Battle Of The Aussie Winter Festivals: Sydney’s Vivid vs Melbourne’s Rising

Battle Of The Aussie Winter Festivals: Sydney’s ‘Vivid’ vs Melbourne’s ‘Rising’ is the latest edition (June 10, 2025) from Coffin Ed‘s The Naked City column – exclusive to City Hub.

Sydney and Melbourne have always maintained a certain rivalry, one that is usually overhyped in the media – as if the two cities have a certain contempt for each other. Sydney has often branded Melbourne ‘bleak city’, a reference to its colder winters, grey overcast skies and less than scenic location on the banks of the muddy Yarra. Melburnians on the other hand see Sydney as brash, too Americanised and a hotchpotch of overpriced real estate, congested roads and bad town planning.

The rivalry manifests itself in a number of ways, particularly when it comes to sporting and cultural activities. There are millions thrown around to secure and maintain big tennis, golf and motor racing events and the bidding often shuts out smaller players like Brisbane and Adelaide. Culturally the rivalry is not quite as intense or money driven, but both cities like to think they are the artistic centre of the nation.

When it comes to arts and cultural festivals both Sydney and Melbourne are heavily invested. Admittedly they often cooperate in swapping various musical and theatrical artists and productions but ‘exclusivity’ is also highly prized. One interesting observation that’s increasingly made, is that Melbourne is more prepared to embrace the weird, the wacky and the offbeat when it comes to arts programming.

Currently both cities are hosting winter festivals, looking to attract hordes of locals as well as interstate and overseas visitors. Vivid in Sydney is very much a mainstream event with lots of big and glitzy illuminations, the type of visual feast that is often repeated overseas. Melbourne’s Rising festival is out to cultivate the oddball with a program of new art, music and performance that strives to be intellectually challenging and thought-provoking.

Perhaps it’s unfair to compare Sydney’s populist showcase with Melbourne’s more niche celebration. However over the past decade or more, it’s cities like Melbourne and to a lesser extent Adelaide that have been far more adventurous in their cultural programming. Take the big-budget Sydney Festival with the more modestly financed Adelaide Fringe and you are often comparing our safe and tested, commercially viable offerings with Adelaide’s more eccentric programming.

Let’s look at some of the more unusual events at the Melbourne Rising Fest and ask whether they could ever be duplicated in Sydney. Swingers – The Art Of Mini Golf at Rising is a playable exhibition featuring nine mini golf holes at Flinders Street Railway Station. Each hole is curated by a different artist and it draws its inspiration from mini golf’s radical roots, whereby 19th century Scottish women were banned from the real golf courses and forced to sit on the sidelines.

It’s an interesting concept but would it ever work in the harbour city? Life is often portrayed as an inevitable slippery slide and perhaps we could install our own artistically curated mini golf course on the Opera House sails. It would be too dangerous to have real people up there but with all the whizbang wizardry of modern light show technology, it’s eminently possible. Players could control the ball movement from portable consoles at West Circular Quay — a hole in one rewarded with a free Slurpee.

One of the big attractions at this year’s Rising is the Space Out competition, originally created by South Korean artist Whoopsyang. Participants sit still for 90 minutes, minus any tech, talking or sleeping. The idea is to zone out completely and judged on heart rate and crowd reaction, the honours are afforded to those who go completely blank.

Cynics might say the scenario is repeated daily on the back benches of our State Parliament and what’s to stop a kind of ‘Weekend At Bernie’s’ imposter? Nevertheless I’m sure we could pull off a similar event in Sydney, perhaps during a train strike or major peak hour disruption.

Melbourne’s muddy old Yarra River was once described as “too thick to swim in and to thick to plough”, so it’s not surprising the ‘Saturate’ event at Rising takes place at the more hygienic Melbourne City Baths. The event promises: “Swim collectively in amplified sound. Float with submarine bass. Move weightlessly through a wobbling resonance. Your body is a conduit for raw sonic reception”.

Wow, except the communal sonic dip will set you back around $35.00! Sydney – we can pull off that kind of audible encounter and make it absolutely free! Imagine a couple of giant waterproof speakers at each end of Bondi Beach, pumping out thousands of watts of pulsating music and goofy sounds in the breaking surf. It’s a chilly winter’s dip but you get to experience an incredible auricular symphony as you are sucked underwater in the rip and find yourself heading towards New Zealand.

The message is clear. Melburnians might think they have a mortgage on the avant garde, but good old mainstream Sydney can pull off the radical whenever the occasion arises. Let’s blow them away with eighteen holes of mini golf at the Opry, a twenty four hour space out in the Domain and every surf beach in the city wired for sound!