OzAsia Festival builds bond between South Australia and sister state Shandong

Aussies love a beer and a fair number will have tasted the brew from Qingdao. But how many can name the province it hails from? How many will know Shandong is South Australia's sister state? And how many will have any idea where it is?

Thanks to diplomatic efforts, that is about to change: the Adelaide-based OzAsia Festival, now in its eighth edition, is this year a product of that 26-year-old sister state relationship. It's a tie Adelaide Festival Centre chief executive and artistic director Douglas Gautier says was initially based around trade and education. This month, it's been extended to cultural activity.

"We think this is the biggest state-provincial cultural exchange between Australia and China ever," says Gautier. "About 200 people are coming from Shandong, including 150 performers and technicians."

Gautier is well known to Hong Kong arts lovers. Former head of the Hong Kong Arts Festival and still a consultant to it, he lived in Asia for 20 years and Hong Kong, his wife's birthplace, is his second home.

He is passionate about the Festival Centre-based OzAsia, which each year has a focus - next year, Indonesia - although it also showcases other works from the region, this year from 10 other countries. For example, the films include an "Action Women of Hong Kong" component.

The festival's origins date from Gautier's time in Hong Kong and a conversation with arts patron Rupert Myer, about there being no major Australian event focusing on cultural engagement with Asia. So Gautier took the project on, despite detractors saying Adelaide was an unlikely venue given "the weight of Asian engagement was more strongly in Sydney and Melbourne".

To Gautier this 36-event festival moves away from the old Eurocentric mindset that dominated programming of Australia's major arts festivals.