Highway to Hell a Finalist in the Australian Event Awards

We are thrilled that Highway to Hell, our Perth Festival 2020 finale, has been confirmed as one of the best events in Australia.

Highway to Hell was a massive free, family-friendly event to celebrate the closing of Perth Festival on 1 March. It has been named a National Finalist in the Best Cultural, Arts or Music Event at the 2020 Australian Event Awards.

More than 144,000 people reclaimed 10km of Canning Highway as the world’s longest stage for an epic one-day carnival of music, art, and suburban myth making. Led by a rolling convoy of musical stages, Highway to Hell marked the 40th anniversary of the burial in Fremantle Cemetery of Freo boy and AC/DC frontman Bon Scott, who is fabled to have written the famous song about this stretch of highway.

'What a joy it is to run a festival in a city that dreams as big as Perth, a city that celebrates us programming ambitious and inclusive events like Highway to Hell,'
Perth Festival Artistic Director Iain Grandage says.

'The sense of community, joy and inclusion was evident from start to finish. We were overwhelmed to see so many community groups and local businesses enthusiastically involved in their own way,' he says.

'None of this would have been possible without the extensive and unwavering help of all our sponsors and supporters, including the State Government through Lotterywest, Tourism WA and other agencies.

'The three local councils in Melville, Fremantle and East Fremantle were immense in their support. So too were the Public Transport Authority, Main Roads and WA Police, who joined us for a year of intense planning, coordination and hard work to bring this event to the people of Western Australia.

'We are so very grateful.'

Event industry leaders and experts from around Australia who judge the Awards have read hundreds of entries and determined that Highway to Hell deserved to sit amongst the National Finalists.

Entries are judged on all aspects of event management including best practice, innovation, marketing, stakeholder engagement and management, sustainability and event legacy.

Congratulations to all the other Australian Event Award nominees and finalists from across the country, especially here in Western Australia.

Across the board, 2020 was a very high scoring year. Co-chair of the Event Awards Judging Panel Brenda LaPorte said: 'The entries put forward for judging on average scored significantly higher than last year. This is an incredible result knowing what the industry has been through in 2020. It clearly reflects the high quality of the events delivered across Australia and what we have to look forward to when our industry makes its comeback.'

Australian Event Award Winners will be announced in October 2020.
See the full list of 2020 finalists and more information here.

Perth Festival 2021 returns from 5-28 February. We’ll be releasing details of our 2021 program in just three-months’ time in November 2020.

Banner image by Jessica Wyld