The Luminato Festival of Arts + Creativity—which returns to Toronto for its third incarnation next month—kicks off with a black-carpet gala for 1,200 guests June 5 and wraps up with a weekend of activities on the waterfront on June 13 and 14. “To activate the entire downtown core with art and culture for 10 days is huge,” said festival C.E.O. Janice Price. “Last year we decided we had to balance the strong opening weekend. We also discovered we needed a central hub that was easily communicated, so we decided on Yonge-Dundas Square.”
The square will host a number of free events again this year, including an opening night concert featuring Randy Bachman. The festival's opening night will also include an invite-only gala, sponsored in part by Giorgio Armani, at Canada’s National Ballet School. For the closing weekend, planners have invited Cirque du Soleil to perform at HtO Park and in the Toronto Music Garden at Harbourfront. “The two weekends need to be the hallmarks of one of our hallmarks, which is that 80 per cent of our programming is free,” Price said.
As the festival enters its third year, Price said organizers were mindful of the need to offer programming in locations that the public is familiar with. “It’s always a careful balance. You want to be creative and flexible, but on the other hand you have an audience. There are certain guiding principles you want to retain because you can’t reinvent yourself to the public every year. You have to give them something to hold onto,” she said.
Price reported that all of the festival’s corporate partners—companies like L’Oréal and Telus—are returning this year. “In this economy we are so grateful and appreciative they all came back. Understandably the philanthropic donor sector is down this year,” she said. “We went through a small round of cost cutting this year. We had to restructure a few positions at Luminato. There was no programming that didn’t happen per se, but we held the line and didn’t expand it.”
Three common threads are running through the programming this year. Organizers are planning a festival-wide celebration of the guitar—including an attempt to obtain a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest guitar ensemble at Yonge-Dundas Square on June 6. The 200th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allen Poe, translated into various events as a lighthearted look at goth and horror, also figures prominently this year, as does the topic of contemporary communications, Price said. “The key is to see them reflected in every genre, in every kind of art form.”
The three artistic themes will also play out at the Luminato and Giorgio Armani opening night party. About 1,200 guests are expected to attend the event, which attracted a crowd of 1,500 to the Royal Ontario Museum last June. “It’s still a huge party,” Price said. “Because we have very distinctive artistic themes, we’re using the three different levels [in the venue] to express different themes of the festival. It complements our creativity."
Price noted that event planners "gravitate towards cultural buildings" but said that no other organization "has really used the new National Ballet School for this kind of a gala event. Our personality is to be the first ones, so in some ways it’s easier for us. It matches our brand DNA to do things that are a little unexpected."
Festival sponsors include L'Oréal, the Government of Ontario, the Government of Canada, Telus, the City of Toronto, OLG Presents Music, National Bank Financial Group, Manulife Financial, President's Choice, Scotiabank Group, Aeroplan, WATERFRONToronto, the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, CTV, The Globe & Mail.
