Maz McGann

No-one Else is Ever Going to Have this Experience Quite Like This

Maz McGann was drawn to working in the arts because of its innovation and excitement. “It’s exhilarating, it’s exhausting from an event management perspective, but there’s something quite amazing about having, you know, 5000 people in a space all there to have a good time.”

Now working as a Principal Consultant at her company, Play Your Part, McGann spends her time creating strategy around events and festivals. Outside of work, it’s the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nature of festivals that excites McGann.

“When it’s a piece of work that’s been created about that place and that time, you just feel incredibly privileged and fortunate to have been there. You think, ‘No-one else is ever going to have this experience quite like this again.’ So it gives that sense of urgency and need to just get your tickets.”

Originally from regional Victoria, McGann now lives in Tanunda. In coming to South Australia, she was surprised by how ingrained festival culture was.

“I remember talking to people about it, going, ‘I’m really excited about the Fringe,’ and it was quite interesting that there were people equally excited about it and then there were others that just took it in their stride going, ‘Oh, yeah. It’s on every year. We love it. It’s just part of what we do.’”

In viewing South Australia as a festival state, McGann thinks the state “understand[s] that nature of creating an atmosphere. And in some ways the city is well designed to sort of create that atmosphere as well with the spaces that they use for events. I think they do that very well in terms of taking in the river and the university campus and the gardens really well.”

For McGann, South Australia’s identity as a festival state goes hand in hand with community pride: “ I think people are very proud of it. I spoke to a young person recently and he talked about getting his first car and was really annoyed that his number plate didn’t have The Festival State on it.”

“And I’d never really thought about it, but it was really interesting that he was really proud of that, like, that was part of who he was. And those little sort of signs around the place very much become embedded in the identity of a town and a community.”

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t work to be done. McGann notes: “I still think that there’s a huge audience out there that just don’t see themselves in the festival offering, no matter where it is – or, you know, don’t have a relationship with art.

For a whole bunch of reasons, it’s just not part of their day-to-day life.” She thinks it’s important for a festival to question “how you are creating place-based work, creating more of that and putting more money into that and engaging communities to be part of those things in participatory ways?”

One of the pleasures of festivals, and particularly in South Australia, McGann finds, is spending time in spaces that are new. “We move through spaces quickly. And even the city of Adelaide, like we’re often driving through it or even walking from one event to the other to get to something or go from one end to the other. So festivals create an environment to sit in situ for a bit and actually examine a space more closely.”

“A perfect example, I think, is the light installations that have happened on North Terrace over the last 10 years. All these buildings are amazing in their own right but they’re very intimidating.

They’re very old and they’re a specific type of architecture. So to present them in this way that’s quite whimsical and playful just completely changes the nature of that.”

McGann strongly believes that festivals in South Australia are for everyone, not just those who live here. “There is something quite extraordinary about inviting others into your space just to have a look at what you’ve got because they think it’s cool, and that sense of pride in that is quite something, and that happens in South Australia.”

McGann thinks it acts as “a good reminder of the quality you have got on your doorstep.”

 
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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: Katerina Bryant

Photography by: Chi Catalano