David Collins is the Founder and Festival Director of the Darwin Street Art Festival (DSAF), in the tropical Top End of Australia. An artist himself and former youth worker, Collins often pinches himself at the thought that 10 years ago, a younger version of him was probably graffitiing in a drain in Darwin’s northern suburbs, and had no idea that he’d one day spearhead the most awarded street art festival in the country.
Collins runs DSAF through his business Proper Creative, an art initiative he co-founded with friend Jesse Bell 15 years ago. He is passionate about using art as a vehicle for social change and has since been on a Churchill Fellowship to the US to investigate this idea further. Collins speaks to ArtsHub about passion, street art culture and creating your own future.
How did you become the Festival Director of the Darwin Street Art Festival?
I actually am lucky enough to have created the job myself. It was the perfect storm. I didn’t know it at the time, but some staff from the NT Government and major events had been over to Singapore at the time that I approached them with the idea. They’d just seen the tropical architecture and had a new appreciation for the street art there. Around this same time, I happened to knock on the door and said: “We need a street art festival, it needs to be local and I can do it.” They gave me five weeks to do it – and we pulled it off.
The Darwin Street Art Festival is now the most awarded Street Art Festival in Australia, and one of the longest running – currently in its ninth year! We’ve painted over 130 murals across Darwin’s city and suburbs and have had everyone from local artists who have painted their first mural to renowned artists from almost every continent paint their stories on our walls.
What’s a typical day/week like in this position?
Leading up to the Festival, it’s truly about knocking on doors, looking for walls, talking to building owners, and working with artists and suppliers. There’s a lot of groundwork and a lot of conversations that need to be had in order to get a wall locked in and an artist matched with that wall! And then when the Festival’s on, my day looks like a 6am start and a 10pm finish – lots of running around doing checks, taking artists between places, dropping paints and supplies off, and making sure all the wheels are turning the right way. I love it, even though they’re long days; it’s my favourite time of the year.
What are some of the misconceptions of your job?
People think it’s a lot more glamorous. Festival Director sounds like someone who may be sitting in an office sending emails and taking meetings, but I am always in the thick of it. There’s a lot of time spent standing in dirty lanes and staring at buildings in the sun and I’m in a paint-covered T-shirt 24/7!
Although it’s only a three-week festival, it requires a lot of planning and logistics, and it’s never far from my mind.
If you were hiring for your job, what qualities would you look for?
It’s such a unique role and a unique situation, so I think it’s hard to really put out ‘criteria’ as such, but when I am hiring for roles within the Festival, support roles mostly, I obviously look for experience in painting. Luckily, we’ve built up enough of a reputation that artists who get headline spots or have already painted here before really want to come back and support during the Festival in various other roles and so I know what they can do and it’s easier for me to hire people in that respect. I think the other big one for me is supporting locals. I try to give them opportunities to learn and grow. That was one of the big drivers for me in building the Festival, bringing that level of opportunity to the local art scene and jobs to local artists.
What are the pros and cons of being a festival director of DSAF?
The pros, of course, are working with the really great crew we have; the DSAF team are awesome. Everyone in the team comes together for this month of chaos and we get it done and we make it a really great time. I think the fact that, once we’re done, the art is still up, so all year round, whenever you just go down the shops, you see a street art mural, you see people standing in front of murals taking photos, you see it all over social media – it’s so energising and I think it’s those little moments too where you think this has really changed the city.
The cons would probably be having to break some hearts. We have so many people applying and usually only about 20 walls to fill each year – obviously I am not the only one who picks the artists every year, but I am definitely who they look to when they don’t get the call-up and it’s really heartbreaking to be on the end of someone’s disappointment.
What’s the future of street art in Australia?
In Australia, I think street art is going to grow stronger and stronger – Australian street artists and mural artists are painting all over the world and Australia’s definitely becoming more of a destination for street art. Melbourne’s always been it, but now Darwin is up there. You can’t turn a corner here without seeing a mural and we are so proud of that.
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We’ve got a mural on every major city street now – so watch out, Melbourne! People are really embracing it both as a cultural movement and as a genuine tourism attraction and I definitely see that continuing. As long as there are walls and paint, there’ll be street art!
