Sydney Turns On The Lights To Beat The Winter Chill

JUNE 19, 2017

Encouraging 2.3 million people to step outdoors in Winter is no mean feat. Few do it better than Sydney’s Vivid light festival. For 23 days in June, when daylight hours are shorter and nights colder, Sydney-siders and tourists are encouraged to view popular parts of the harbour and iconic public buildings to witness an audio visual spectacle.

The centerpiece of Vivid is the blank canvas of the Opera House, where the distinctive shape and whiteness of Utzon’s sails allows for an array of visuals to be projected. Buildings like Customs House (replaced this year by the Museum of Contemporary Art due to light rail works) have provided interactive lights shows, some giving the appearance that the building is collapsing before your eyes.

The whole concept of a Winter lights festival was created to motivate people outdoors when typically they would prefer to be at home in a warm place. The quietness of winter had discouraged local tourism and in 2009 Sydney experimented with Vivid as a means to breathe life into a crisp Sydney harbour. In 2013, Vivid generated $20 million for the NSW economy. The event has experienced steady grown, in 2012 500,000 people attended and by expanding into new offerings like Vivid Music and Vivid Ideas, a record 2.3m visitors were recorded in 2016.

Each year the festival grows by numbers and spreads across the city to suburban areas allowing more people of the City’s 5million residents to enjoy the event.

For more information on what keeps Sydney vibrant in winter, visit https://www.vividsydney.com/