Brisbane Festival’s Art Director Ebony Bott On Career, Curation & 2026 Program Must-Sees
behind the scenes
By Victoria Lewis | 4th September 2026What does it take to curate one of the country’s largest citywide festivals? Taking experience as former Head of Contemporary Performance at the Sydney Opera House, Brisbane Festival’s new Artistic Director, Ebony Bott, has built a decades-long career curating based on the question: what will make all audiences want to get involved?
As Brisbane Festival’s opening weekend looms, I chatted to Ebony about what goes into curating a program of this scale, how she balances innovation with public appeal, and her must-see events on the schedule.
What actually goes into curating a citywide festival?
Festivals aren’t programmed in a day, but over decades of network building and consuming arts from all over the world. During Ebony’s tenure at the Sydney Opera House, she learnt to consider the audiences who weren’t going to the Opera House as much as those who made regular appearances. She has to create a program for everyone, not just the already arts-obsessed. So, in curating Brisbane Festival 2026, she is constantly thinking to herself at every step, “ How is this tied back to local? Why is this relevant? Why would the people of Brisbane and Southeast Queensland wanna come and be part of this festival?”
After experiencing an influx of new audiences with Choir of Man at the Opera House, she knew it had to be in Bris Fest. The feel-good show set in a working pub will be the centrepiece of the Magic Mirrors Spiegel Tent, a production that aims to encourage new patrons into Brisbane’s artistic forecourt.
Speaking of centrepieces, when I ask Ebony what she is most proud of about Brisbane Festival 2026, she talks about the enormous feat of creating Verso Projects’ Festival Village South Bank. It acts as a central space, easily accessible and identifiable to the broader public, programmed from morning until night with hundreds of artists.
”There’s something about when you come into an organisation, and you say, “Hey, guys, I wanna build a village. Can we do it?” That’s a really big thing to do [but] everyone just helped me turn it around and pull it off, and it’s literally being built right now.” The idea was to give a nod towards the Olympic Village in the lead-up to Brisbane 2032, incorporating the river, the arts, and the public sphere in one tangible space. “Where does art, culture, and sport collide, and how can we have that all housed in one giant village?”
How do you make a festival feel “distinctly Brisbane”?
“ I think that each festival, no matter where you are in the world, has to speak to place. And for me, that is about the artists that are in this place – it’s about the geography and the rhythms of the city,” says Ebony.
She gives me the example of the morning program she has curated this year. “I responded this year to the fact that Brisbane is the world’s earliest rising city in the world. So the festival starts at sunrise… and goes right through to the other end of the day.” Ebony wanted to find a way to speak to our city of early risers that didn’t just lean into wellness, but really figure out a space for an early morning event within an arts context. So, she worked with choral master Emma Dean to produce Wake Up and Sing, where people can join in with community choirs from all across Brisbane down at South Bank. She also highlights an initiative in collaboration with the Queensland Conservatorium, where students will take their artistic warm-ups into the public sphere for all to see.
“So again, it’s sort of meeting those things of, again, addressing the fact that there are so many people out and about early in the morning, but also what are the artists doing at that time, or how can we turn venues inside out in that way.”
Programming for innovation vs public appeal
“ When we think about innovation through an arts lens, it’s like where do all the art forms collide? Like how do art forms continue to reinvent themselves?”
It was a similar thought process behind curating the Bright Nights by ANZ light show on the river. She pushed for this not only because “Brisbane loves spectacle” but because it’s a perfect merging of technology – namely 18-metre-high jets and lasers – and the arts, with a soundtrack hand-curated by the Veronicas.
”That could only happen in Brisbane.”
Bright Night by ANZ. Image: JD Lin
To her, curating in a way that balances innovation with public appeal is central to programming for a place, an audience, and a period of time. Alongside large-scale spectacles, she has also made sure to highlight emerging talent by collaborating with Metro Arts on Night Moves, “a platform for emerging and more experimental art forms,” that appeals to more alternative voices.
Curating Brisbane Festival is a careful balancing act. “ It’s about how each venue will always find a different audience, and that’s what’s really important is that you meet the audience where they are.”
What’s the Artistic Director’s “must-see” program event?
Though not one to openly play favourites, Ebony does let me know there is one late program inclusion that really has captured her attention and admiration. “ I have a feeling that when word of mouth will spread like wildfire, and there aren’t many tickets to this show,” she says. The show is Werewolf, by Binge Culture. She says when she first saw the gripping production in New Zealand, “over 60 minutes, I just had the best time. I sort of laughed, I sang, I screamed.”
In saying that, the whole of Ebony’s program is of true must-see status – a program certainly doing its job of speaking to a city. “ Across all of our shows, across all the venues, it does feel like this festival really knows how to take over this city, and I feel so proud and so humbled to be part of it,” she adds.
Discover more on the full Brisbane Festival program; click here.
Imagery: Supplied (Brisbane Festival)
