The SOOB 2003 logo, designed by Marni Franks. Marni was the inaugural winner of the SOOB logo competition.

SOOB 2003

SOOB's sophomore effort ran from December 3-7 in 2003.

The festival grew exponentially from the first year and quickly established itself as Brisbane's de facto fringe festival.

In in only its second year, SOOB 2003 showed it had developed into a unique new emerging arts festival of national significance, covering a much broader and more diverse range of artforms, practices, artists and creative industry workers than more traditional performing arts-based fringe festivals (eg Adelaide Fringe). For example, SOOB 2003 was (as in every year) the largest single gathering of new media arts, game development and digital arts in Queensland.

Download the SOOB 2003 Evaluation Report [Microsoft Word file]

Audiences at SOOB 2003's Here and Now exhibition featuring contemporary photogrpahy by Siobhan Thakur, Susan Kukucka and Ilona Cook.

SOOB 2003 Festival Successes

By any measure, the 2003 Straight Out of Brisbane festival massively over-achieved in its core goal of creating new outlets and opportunities for young and emerging south-east Queensland artists, and for the entire Brisbane independent scene in general.

The raw numbers tell it all. At the 2003 SOOB Festival, there were:

• 152 events
• 620 local and inter-state artists and speakers
• this made it the 3 rd-largest festival in Brisbane by numbers of events and participating artists
• approximately 8,000 people attending (more if public art is considered)
• 89.2% of our audience was under 30 years of age according to our audience surveys
• 95.4% of our surveyed audience said there were satisfied or highly satisfied
• a small but significant 6% of our audience travelled to SOOB 2003 from inter-state - in only the second year of the festival

The Straight Out of Brisbane created 137marketing, networking and showcasing opportunities for artists working in new and experimental arts practices, and for young, independent and emerging artists under-represented communities and backgrounds.

SOOB 2003 individual success stories:

Louise Terry received a $5,000 grant from the Next Wave festival to work on an “audio-visual theremin” with internationally-recognised new media artist Anna Helme (who has worked in London and Paris with internationally famous electronica record label Ninja Tunes). The outcome of this grant will be a season of performance at the Next Wave festival in May 2004

Grant Stevens , who appeared in several SOOB exhibitions and is a former visual arts coordinator for the festival, exhibited at the National Gallery of Australia in 2004.

Simulcast , who performed at several SOOB events, received significant contemporary music recognition, culminating in a national video-mixing slot for SOOB band Puhzaki at 2004's Big Day Out – an important career advancement.

SOOB’s visual arts coordinator Amanda Cuyler was approached by the Public Art Agency to curate a component of their Public Art exhibition as part of this year’s Internation year for the Built Environment. That project became the showpiece Young People and Public Art exhibition at Southbank for the Public Art Agency.

Anita Johnstone and Luke Illet, who curated Game Sy:sect for SOOB, travelled to Canada where they were employed by the Banff New Media Centre in Canada, a world leader in new media arts practice.

Riva Baum , who coordinated the zines and young writing component of SOOB, was appointed the Director of the National Young Writers Festival in Newcastle for 2004.

Tara Pattenden , who coordinated part of the new media program of SOOB, has toured internationally with her avant-garde contemporary music act Kunt. She played dates in Europe and North America. Tara has since moved to Berlin where she works fro Crazy Frog.

Marcel Dorney, who coordinated the theatre and independent performance component of SOOB, has since received a $10,000 grant from Arts Queensland to further develop some of his playwriting projects. These found fruition in his 2004 play for Metro Arts' Independents series, Harriers.

Thea Baumann, SOOB’s other new media coordinator, gained national recognition by curating an exhibition and screening of new media and digital video works for 2003’s Electrofringe at This Is Not Art. Since SOOB, Thea is now working for the Multimedia Asia Arts Pacific (MAAP) festival.

Luke Jaaniste , who participated heavily in SOOB programming and featured in several panel discussions, was profiled on Triple J for his work with the COMPOST collective. The COMPOST collective also received Arts Queensland major grant funding in the September 2003 round.

More than 50 Queenslandartists spoke or performed at 2003’s This is Not Art festival.

SOOB also worked closely with 2004-6 Next Wave festival Artistic Director Marcus Westbury to include significantly increased numbers of Queenslanders in 2004's Next Wave festival.

Marketing and publicity outcomes for emerging artists

The results of SOOB 2003 ’s marketing and media campaigns are highlighted below :

Triple J’s specialist emerging arts program Artery devoted an entire episode to SOOB on Wednesday the 3 rd December 2003. Triple J arts presenter Fenella Kernabone traveled to Brisbane to cover the event, and dedicated a special episode to SOOB featuring interviews, music, stories and all-Brisbane emerging content.

The Courier-Mail carried a strong profile for the festival, devoting a full-page feature article to the festival and supporting it with blanket “My Choice” recommendations in their TODAY section

Straight Out of Brisbane was positively reviewed by national contemporary arts publication RealTime.

Straight Out of Brisbane’s website, www.straightoutofbrisbane.com, received more than 90,000 hits and over 20,000 page impressions in November and December 2003

Straight Out of Brisbane was profiled strongly in all the Brisbane street-press (Rave, Scene and Time Off). The street press represent a crucial media market for Straight Out of Brisbane’s predominantly young audience.

SOOB also developed specific publishing opportunities of its own for young and emerging Queensland artists. SOOB received two publication grants from the Australia Council in 2003: a Visual Arts board grant for Summer, a publication of emerging Brisbane contemporary visual art, and a Literature board grant for Between Space, a Queensland anthology of experimental and new writing.

Straight Out of Brisbane also developed a series of highly successful media partnerships in targeted niches:

• Straight Out of Brisbane and 4ZZZFM developed a strong mutual partnership, with the festival advertising on the station, and the station in turn providing almost blanket coverage of the festival in the run-up to the event
• Straight Out of Brisbane and MAAP Magazine developed a media partnership. In the November 2003 edition, Straight Out of Brisbane’s film coordinator Sarah-Jane Woulihan (a 26-year old independent film-maker who has made both clips for Silverchair and activist documentaries) was the subject of a feature article
• Straight Out of Brisbane built on its strong partnership with Brisbane Marketing, who featured the festival with a full-page spread in their Festivus summer festival magazine, and also with advertising, listings and venue support in Fortitude Valley

Sponsorship outcomes

SOOB 2003 secured significantly more sponsorship in this year’s festival. Total in-kind sponsorship was in fact close to $30,000, and would total in the hundreds of thousands if the nearly-unquantifiable value of thousands of hours of volunteer time was taken into account.

SOOB received considerable in-kind support from the Brisbane City Council’s Visible Ink Space, in Fortitude Valley. Visible Ink supplies office space and general office resources such as printing facilities, internet, computers, stationary and photocopier use.

Other significant sponsorship this year included:

• Brisbane Marketing – mention in the Festivus magazine, donation of venues, general marketing advice
• Map magazine – media sponsorship
• Forwin – venue space
• IMA – venue space
• The Brisbane Powerhouse – venue space
• The Indie Temple –venue space
• The Elephant and Wheelbarrow – venue space
• Edwards Dunlop Paper – paper for poster printing
• Crystal Media – printing
• Videopro – a digital camera for the winner of the SOOB 2003 Logo Competition
• Kodak – prizes for the Kill Your TV film competition
• Taxi Film Production - prizes for the Kill Your TV film competition
• Cutting Edge - prizes for the Kill Your TV film competition
• Atlab - prizes for the Kill Your TV film competition
• QPIX - prizes for the Kill Your TV film competition
• IJS – sound and other equipment