Arts

DreamBIG Children’s Festival Celebrates It’s 50th Anniversary This Year

DreamBIG’s Creative Producer, Georgi Paech speaks to Glam Adelaide about this year’s festival

The Adelaide Festival Centre’s beloved DreamBIG Children’s Festival returns this May. In 2025 DreamBIG celebrates its 50th Anniversary, and there is plenty packed into this year’s program.

DreamBIG wants to inspire the children of South Australia to reflect on their past, present and future with the theme ‘I Was, I Am, I Will Be’. This year’s program features more than 70 shows, activities, and exhibitions across 10 days. Young people and their families can experience music, storytelling, interactive play, and more, from the program which includes 9 world premieres and 12 South Australian premieres. 

DreamBIG’s Creative Producer, Georgi Paech, spoke to Glam Adelaide about the festival and shared with us her thoughts as to why the DreamBIG Children’s Festival is so vital for our arts culture here in South Australia. 

“This is my first year as a creative producer, so I’ve spent the last two years in the lead up to it thinking about what the role of DreamBIG is in our state’s creative landscape. The way that I think about it is that the arts is a great way to connect young people in a lot of ways. To connect them to themselves and the values that they hold most dear, to connect them to their peers, and to connect them to their wider community. The other word that I think of when I think of the role of the arts for young people is to help them to thrive, both now and in the future – for them to feel empowered and creative and curious, embed them with a sense of play. I think these are all really amazing things for young people to develop, both as children but also thinking about them as the citizens of the future.”

This year’s program is once again packed with so many brilliant opportunities for families. We asked Georgi what process she and her team go through when selecting what appears in the final program.

“One key element for DreamBIG is that we want every child to feel welcome, for it to be a festival that’s accessible for everyone, no matter their background or ability. So it’s really about thinking about selecting works that work for both a range of ages and a range of interests, and also to embed a feeling – particularly this year for DreamBIG‘s 50th anniversary – a sense of joy and fun. We have a range of shows that are in the theatre, but we also look at highly participatory works where young people are part of creating the artwork themselves.”

To commemorate the world’s longest running curated children’s festival, the parade will return to open the festival. Students across South Australia will join together for a grand, statewide birthday celebration on 7th of May with the DreamBIG’s Birthday Parade at the Adelaide Festival Centre. School teachers can also choose to host their own event at their school.

“For anyone who might have grown up with DreamBIG, or Come Out as it was called up until 2017, it used to begin with a parade every year. To look back on the 50 years, we decided to bring it back for 2025. Students who are participating will get a workshop in school with some of our artists to create props and costumes to take part in the parade. We’ve also partnered with Australian Dance Theatre, who have created an online resource for students to be able to create their own choreography, and the Heathfield Renegades for them to be able to do their own drum lines. There’s a lot of work that students will be doing in school ahead of the parade.

“We’ll be hosting a parade here at the Festival Centre on the 7th of May to open the festival, but we also encourage schools around the state to host their own parade at school. We’re going to be going out to about 18 regional schools to teach them some of the tools they might need to host their own parade, with the idea that during the opening week of the festival, children all across the state will be hosting parades at their school.”

There is so much packed into this year’s program.

“The program is bursting with so many amazing opportunities for families, and we’ve got some really incredible performances. We’ve got Zindzi & The Zillionaires coming on the Sunday of Big Family Weekend, which will be really fun. A lot of people know her from Play School, but she also has her own hip-hop band for kids, so that’s some of the music that she’ll be performing. We also have a theatre adaptation of Imagine LIVE, which is the beloved picture book by Alison Lester, which has been brought to life in a really interesting way using something called digital puppetry. Essentially the actors will do a drawing live on stage and then it will come to life. We’ve also got a great range of free activities out on the Festival Plaza. We’ve got a giant puppet theatre that young people themselves will actually puppet as part of the performance, and we’ve got an installation called The Plants where there are ‘magical’ sensors in a plant so you can use it to play music. It’s this incredible, unique instrument – making music with a plant!”

More than 2.5 million children have participated in the festival since its inception in 1974, and it remains an intrinsic part of growing up in South Australia, placing young audiences at the centre of fresh, inventive, imaginative, and inspiring arts experiences. 

DreamBIG Children’s Festival will take place from 7 – 17 May 2025 a the Adelaide Festival Centre. The full program and tickets are available now.

For more information, including age suitability, and to purchase tickets, visit the DreamBIG Children’s Festival website: https://dreambig.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au/

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