Semi Permanent Festival of Creativity & Design will return to Carriageworks as part of Vivid Sydney 2023, from 31st May through 2nd June 2023. Now in its 21st year, Semi Permanent will again bring together the creative industries from across Asia Pacific for three full days of inspiring keynote talks, panel discussions, workshops, exhibitions, demonstrations, installations, and more.

The breadth of this year’s program is reflective of creative practice in 2023, including graphic, product, spatial and motion design, filmmaking, photography, illustration, publishing, writing, advertising, animation, Web3, and visual data. Many of the talks and programs delve into important and timely cultural subject matter, including futurism, feminism, First Nations culture, accessibility, sustainability, and diversity, equity and inclusion. Each year, Semi Permanent takes the opportunity to explore a universal idea that most aligns to the challenges and opportunities of the time. For 2023, we introduce the platform ‘REFORMATION’. “We thought the world would seek to build itself back as it was, but it’s increasingly clear that our collective future cannot—nor should not—look anything like its past,” says curator Mitchell Oakley Smith. “We live amidst a once-in-a-generation chance to write past wrongs, reform seemingly immutable practices, and redesign the world in a shape we’d like to see.” “One look around will tell you the seeds have already been sown: the promise of a borderless Web3 world; the reclaiming of time via remote work capabilities; the dismantling of industrial hierarchies and traditions that prioritised some consistently over others. And in its place, something new is beginning to emerge: new creative languages, new ways to communicate, to create, organise, disrupt, rebuild. New ways to speak, hear, interpret, understand, and connect. Less barriers to entry, and more possibility for brilliance. With all the chips seemingly thrown in the air—which of these do we catch, and which do we let go?”