Despite South Australia Government support Adelaide Festival records 2024 loss

Australia’s oldest and most prestigious arts festival made a loss in presenting its 2024 edition, despite an injection of $2.3 million from the South Australian government six months earlier.

As reported by Guardian Australia, management of the Adelaide Festival confirmed on Friday it will post a deficit, with details to be revealed in a financial report next month.

The spokesperson said the deficit expected to be announced next month was due to more free events being staged in 2024 and a downturn in ticket purchases, which was in line with other recent festivals around the world.

However, the event is also understood to have experienced a loss of sponsorship after three pulled out.

A festival spokesperson confirmed to the Guardian that in 2023 three sponsors withdrew support “due to misalignment with our values when we included Palestinian writers in Adelaide Writers’ Week”.

The 2024 Adelaide Festival was the first curated by British Artistic director Ruth Mackenzie, who has been reported as being set to leave the leave the event midway through her tenure and will no longer deliver the 2025 and 2026 festivals as per her contract.

On Monday, Adelaide news website InDaily reported that Mackenzie would be taking up a new role as Program Director, Arts, Culture and Creative Industries Policy, within the South Australian Department of the Premier and Cabinet. 

Mackenzie was appointed as the Festival’s AD in 2022, with the event’s then chair Judy Potter describing her at the time as “a powerhouse of the British and European festival and arts communities” and commenting that the Festival was “very excited” to see what she would bring to Adelaide.

Mackenzie also prematurely left her previous role, as Artistic Director at Paris’s Théâtre du Châtelet, amid controversy.

In August 2020, Mackenzie told the Guardian her sacking had been “brutal” and “inexplicable”.

Brett Sheehy, who directed the festival from 2005 to 2008, has been brought in as locum Artistic Director, while the board and management conducts a new recruitment process.

Image: Ruth Mackenzie. Credit: Claudio Raschella.