In Kate Gould’s two years of running Brisbane Powerhouse she has put the pedal to the metal – and she shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, Gould is now unveiling her most ambitious project yet.

Gould and her team plan to turbo-charge Brisbane Powerhouse’s Melt festival to transform it into Melt OPEN, a three-week long celebration of Queer art and culture. It will kick off in October and run into November 2024 and will have a fringe festival flavor.

In fact, today Melt OPEN’s newly appointed executive producer, Pieta Farrell, is in Edinburgh, home to the world’s most famous Fringe festival, announcing the plan and starting the hunt for participants.

Melt OPEN’s newly appointed executive producer, Pieta Farrell. (Image: Supplied)

“Pieta will be presenting to producers in Edinburgh not long after we announce Melt OPEN here,” Gould tells me as we sit sipping coffee at Brisbane Powerhouse overlooking the Brisbane River.

“This festival will rise out of the success of Melt over the past eight years,” Gould says.

“We have been working with Tourism and Events Queensland and BEDA (Brisbane Economic Development Agency) to develop a new concept for the city and this is it. Melt will still happen here but in conjunction with it there will be significant events happening all over the city. Melt OPEN will be a celebration of queer art, artists, allies, icons, sport and ideas.”

According to Gould Melt OPEN aims to raise the bar higher than ever with more venues, more artists and “more LGBTQI+ love in a city that is gearing up to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2032”. The hunt is now on for participants, artists and venues.

Tourism Minister Stirling Hinchliffe loves the idea and says Melt OPEN will bring thousands of visitors from interstate and overseas.

“This is another in the Queensland capital’s glittering line-up of world class events sharing the state’s great lifestyle on our runway to 2032,” Minister Hinchliffe says.

“Anticipated to generate more than $8 million for the visitor economy, MELT Open is terrific news for the city’s accommodation, hospitality, transport and tourism operators … and for Queensland jobs.”

Brisbane Powerhouse CEO and Creative Director Kate Gould has unveiled Melt OPEN, to debut in Brisbane in 2024. (Image: Supplied)

Brisbane’s Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner is backing the new festival and Gould says venues, galleries, businesses and artists are already starting to come on board.

She says Melt OPEN will be a unique event.

“We saw how well Sydney WorldPride 2023 went and there’ll be something of that in Melt OPEN,” she says. “But there is not another festival quite like it and we want to make it quintessentially Brisbane. Since coming back to Brisbane after 18 years away I have noticed that we don’t have a big Fringe scene in Brisbane.”

She acknowledges that Wynnum Fringe has been a success and hopes to partner with that event in some way but says we need a city-wide event and “a new event for the country”.

“Sometimes an idea is such a good idea that you just have to go with it,” Gould says.

In her two years at Brisbane Powerhouse Gould has boosted the riverside heritage venue’s profile with successful events such as Night Feast, which will be reprised in October and will be held twice again next year and will be the lead in event for Melt OPEN.

Night Feast draws the best food and arts to the Brisbane Powerhouse Precinct and it was an instant drawcard when it ran its inaugural event in March.

“It went crackers,” Gould says. “We got 125,000 people through. We were absolutely thrilled.”

We believe here is another big food announcement I the offing but we will all have to wait until next week for that.

A new music festival called OHM is another of Gould’s initiatives and she said that event attracted thousands of new patrons to the venue.

Gould, a UQ Graduate, has the experience to back her vision and ambitions. She started out in Brisbane working at QPAC and Brisbane Festival and in her 18 years away has become regarded as one of Australia’s leading cultural entrepreneurs and strategic advisor to numerous major events and organisations including Dark Mofo, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Aboriginal Art and Cultures Centre (SA), Monash University and Australian Dance Theatre. She is the former CEO and Associate Artistic Director of the iconic Adelaide Festival.

Her career highlights include co-founding Mona’s annual winter arts festival Dark Mofo, and championing the inaugural Crows AFL Women’s team while a director of the Adelaide Football Club.

As Principal of Kate Gould Consulting, she worked with clients over eight years to secure more than $200 million in cultural funding. She is also an experienced and qualified company director and has served on six boards including as Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s current Chair, TarraWarra Museum of Art and South Australia’s Premier’s Council for Women.

She grew up in an artistic family. Mum Jenny was involved in the arts and her father, Tony Gould was founding director of QPAC and founding artistic director of Brisbane Festival.

Tony Gould was regarded as the father of the arts in Queensland. He died in 2020 and after his death Kate Gould decided to come home to Brisbane (from Adelaide) with husband, Rainer Jozeps, a former head of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, to be closer to her mum.

And to shake up the arts in Brisbane following in her father’s footsteps.

One wonders what her dad would have made of her ambitious moves. She wonders too.

“He would be concerned about me going so hard,” Kate Gould says. “But why not? He would have said – oh, you are taking a lot of risk! He was a very calculated risk taker himself.

“I would have loved to have talked to him about all this because he was my biggest mentor. I know him so well and he’s so real in my imagination. I feel like he could walk in right now, that he has just gone away for a little while.”

It’s certain that Tony Gould would be immensely proud, as mum Jenny is now.

The Goulds are Brisbane arts royalty and Kate Gould is in the process of proving that the dynasty continues.

brisbanepowerhouse.org/melt-open/