Your Guide to Festival Park
Our hub of all the DF20 Homegrown action, Festival Park, opens tomorrow night (Thu 6 Aug). But with things looking a little different this year, we thought we should provide you with a guide to what to expect when you drop in this year.
First off Festival Park is still the place to eat, drink and catch up on a range of free and ticketed entertainment. Bring a picnic rug or a cushion and set up on the grass with your ‘bubble’. Enjoy a tasty morsel from some of Darwin’s favourite eateries cooking up a storm onsite or refresh yourself with a drop from one of the Coopers bars.
Before you even head out please register your contact details to help us keep everyone COVID safe – this is a requirement of entry this year.
Entry to Festival Park is from Smith Street. With capacity limited to allow for physical distancing, you may have to queue up to enter, so please be patient. The good news is, if you already have a ticket to a show on the Sunset Stage then you can move to the front of the line for priority access on the night of your show.
If you are seeing a Sunset Stage show, you exchange your ticket for a wristband at the main gate, which will allow you to move between Festival Park and the Sunset Stage. You can set up in the ticketed area from 5pm and settle in with a drink from the bar – or bring food and drink in from the main Festival Park area. On Friday and Saturday your wristband allows you to kick on under the stars at Club Awi – and friends without a Sunset Stage ticket can join you from 10pm by buying a $5 ticket at the door.
As always, the Rimfire Energy Bamboo Bandstand will host free music every night the park is open and free dance performances on Saturday and Sunday evening. So, while you eat and drink and hang out with friends, you can kick back to some great local tunes and moves. Late-night music lovers can also enjoy a free show on Thursday 13 August when Tutup Mulut perform their electro acoustic Indonesian space music in Malam (Night).
Those up for the challenge of saving a cartoon hero from certain doom can get involved in Avoidable Perils. This social experiment beamed to screens in Festival Park asks you to SMS to help determine the fate of a series of characters. The more people who get involved, the more likely the onscreen heroes are to be saved – so rally that contact list!
Take a wander through the Park and discover the free photography exhibition Still Life in Lockdown, a series of images taken in Darwin and Lismore (NSW) during the stay at home restrictions.
Festival Park opens 5pm tomorrow night with the free Housewarming event and is open every night until Sun 16 Aug (closed Monday 10 August). Entry is free (limited capacity).
