Photography festival to light up Canberra's winter.

Groom, Linda

[ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED]

From 11 July to 12 October, over 50 organisations in and around Canberra will combine to present the national photography festival, VIVID. Almost every available exhibition space is booked out with a festival program of more than 100 exhibitions and events ranging from outdoor projections to a photographic trade show.

The festival has come a long way since June 2004 when curators from the National Gallery, National Film and Sound Archive, National Museum of Australia, National Archives, Australian War Memorial and National Library of Australia met with lecturers from the Australian National University to discuss the possibility of synchronising their planned photographic exhibitions and an international conference on photography. The earliest available date, July 2008, seemed then to be a long time away, but the group adopted the methodology that comes naturally to Canberrans--plan early, establish a committee, and relentlessly circulate the minutes of meetings to both the interested and the bemused.

Slowly the number of participating organisations grew. The Canberra Museum and Gallery decided to use the opportunity to highlight its strong photographic collection and Old Parliament House booked the premiere showing of an exhibition of stunning contemporary photographs of the recent years of drought. Interstate photographers flew to Canberra to choose venues and commercial galleries scheduled photographic shows. VIVID evolved into a highly inclusive festival, encompassing not only the exhibitions of historic photography, which form its core, but also edgy contemporary photography and commercial, student and community photography.

The National Library assumed a convenor-like role in the festival and has funded an administrative support position. VIVID has developed into an excellent opportunity for the Library to collaborate with the broader cultural sector and also to attract a wider audience for the Library's own major exhibition on the photography of Charles Bayliss. An additional benefit of the process of developing the festival has been contact with a number of younger photographers whose work has been purchased for the Pictures Collection.

Involvement with VIVID has been a learning experience for the staff in the Pictures Branch. In many cases we have been able to adapt our existing skills--for instance, our collection management experience made it a simple matter to organise the promotional images contributed by VIVID participants. In other cases it has been a journey of discovery: we learnt that displaying sponsor logos in alphabetical order is an idea that can be improved upon, and that the apparently mundane act of mailing a brochure is in fact 'distributing collateral'.

VIVID is something of an experiment in broadly-based collaboration within the arts sector. We hope that Gateways readers around Australia will consider visiting Canberra between 11 July and 12 October to see the results. The VIVID program is online at www.nla.gov.au/vivid.

Linda Groom

Curator of Pictures