The Ten Best Ideas to Visit at Vivid Ideas

Vivid Ideas brings interesting speakers from Sydney and across the world to talk about how they do what they do in their creative field. Previous years have brought speakers like (now) McSweeney's Lucky Peach editor Chris Ying, author Cory Doctorow and local star, Red Rattler's Penelope Benton. One thing every year has in common (bridging the name shift from Creative Sydney to Vivid Ideas) is a dense program threaded with interesting creative speakers. To help you unpick those threads, Concrete Playground has picked out these 10 best ideas that this year's Vivid has to offer.

1. Digital City

Cutting up our city creatively is one of the points of Vivid Ideas. For their two Digital City sessions they've pulled together a bunch of speakers who have atomised Sydney with their cameras and keyboards. We Blog the City pairs dissector of Sydney and the world, 52 Suburbs' Louise Hawson with the library-cataloguing, city-parsing Vanessa Berry. The Digital Layer of the City, brings together geo game-maker Richard Fox, unseen artist Warren Armstrong and Nicole Gardener, who will talk about getting a good layer of digital nous laid alongside the city's physical footprint.

2. FEEDBACK

Been meaning to get down to the FBi Music Open Day? Working the next step in your musical career? Rueing the last one? FEEDBACK is a youth-aimed (read 18-25 year old) music conference aimed at connecting aspiring musicians with advice from the musical establishment. And if that seems like some creative advice that's too basic for your needs, step up to advanced lessons in the Making of … a Hit Song and hear a YouTube insiders' guide to Biebering yourself to stardom.

3. The Incredibly Short Film Festival

With Twitter jumping on the micro film band-wagon and launching Vine, the short, looped motion-making of the animated GIF is having a pretty good year. The Incredibly Short Film Festival collects looping GIF films from around the world for an evening's celebration of this cyclical art. After its MCA screening, the festival moves on to the World Bar to see it all again, this time laid out in oversized projection on the buildings around World Bar. If you fancy your hand at making your own GIFs, the Apple Store will also be running courses in the build-up to the festival.

4. Evenings in the Lounge

If your version of creativity runs in more of the relaxing and drink-mulling variety, Evenings in the Lounge is a (mostly) free series of evening hangouts and conversations (mostly) on the MCA balconies. The evenings cover green themes, printed chocolate, creativity at work, creative advice, passion, graffiti, a bit of mixing, co-working and some brainstorming, too.

5. Reportage Photography Festival

Australia’s leading documentary photography festival, Reportage, have joined forces with Vivid Sydney this year. Developed from impromptu snapshot exchanges in a Bondi apartment, Reportage is now gaining exposure as a national and global photography event worthy of focus. In a flash, it seems, the depth of the photographers fielded at the festival has zoomed to dizzying heights. Shutterbugs such as distinguished Magnum photographer Alex Webb (USA), Contact Press co-founder David Burnett (USA) and Italian camera-king Franceso Zizola (co-founder of NOOR Agency in Amsterdam and 10B Photography in Rome) will grace Sydney with their pictorial prestige for the duration of the snapfest around Sydney from May 25 to June 13.

6. Women on Screen

Sydney has been satisfyingly packed with female focuses events these last couple months.  All About Women isn't long past, and a World of Women recently put women's contributions to the silver screen under the spotlight as well. Vivid takes its own look at where women stand in the film biz with  Somersault-directing Cate Shortland and Buffy (the movie)-supervising Susan Cartsonis on stage at Let's Talk About the F-Word — Female Storytellers. Forward Thinking: Screen Trends also takes a closer look at women on the silver screen, this time inviting Saudi Arabia's first female filmmaker Haifaa Al Mansour on stage as part of a panel discussing the change afoot in film across the world.

7. Indie Magazines: High End Content, Low End Budgets

Chris Ying was a highlight of the second year of Creative Sydney, and he returns this year at Indie Magazines: High End Content, Low End Budgets to talk about how he puts together McSweeney's food magazine, Lucky Peach, on a staff of four. He's joined on stage by photo editor of the image-heavy Colors magazine, Mauro Bedoni. It was a magazine originally set up in the '90s as a Benetton-backed concern. And, while Benetton continues to fund the publication, it's gone through any number of incarnations in since then in its ongoing mission "to show the world to the world." Both men will talk about how they make publishing work around their webs of international contributors.

8. The Ten Creative Commandments

There are actually 613 commandments, but most of the time the more religious among us get by remembering just ten. Vivid Idea's website, similarly, lists only eight sessions of Ten Creative Commandments. But even eight seem like plenty when your being mandated to check out changing cities, commercial collaboration, science communication, better living through design, social networking, open sourcing, government policy makers and the internet of things. In every day life, even religious people can find they need to pick and choose. So, one or eight, you're sure to find the creative direction that works for you.

9. The Heart of Redfern

Redfern's getting ready to play host to another mix of light, performance and drama as the suburb gears up to film another series of Redfern Now. Around the same time that the shooting gets going, the Media and Entertainment Arts Alliance — the union that bravely mixes entertainers and journalists — throws open the doors to its Redfern digs for the Heart of Redfern. It's a night light, dance and music focused on the history of the suburb. It's a rare chance to see inside the building without joining up and an excuse for another night out around this already-these-days bustling suburb. The night is free, but you'll need to RSVP first.

10. Making of …

Vivid Ideas is a festival that likes to take you behind the scenes. And the Making of… series is its strongest foray into the world behind the creative curtain. Six evenings explains the ins and outs of things we take for granted as consumers, but which complicate the head when they move from something to consume to a thing needing to be made. See behind the scenes of putting together some animation, a little song production, both mobile and blockbuster games, a bit of transformative theatre and even futuristic sensor-based performance. And then try to make it all yourself after.

Reportage festival section by Nishan David. Digital City image by Warren Armstrong. Guitar image by Feliciano Guimaraes. Reportage image by David Burnett (Contact Press Images), from his work, ‘44 Days: Iran and the Remaking of the World'.