Season Preview: Your guide to the arts in 2022

On 26 May 2021, Melbourne’s new winter festival RISING began to rise, after the inaugural festival planned for August 2020 had to be delayed due to COVID lockdowns.

But at midnight on the second day of the 2021 festival, a new lockdown was introduced putting an end to the 133 events programmed, including 36 new works. Finally (we hope), RISING will envelop Melbourne’s streets and surrounds from June 1–12 this year, with the 2022 program announced today.

Monochord Aqua Luma RISING

Monochord Aqua Luma. Photo courtesy of RISING

“It is really exciting. I can tell you that it’s a festival three years in the making,” Co-Artistic Director Gideon Obarzanek tells Limelight.

“We didn’t plan it that way but it ended up that way and it’s a much richer program for that. We have 225 events [including 22 commissions and 14 world premieres] and 800 artists, and we are expecting a million people to experience RISING in the first half of June –  which makes it a very big-scale festival.”

Funded by the Victorian Government, RISING replaces the...