The Australian International Design Awards, Australia’s longest standing and most prestigious awards for design and innovation, is now aligned to Vivid Sydney, the annual festival of light, music and ideas, to create the inaugural Australian International Design Festival.
The Design Festival will take place during Vivid Sydney 2013 from 30 May to 10 June and will feature an international design conference, a public design showcase, the prestigious Australian International Design Awards Presentation Ceremony and a series of design celebrations.
The Design Festival will build on Vivid Sydney’s spectacular showcase of Australia’s creative talent and will shine the spotlight on Sydney as an international design destination.
Brandon Gien, Managing Director of Good Design Australia, believes that aligning the Design Festival to Vivid Sydney is a natural fit and will highlight Sydney’s position on the world design map and elevate the important role good design plays in our daily lives.
“The inaugural Design Festival will promote Australian design to the world and will reinforce the message that Sydney is an international city with iconic design at its core. We are looking forward to working with the NSW Government, through its tourism and major events agency Destination NSW,
and Business Events Sydney to deliver a world class design event.”
The Design Forum, an integral part of the Design Festival, will feature some of the world’s most prominent design leaders who will talk about the latest industry trends and spark debate on how design is playing a leading role in shaping a better future.
NSW Deputy Premier and Minister for Trade and Investment, Andrew Stoner MP, said Vivid Sydney has global recognition as a key creative industries event for attracting international business visitors.
“Sydney is the creative capital of Australia, and with almost 40 per cent of Australia’s creative industries based in our harbour city, Vivid Sydney indeed shines an international spotlight on our local talent,” Mr Stoner said.
“Our visitor economy gains from hosting strategic creative industries events, and the value to our economy as a whole is boosted. Business events like these spur valuable trade and investment opportunities, link our local industry to the world’s leading thinkers and professional networks, and breed innovation and new ideas.”
The creation of the Australian International Design Festival was made possible with support from Destination NSW and Business Events Sydney, who helped secure the event in Sydney.
Destination NSW CEO, Sandra Chipchase, said the Australian International Design Festival joins a number of other high-profile creative industries events at Vivid Sydney including Mumbrella 360, the 2013 International Symposium of Electronic Arts and CeBIT Australia.
“Last year Vivid Sydney’s Ideas program featured over 100 creative industries events with more than 7,500 people attending 14 days of free and ticketed talks, workshops and networking events. These events yielded many new relationships and investments between creative industry professionals, and I am delighted the Australian International Design Festival will continue to provide these opportunities to local, interstate and international design practitioners during Vivid Sydney,” Ms Chipchase said.
Business Events Sydney’s Chief Executive Officer, Ms Lyn Lewis-Smith, reiterated Sydney’s appeal as a destination of choice for global events and the value of leveraging existing events to bring new opportunities to Sydney and NSW.
“Vivid Sydney is proving very attractive to international conferences as a platform for exchanging ideas and networking with the world’s creative innovators and design gurus. We are Australia’s global city and are committed to securing business events that drive knowledge, innovation and relationships,” Ms Lewis-Smith said.
The Australian International Design Awards will be calling for entries from 1 February 2013 to feature in the inaugural Design Festival. Finalists will be invited to take part in the Good Design Showcase at Westfield Sydney, Bondi Junction and Parramatta shopping centres during the Design Festival.
For more information, visit: www.designawards.com.au
