A 70-Year-Old Community Celebration
Darlington Arts Festival came into being in the 1950s, gathered momentum through the 1960s and 1970s and continues to this day.
The early festivals were informal one-day events showcasing the work of local painters and potters. These were organised as a thank-you gesture to raise funds for volunteer firefighters who regularly saved both homes and studios from summer bushfires.
Early festivals were organised by artists Guy and Helen Grey-Smith. They were soon joined in Darlington by other ambitious young artists: Robert Juniper, George Haynes, David Gregson, Philippa O’Brien, Mac Betts, Brian McKay, Wim Boissevain, Richard Woldendorp, Leon Pritchard and others whose works were widely collected.
Darlington rapidly became a bohemian artists’ enclave, the chosen home of outstanding young practitioners who built interesting homes and studios and challenged Perth’s conservative cultural establishment with modernist interpretations of the landscape. Little wonder our annual festival – run entirely by volunteers – soon found a distinctive place on Perth’s cultural calendar.
Read more about the festival’s history in Arts on the Edge: Darlington, the Place, the People, the Festival written by local author Trea Wiltshire and published by the Darlington History Group, www.dhg.org.au.
