Resilience rewarded: Melbourne’s ‘Rising Festival’ shines in 2022

Last updated: Fri 17 October 2025 By WCCF Editor

The Purpose
RISING Festival had originally planned to launch in 2020 as a major new festival in Melbourne’s cultural calendar. The festival was conceived as a combination of three existing Melbourne events: the Melbourne International Arts Festival, White Night, and a component of the Melbourne Food and Wine festival. Due to the pandemic, RISING was forced to use 2020 as a development period instead. It delivered a limited program in 2021, which was cut short by lockdown measures.

The Challenge
Over the pandemic, Melbourne residents endured limited access to in-person artistic events and experiences.

The June festival featured 225 events, with 801 local and international artists taking the city as their canvas, transforming its streets, gardens, car parks, waterways and rooftops.

The Solution
In 2022, RISING saw its first full iteration as a nearly two-week-long festival presented across neighbourhoods in the city, including Flinders Street Station, Birrarung, Chinatown, and The Wilds. The June festival featured 225 events, with 801 local and international artists taking the city as their canvas, transforming its streets, gardens, car parks, waterways and rooftops in an explosion of culture aimed squarely at the heart of Melbourne’s night scene.

RISING festival featured First Peoples storytelling from creation stories to contemporary visual arts via new technologies; a collection of international solo female performance makers and their powerful singular visions; notions of the queer chosen family; and a residency program tracing musical family trees. The program included a dining precinct, activation of city streets, major public participation projects along the Yarra River, and presentations by artists across key arts and culture venues including Arts Centre Melbourne and National Gallery Victoria.

The Impact
Building on the foundations of RISING 2021’s Golden Square exhibition, the program in Chinatown encompassed free, outdoor, and street-facing video works; complemented by ticketed, site-specific programming across unconventional venues. The Chinatown Night Market in Heffernan Lane was reimagined to feed thousands of audience members exploring the festival.

The festival is supported by funding from Victorian Government through Creative Victoria and Visit Victoria, City of Melbourne, and the Australian Government. RISING was conceived by the Victorian Government and commissioned to become Asia Pacific’s preeminent cultural festival.

Source: World Cities Culture Report 2022