Aislinn Kirkby

Áislinn Kirkby and the Full-Spectrum Festival Experience

Although still in her early twenties, Aislinn Kirkby has worked or volunteered at a seemingly countless number of festivals across Adelaide.

Since quitting her job at a supermarket in 2021, she’s become part of the community of ever-moving festival workers who bounce from event to event, finding their next job as they go along.

This mode of working has taken Aislinn from front of house jobs at Adelaide Fringe and Gluttony, to volunteering at Tasting Australia, roles at Nature Festival, and internships with the Adelaide Film Festival and Cabaret Festival, among many more, including working as a Box Office Assistant at the Edinburgh Assembly Festival.

“I’m not the most organised person, either, so it’s a bit chaotic,” says Aislinn. “A lot of people have a lot of jobs… [they] work for three different festivals at any one time or migrate between whatever’s going, and I’ve met people who have come from Melbourne to go for this job or are about to go to Sydney for another festival.

“But it’s something that unites everyone. Festivals is a universal love, especially in Adelaide where we’ve just grown up with them.”

Aislinn’s love for festivals bloomed from her love for music. After growing up surrounded by hymns at church and playing in a pipe band, she discovered the joy of music festivals in her late teens.

Volunteering on the gate at Spin Off festival was her lightbulb moment. Despite not even staying to see bands after her shift (how she deeply regrets missing Childish Gambino’s set), the camaraderie of the festival atmosphere made an impact.

“I was the wristbander… and everyone’s annoyed at them because they’re either too tight or too loose, or they’re stuck on your arm hair,” says Aislinn.

“And it was probably the worst job you could have on the day, but I don’t know. There was just something about [how] everyone there was so excited to be there, like, not just the people coming in but everyone else that was working alongside me.”

While she had been planning to study psychology at university, this singular experience prompted Aislinn to search for something else. She found it in the form of the University of South Australia’s Bachelor of Creative Industries with Festival and Tourism Management.

“It was about two months later that they announced the degree, because it was a brand new one,” Aislinn says. “I would be part of the first cohort to graduate and I thought, ‘This is awesome. There’s no other degree that has a Festivals major. Like, how cool is that’.”

The degree has offered Aislinn a completely new insight into the world of festivals. Characterising it as preparing its students to be “the CEO” of a festival, Aislinn says it has given her knowledge of everything from logistics to marketing and programming.

The academic and intellectual understanding of festivals she’s developing in her degree is only enhanced by her time spent working at the coal face in roles like front of house, and by her still undiluted enthusiasm for attending festivals.

This 360-degree view of the festival experience is building a strong vision in Aislinn for what a Adelaide’s festivals could and should be in the future.

“There’s a lot more of a focus on sustainability and on the inclusion of First Nations communities with programming,” she says. “Adelaide Fringe does a really great job of both of those things and you can see it on their board – it’s so much more diverse than a lot of other festivals.

“You can see just how far places have come, because people my age and in the 10 years above me and what will be the 10 years below me, this is what they want. They want people of colour, they want people who identify as LGBTQI+, they want people with disabilities. People can only connect with what they see, and if what they see looks, talks, acts like them, then they want to be involved in it.”

Now nearing the end of her degree, Aislinn has ambitions to make her way from public-facing festival roles and into the back offices, particularly the marketing team.

With her combination of hands-on knowledge, thoughtful insights, and genuine appreciation for the power of festivals, she’s poised to mould the next iteration of Adelaide’s festival landscape.

 
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This article is part of the Festival City Stories series, a collection of reflections about Adelaide made by the people who make this a festival place. The project was funded through the Department of Premier and Cabinet, Arts South Australia, Arts Recovery Fund, and delivered in partnership with the State Library of South Australia. 

Written by: Farrin Foster

Photography by: Sia Duff