for the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain which was unveiled in 2014 proposed the building of a permanent “sound shell” in The Domain, but this was critised by former prime minister Paul Keating.
Keating said it would turn The Domain from a garden and meeting space into something primarily used by concert promoters, who have plenty of other spaces in greater Sydney at their disposal. “Why should the trust be bending over to facilitate this kind of abuse?” he said.
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Mr Bertels has echoed the sentiments of previous Sydney Festival directors in saying that the festival’s free concerts come at a potentially needless cost, since fans are willing to pay for the privilege of seeing The Flaming Lips.
Anthony Steel, who served as director of the festival in 1995 and 1996, said the Domain concerts were kept as part of the festival at the insistence of sponsors, but to the chagrin of organisers.
“What I call the face-painting side of the Sydney Festival has continued up to now,” he told Fairfax in 2005. “But my aim was to get rid of that sort of thing, ditch those two performances in the park [Jazz in the Domain and Opera in the Domain]…”
“…to my mind, they had absolutely no place being in an arts festival. But the representatives of the major sponsors were on the board, so that was that – we were stuck with it,” Steel added.
