Our festival is down but not out, there’s still plenty of ways to experience our program. We’ve got podcasts brimming with big ideas, guided audio tours, projections saturated with colour, colossal lantern installations and moving audio works. And if you’d like to support the festival, our full suite of festival merch is on sale now.

If It’s In Your 5km Radius

We ask that you don’t travel to these works, but consider experiencing them if you are exercising within 5km of your home.

Wander the Wood

• Take a self-guided, podcast walking tour through Collingwood. Listen to stories of the area’s creative history and hear about its residents’ talents and journeys.

Ancestral Memory

• A flowing Spirit Eel weaves its way across Hamer Hall in this saturated projection work.

The Rivers Sing

• Our major sonic artwork projecting sounds and voices collected on Country. If you live beyond 5km of the work, tune-in to its Instagram Live stream every night at 5.15PM by following @the_rivers_sing

Wandering Stars

• A 500-metre-long lantern installation exploring the eel’s migratory journey from inland waterways to the deeps of the Coral Sea; and its embodiment of First Peoples knowledge of the land, sea, river and sky.

Moving Objects

• Dotted around the city you’ll find the poster-based and Metro hoarding artworks that make up Moving Objects—a sprawling exhibit showing responses by First Peoples artists to the collections of Museums Victoria. Also included is Mulunma—Inside Within—contemporary dance and choreography projected onto Melbourne Museum from dusk to dawn.

Melbourne Art Trams

• The new fleet of 2021 Melbourne Art trams have are now rolling out across the network. For the first time, each tram has been designed by a First Peoples artist—together they make up a rolling, city-wide art exhibition. Head here to learn about each tram, find their tram IDs and track if they’ll be passing through you neighbourhood soon.

Official festival merchandise

Reko Rennie Collection

• Acclaimed visual artist Reko Rennie (Kamilaroi/Gamilaroi) has created a mini collection in bold blue and pink, featuring a long sleeved tee and umbrella. A portion of the profits will be donated to Rennie’s nominated charity Elizabeth Morgan House.

Aunty Zeta Thomson Collection

• For her collection, Aunty Zeta Tomson adapts her Melbourne Art Trams design, Mookies Around the Waterhole, into a range of tees, a tote and wet weather gear. A portion of the profits will be donated to Thomson’s nominated charity, Wildlife Victoria.

RISING Collection

• We designed our RISING collection to keep you toasty well beyond festival season. Rug up and avoid the cold sting of winter regret.

The Festival In Liquid Form

RISING festival x Blackhearts & Sparrows Wines

• Imbibe some of our collaborative grape juice from the comfort of your own home. We’ve got a textural Fiano and a spicy Tempranillo.

Bloody Moon

• The Bloody Moon is Four Pillars Gin and Blackhearts & Sparrows’ complex, bold update to the Negroni; featuring Bloody Shiraz Gin, Davidson plum, white chocolate and tonka bean. The lockdown cocktail you need.

For Your Ears

The RISING Podcast

• We took a deep dive on some of the festival’s most thematically rich works. Each episode pairs an esteemed host with the works’ creators. John Safran meets Back to Back Theatre, opera singer and composer Deborah Cheetham AO speaks to journalist Daniel Browning, and the drummers of The Necks and Dirty Three discuss their bands’ origins.

Festival Playlists

• Our first music program spanned epic sets of improvisation, otherworldly R&B, bass-heavy club tracks. Check out some of those peaceful, passionate or political voices on one of our playlists.

Heavy Congress Playlist

• What was to be our baptism of bass at Melbourne Town Hall is on pause—but that doesn’t mean you can’t dive into the decades of rich history that make up the world’s sound system cultures. After you're done listening, have a read about the project's crews, and where they're from, here.

RISING: Singles Club

• Listen to our series of specially commissioned cover songs from the country’s best. Julia Jacklin and RVG cover Björk, Gregor and Sweet Whirl take on Creedence, and you can charge up to Amyl and The Sniffers belting redo of ‘Born To Be Alive’.

Donate

While recent developments are devastating, we are buoyed by the sheer resilience of the staff and artists involved with RISING. Together they created something that spoke to Melbourne; something beautiful and beguiling; something extraordinary, for extraordinary times. We could not be prouder. If you can, please consider making a gift today to support RISING’s future. Donate here.