Consultation has concluded
Project Update
Following consideration of the outcomes of the community consultation, Adelaide Fringe, The Garden of Unearthly Delights and Gluttony events have withdrawn their application to close Rundle Road for the 2024 Adelaide Fringe.
The Adelaide Fringe, The Garden of Unearthly Delights and Gluttony events have acknowledged the public feedback received, and have advised that they plan to work through this feedback with stakeholders before they consider revisiting a potential application in the future.
Project Information
The City of Adelaide received an application from Adelaide Fringe and venues Gluttony and Garden of Unearthly Delights to expand their event footprint to include areas on a closed section of Rundle Road.
Adelaide has long been recognised as one of the world’s great festival cities and home to many globally significant art and cultural collections and events. This event aligns with the City of Adelaide’s Strategic Plan to provide support to key festivals and organisations to assist them in offering events and activities that attract visitors to the city.
Under the Local Government Act 1999, the City of Adelaide is required to consult the public before it can grant a permit for an event that requests to use a public road for business purposes, and the said purpose will require whole or partial road closure(s) that may impede the passage of traffic to a material degree.
The purpose of this public consultation was to invite feedback on the proposal to temporarily close Rundle Road between East Terrace and Dequetteville Terrace from 6:00am Monday 5 February 2024 to 11:59pm Thursday 21 March 2024.
Background
The Adelaide Fringe is Australia’s biggest Arts Festival and is the world's second-largest annual arts festival (after the Edinburgh Festival Fringe), held in South Australia between mid-February and mid-March each year. It features more than 7,000 artists from around Australia and the world. Over 1,300 events are staged in hundreds of venues, which includes work in a variety of performing and visual art forms. The Adelaide Fringe features many free events, occurring alongside ticketed events for the duration of the 5-week festival. In 2023 Adelaide Fringe became the first festival in Australia to sell 1 million tickets. This has doubled from 500,000 tickets sold in 2015.
Event Details
Located within the East End Precinct, Rundle Park / Kadlitpina (Park 13) and Rymill Park / Murlawirrapurka (Park 14) have long played home to three of the largest Adelaide Fringe venues, being the Adelaide Fringe Corner Box Office, Gluttony, and the Garden of Unearthly Delights events sites.
The additional area on Rundle Road will enable these venues to have up to 4 shows a day for 28 days, adding a potential 200,000 + ticketed attendances across both event sites.
In addition to these venues, the Adelaide Fringe is proposing to relocate the Adelaide Fringe Festival’s Corner Box Office to the central road position. This will enable better accessibility for audience patrons, including providing a quiet space and change facility for those with mobility access needs and neuro-divergent audiences otherwise not available in the Park Land sites.
These venues would not be possible without the road closures due to the space and dynamics of their current Park Land sites of Rundle Park / Kadlitpina (Park 13) and Rymill Park / Murlawirrapurka (Park 14).
Proposed Closure Information
The proposal was for Rundle Road to be closed to vehicular traffic in both directions between East Terrace and Dequetteville Terrace from 6:00am Monday 5 February 2024 to 11:59pm Thursday 21 March 2024.
