Vivid Sydney Festival: Elements and Concepts of Staging and Theming

This essay discusses the primary elements and concepts involved in Vivid Sydney Festival's staging and theming, and reflects on the relationship between events concept, audience, staging, and theming. It covers the festival's theming, audience, stakeholders, sponsors, and the relationship between concept, theming, and staging.

Running head: EVENT AND FESTIVAL MANAGEMENT 1
Event and Festival Management
Name:
Institution

Event and Festival Management 2
Introduction
Vivid Sydney is considered to be a yearly light, ideas, as well as music’s festival that is
held in Sydney. It entails outdoor immersive light installations as well as projections,
performances by both international and local musicians, and a forum for exchanging ideas that
features public debates and talks led by creative thinkers. This essay is divided into two sections.
The first part aims at discussing the primary elements and concepts that are involved in Vivid
Festival’s staging. The concept deals with identifying the audience as well as other stakeholders
while the staging aims at addressing the venue and the festival’s theme. Additionally, the second
part offers a reflection on the relationship that exists between events concept, audience, staging,
as well as theming.
Part A
Vivid Sydney is viewed to be the world’s largest ideas, music, and light’s festival that
will run from Friday 25th May to Saturday 16th June. The much loved Customs House aims at
celebrating Australian and NSW’s artists as well as international creative innovators that
headlines vivid ideas, music as well as artists(Ahmad et a., 2012). The Harbour City will be
painted with colors as well as spectacles of vivid light. The theming of the Vivid Sydney festival
is on Vivid Music’s electric performance as well as cooperation and availing an international
forum through thought-provoking debates and discussions on creative ideas.
The Vivid Music takes over the 2018 event that has an electric line-up that ranges from
noise to jazz as well as sonic experience to soul. The highlights consist of a one-night-only act
from St. Vincent, and Curve Ball’s return that is headlined by Alison Wonderland. The
extraordinary rise in jazz features the Branford Marsalis and the globe’s finest jazz vocalists

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(Daniel, Bogdan & Daniel, 2012). The vivid ideas aim at providing a forum for workshopping,
collaborating, and cultivating fresh thinking in driving the creative ideas across technology,
design, culture, as well as entertainment. The Vivid Light extends to Luna Park Sydney. The
primary theme of the show is to celebrate the history, creativity, fantasy, magic, engineering, as
well as imagination that are joined to develop millions of memories (Dredge et al., 2013). The
audiences of the festival are people located in Australia as well as the globe who target to be
mesmerized by the Vivid Sydney pogrom.
The NSW Government’s tourism and major events agency Destination NSW owns,
manages, and produces the Vivid Sydney festival. Vivid Sydney’s partners include American
Express and Samsung. The festival’s supporters include, Technical Direction Company, Oracle
Liquid, Transgrid, 32 Hundred Lighting, Property NSW, City of Sydney, Sydney Opera House,
TAFE NSW, and Transport for NSW (Geus, Richards & Toepoel, 2016). Other sponsors include
Vivid Sydney’s Access, Cushman and Wakefield, Coca-Cola, Banksia Foundation, Vivid
Collaborators, CSIRO, Gateway Sydney, Kennards Hire and Red Balloon, ATS Logistics, and
Network 10.
Part B
Reflecting on the content covered in this subject regarding the concepts, theming, as well
as staging of events, I have noticed that a strong relationship exists between event’s concept and
staging. Staging entails bringing all the elements of an event for presentation together. The theme
is the decisive factor that distinguishes particular events from each other (Hudson, Roth, Madden
& Hudson, 2015). Thus, it is important that the event’s organizers take into consideration the
links that exist between event’s concept and staging as the event creation process’s primary part.

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From the content covered in the subject, it is clear that for producers to produce
successful special events, they should be in a position to combine past experiences, analytical
research, as well as creative ideas into an event’s strategic planning process. The focus should be
on the audience, theme, and congruent design to facilitate in supporting the individual processes
that assist in determining the event’s quality as well as the overall emotional impact (Jaimangal-
Jones, 2014). Theming entails performance from people who act or participate in the process of
influencing the audience with the intention of creating the desired impact. From the foregoing, I
observe a strong relationship between the theming and the audience. As the events get underway,
people who are performing with the aim of bringing out the event’s theme sway and take the
center-stage (Van Winkle & Woosnam, 2014). On the other hand, the audience comes to the
event with the intention of experiencing the expertise, knowledge, as well as charisma from these
primary performers and the ability of this audience to interact with the theme being expressed.
Hence, for a strong relationship to exist between the audience and the theming, the people who
are involved in the event should be in a position of matching with the event’s theme.
Additionally, I acknowledge the existence of a relationship between staging and concept
since the audience does determine the sponsors required as well as the artists to perform in the
event. The target audience refers to the customer group that forms an event’s focus (Rieke et al.,
2012, October). The original event design depends on the target audience demographic profile
and the number of the targeted audience. From the above criteria, an event is able to obtain its
image as well as determine the budget which will impact on the sponsors required. The target
audience determines the artists to perform, the theme, and the event’s venue. Thus, beginning
from the original conceptualization to the initial implementation of an event, the whole process
takes into consideration the characteristics as well as the behaviors of the target audience and the

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staging as a whole (Stadler, Fullagar & Reid, 2014). The cost to be incurred by the event’s
organizers will obviously vary depending on the profile as well as the number of audiences that
are targeted and the event’s theme. This will, in turn, determine the event’s sponsors and the
stakeholders. Nonetheless, the concept determines the staging since the venue as well as all other
costs are influenced by the number of the expected audience.
The event’s stakeholders and sponsors make use of events as an efficient communication
tool in creating the desired position for themselves among the audience. The stakeholders are
strongly linked with the events since they avail funds that full or partially help in subsidizing an
event to make it affordable to the audiences. These stakeholders help in staging as well as
theming an event. From my point of view, all the three elements of an event that include the
concept, theming, as well as staging must be associated if an event is to be successful. The
concept which consists of the stakeholders and the audience to a large extent determine the
staging of an event (Ziakas & Boukas, 2014). This is because the number of expected audience
will determine the budget required and as a result influence the number of sponsors required for
an event. The theming as well determines the audiences that will want to be associated with a
particular event. Lack of any of the three factors will result in the failure of the entire event. For
instance, if there are inadequate stakeholders and sponsors of an event, the staging of the event
will be poor and as a result, very few audiences would turn out. Also, the event’s theme will also
have an influence on the concept in that the stakeholders and the audiences will be greatly
influenced by the theming.

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Conclusion
It is evident that for any event to be successful, there must be a close relationship
between the event's concept, theming, and staging. This is because if one of the elements is not
taken into account, the entire event is negatively impacted and the intended purpose may not be
achieved.

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References
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(2013). Drivers of change in tourism, hospitality, and event management education: An
Australian perspective. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Education, 25(2), 89-102.
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