With lockdowns and significant restrictions still impacting the arts industry across much of the country, leading Adelaide wealth advisory business Perks Private Wealth reaffirms their support of the arts community as the firm moves to extend its partnership with the Adelaide Festival for 2022 and 2023.

The partnership extension sees Perks Private Wealth commit to a total of four years in supporting the Southern Hemisphere’s benchmark cultural event, having first signed on as a corporate partner for the 2020 Adelaide Festival.

The arts industry has been hit hard by COVID-19, with countless performances and festivals cancelled or greatly reduced in scope. In fact, recently released research from the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work found that the live entertainment industry experienced $24 billion in lost output and 80,000 job losses in the first 10 months of the pandemic.

“It’s no secret the past 18 months has been incredibly difficult for everyone involved in the arts. Given that we’ve been comparatively lucky in South Australia, and key cultural events such as the 2021 Adelaide Festival have been able to proceed, we are proud to continue to support an industry that enriches our State’s healthy and diverse cultural scene,” Perks Private Wealth Director Simon Hele said.

“Over the course of our 40-year history, Perks has proudly worked with a number of arts and cultural organisation as adviser, contributor or supporter. We believe that challenging and diverse  works, which have become a hallmark of the Adelaide Festival, help bring important conversations to life and have cemented the Festival’s standing as the premier cultural event in the Southern Hemisphere.

The Perks Private Wealth partnership extension comes as the Festival this week launched its full program for the 2022 season, which will be headlined by former Adelaide Festival Artistic Director Barrie Kosky’s production of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Golden Cockerel and also features the 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art – Free/State – from curator Sebastian Goldspink.

Joint Artistic Directors of the Adelaide Festival, Rachel Healy and Neil Armfield, welcomed the renewed commitment from Perks Private Wealth.

“Visionary organisations like Perks have proved that they are here for artists, audiences and the Adelaide Festival in the good times and the bad. COVID has brought the global arts community to its knees but partnerships like Adelaide Festival’s with Perks Private Wealth means artists can continue to create feats of daring creative imagination for our Festival stages, where audiences in their hundreds of thousands gather in anticipation every year.”

Image: Neil Armfield, Simon Hele and Rachel Healy with large AF letters outside Bonython Hall. Photo by Andrew Beveridge.