Aaron Austin-Glen

Aaron Austin-Glen
He/Him
Producer – Adelaide Guitar Festival ‘On the Road’, Adelaide Festival Centre

Having worked in the events and entertainment industry for 20 years, I’ve been very fortunate to experience a wide variety of roles producing international events and artistic programs for Southbank Centre London, Aotearoa New Zealand Festival, Brisbane Festival, Woodford Folk Festival, Jaipur Literature Festival and managing venue operations teams at the London Olympics, Rugby World Cup and Madame Tussauds London. 

I wish there was an events course back when I finished school because I spent most of my time at uni going to gigs and daydreaming about travelling the world rather than studying for my sport science degree.

Volunteering at the Sydney Olympics was an important step in my early career to gain an insight into what aspects of event organisation I might prefer. 

I moved to the UK in my early 20’s where I quickly progressed from a supervisor role at a famous tourist attraction to a front of house manager at the UK’s largest arts centre. I interacted with many different departments and was keen to learn more I volunteered to assist the programming team on a series of events which then led to a job offer and allowed me to switch my events lens from venue operations to programming. 

In this industry you develop skills and tools that you can apply to all artforms, venues and unusual situations. It doesn’t matter if I’m producing a large-scale outdoor theatrical fire-event spectacular, an intimate writer’s festival, an abstract German performance-art piece or leading a science education tour across Ghana, I’m constantly applying learnings from previous roles to my current situation and adapting to new challenges as I go. 

I enjoy my current role at the Adelaide Festival Centre as it requires me to draw upon all of my past experience to produce the Adelaide Guitar Festival ‘On the Road’ program throughout regional South Australia.

On any given day I could be applying for grants, meeting with local community groups and councils, programming artist lineups, production managing, budgeting, taking musicians to schools and aged care homes, creating tour schedules and everything else that goes into making the best possible tour for our regional communities.

Travelling our beautiful state and showcasing amazing original live music. It doesn’t get much better.

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This article is part of the Festival & Event Industry Career Profiles series, a collection highlighting the diverse stories of Adelaide’s finest festival professionals. 

Photography by: Jack Fenby