Ballarat LGBTIQA+ event Frolic Festival going dark this winter

While the annual LGBTIQA+ festival usually runs in November, the June festival looks to take advantage of Ballarat's winter for a darker and edgier experience.

Festival director Jay Morrison said Frolic Dark Rainbow would be unlike anything Ballarat had seen before.

"This festival will be pushing the envelope a little bit when it comes to entertainment. I think many people have an idea in their heads when they go to a Frolic Festival event that there's a lot of wholesome fun," he said.

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"This one is a little bit different from that. Our festival will have a bit of a darker edge to it and it's about making sure that we celebrate all aspects of queer culture and we'll be playing in some of the more risque and edgy areas of our culture."

While Mr Morrison remained tight-lipped on some of the events that will take place during the festival, he said the key event would be the Dirty Dark Rainbow immersive art experience at the George Farmer building, an old bacon factory.

"We also want it to be a big surprise to those who are lucky enough to experience that event," he said.

"We're not keen to show all, I guess. We'll be highlighting different artists over the next couple of months before the festival and how they'll be featuring but that one, the element of surprise and mystery is important to our festival."

While the festival brings people from the LGBTIQA+ community into Ballarat from across the Victoria and Australia, Mr Morrison said the festival was still targeted towards the local community.

"We know that this event will attract a lot of people from out of town because it's an exciting event, but that doesn't mean that we want to lose our local audience as well. This is about offering them something that you won't be able to see elsewhere," he said.

"We know that many of the LGBTIQA+ festivals around Australia are very similar, especially in regional areas. They feature the same sort of entertainment in the same sort of artists. This is about expanding our reach and really creating that point of difference."

With targeting the Ballarat community, the festival also looks to celebrate some of the less heralded parts of Ballarat.

"Ballarat winters are something else and we want to celebrate that as well. We want to lean in to what is stereotypically Ballarat which is that 'old, cold and gold' that you hear about," Mr Morrison said.

The festival has also been inspired by the European winter festivals and their take on ceremony, ritual and celebration.

Mr Morrison said while Frolic Dark Rainbow was a step in a different direction, there would still be room for a more accessible festival in the summer. "We don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves, however, we do see room for a light and dark option within the festival so we do have some plans for summer as well," he said.

"For those audiences that this doesn't appeal to, we will be offering a lighter summer option... More accessible to families, especially, because the wonderful thing about Frolic Festival is that it's incredibly inclusive and the age range is quite wide. We have children right through to quite older elderly people who attend our festival.

"This festival is a little bit more niche and will be pitched to an 18 and above audience but we will be having a summer offering as well."

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