From Kitchen Table Dreams to City-Wide Spectacle: How Two Adelaide Sisters Built Winter Light

When Chloe and Maya Richardson sat down at their Unley kitchen table in 2019, neither imagined their brainstorm would become Adelaide's fastest-growing winter festival. Seven years later, Winter Light—the sprawling illumination festival now drawing over 85,000 visitors annually to the Adelaide Parklands—remains fundamentally shaped by the values that sparked its creation: accessibility, environmental responsibility, and genuine community investment.

"We weren't event organisers," Chloe recalls of those early planning sessions. "We were just two people frustrated that Adelaide's cultural calendar seemed to empty out after summer." The sisters, then working in arts administration and landscape design respectively, identified a gap. While Melbourne's winter festivals drew international acclaim, Adelaide's June calendar offered little beyond corporate functions and theatre seasons.

The first Winter Light in 2020 operated from a single street corner near North Terrace, featuring twelve artist-designed light installations and a budget of $23,000 sourced largely through family loans and a successful community crowdfunding campaign. Local artists including sculptor James Chen and textile artist Yuki Nakamura contributed work at reduced rates, believing in the vision. Attendance: 3,200 visitors.

By 2023, the festival had expanded across six Parklands precincts, partnering with organisations including the Adelaide Festival Centre, the Botanic Gardens, and Rundle Street's independent business collective. This year's budget exceeded $340,000—still modest for a festival of its scale, generated through Arts SA grants, corporate sponsorship, and ticket sales that remain capped at $28 for individual entry to maintain accessibility.

What distinguishes Winter Light from larger events is its grassroots curation philosophy. Approximately 40 per cent of featured installations come from emerging South Australian artists selected through open calls, not established names. The Richardson sisters personally review submissions, occasionally visiting artists' studios across suburbs like Thebarton and Seaford to understand their practice before selection.

"People sometimes ask if we'll franchise the model interstate," Chloe notes. "But Winter Light only works because it's rooted here—in these relationships, these artists, this community." The sisters' decision to remain hands-on even as the festival mushroomed speaks to this philosophy. They attend nearly every evening, observing visitor behaviour, gathering informal feedback, and adjusting elements in real-time.

This year's edition, running through July 12, showcases 67 installations across the Parklands. The Richardson sisters continue working from a pop-up office in a North Adelaide warehouse, alongside a small permanent team of four. Their story—of two sisters turning frustration into Adelaide's most talked-about winter gathering—reminds us that sometimes the city's most vital cultural moments emerge not from institutional mandates, but from conversations between people who simply refused to accept the status quo.

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