Sydney Festival- Name in lights

As a lover of free things, I quickly sourced what events I wanted to see during the Sydney Festival. A few weeks ago we made it out to the Festival First Night with hubby/Pepe and Jaeminkins. At Hyde Park they had psychedelic lights displayed, managed to get some great photos too. The city was buzzing with people and it was such a balmy night.

Hyde Park ablaze with psychedelic lights and St Marys Cathedral backdrop



Love these spacey looking pics

I don't know what other people's thoughts are but I thought the line up for free events this year was disappointing and not as exciting. What do you think?

I haven't been to every Sydney Festival as I've spent a few summers travelling through Asia but I do I remember in 2008 down at the Domain, there was an awesome lineup with Grace Knight, amazing instruments being played, attempts to break the record with the public participating in some choreographed dance routine.

The year before that 2007 was Cracker, an amazing pyrotechnic display of fireworks with music and dancing with about 12000 people at Homebush. I also remember the killer mosquitoes out there too as I got bitten alive.

Sydney Festival 03 opened with 'STICKY' an outdoor theatre performed at the Sydney Opera House forecourt - providing a visual and aural delight to the senses. The show starts with lots of sticky tape pulled across the stage, followed by a giant spider unfolding. This evolves at stages into a bird cage, clock tower, train station and factory.

For the 2011 Sydney Festival, I signed up for JOHN BALDESSARI’S YOUR NAME IN LIGHTS – SYDNEY FESTIVAL. Registering our names was easy and waiting to get our time slot took a few days. The first time slot was 4.04am in the morning which I totally missed and slept through. So I had to sign up again and this time our time slot was 12.31am in the morning. I thought this was doable, so we got dressed, took Jaeminkins with us and managed to get a great parking spot right in front of the Australian Museum facade where it was being displayed. 

Let's just say we saw a display with streaming lines and no names flashing. We waited about 10 minutes before our allocated timeslot and I was thinking, I'm in for it now as I not only dragged my hubby and my baby to see this and was hoping that we could laugh about this later. I even sent an email to the organisers saying I had dragged my lil family out and were disappointed that the display was not working.

Just as we thought it was a no show and we started up the car, the names started to be displayed, we waited a few moments and sure enough our names flashed up, I included a few funnies such as the working title of our baby and added our surname which got a chuckle from my hubby. Jaeminkins shares his name with the current Essendon coach so that was a hoot to see on the light display.

All in all it was a funny night which Jaeminkins has no recollection of as he slept through it all and I'm glad that I dragged my lil family to go see it rather on the webcam that was streaming live.