Perth Festival 2026 makes the most of its city’s cultural infrastructure shortage

Artistic Director Anna Reece reveals how her second Perth Festival takes over the city’s public and private spaces.
Boorloo Contemporary at East Perth Power Station (seen here in 2025) returns for Perth Festival 2026. An industrial-looking building lit up by brightly coloured projects, and photographed from the air at night; a large crowd is gathered in the building's expansive courtyard.

From live art experiences on city streets to a contemporary opera performed in a corporate office tower, public artworks on bridges and river banks and the transformation of East Perth Power Station into a hub for contemporary music and art, Perth Festival is inventive when responding to the Western Australian capital’s lack of cultural infrastructure.

‘It takes the Festival a huge amount of energy and resources and time and imagination to deliver the venue the way that we do,’ she tells ArtsHub. ‘But I suppose what the festival does naturally through activating the East Perth Power Station is remind everyone it’s there.’

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Richard Watts OAM is ArtsHub's former National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, a Melbourne Fringe Festival Living Legend, and was awarded the 2019 Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize in early 2020. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Green Room Awards Association in 2021, and a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in June 2024. Photo: Fiona Hamilton. Follow Richard on Bluesky @richardthewatts.bsky.social and Instagram @richard.l.watts