Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Before South Bank was a vibrant cultural precinct, the stretch along the Brisbane River was a long slab of concrete. The cluster of brutalist buildings – now home to some of the most important cultural institutions in the Asia Pacific – was yet to exist.
The pulse of the city’s arts scene yet to find its beat. A younger – much younger – Kate Gould was there. “As a little girl, I’d go onto the QPAC building site with my brother,” says Kate, now the chief executive and artistic director of Brisbane Powerhouse.
“It feels very strange when I go there now and reflect on it as a construction site.” With her parents and brother, Kate moved to Brisbane from Sydney in 1980, a year after her father Tony was appointed as the founding director of QPAC. The arts centre opened in 1985, with more development of the precinct after World Expo 88.
Her father, a pioneer of the city’s performing arts scene, is widely regarded for influencing Queensland’s cultural development throughout the 1980s. “It was a big thing for a city to be growing up and getting all these new, beautiful cultural facilities. “So what he did was visionary for its time.
It still is visionary.” Kate has lived and breathed the arts her entire life. She’s held top roles at two of Australia’s biggest cultural festivals, Adelaide Festival and Dark Mofo, and worked on productions around the globe.
Three years ago, she left her posi.