Georgi Paech always knew she wanted to work with children and the arts, and that conviction was only strengthened when she was asked to choreograph a stage production at her former school.
"I did my undergraduate at Flinders in Creative Writing, and was always really interested in fiction for children and young people," Georgi says.
"Then my old school invited me as an old scholar to do the choreography for the school musical.
"It was a great show – Singin' in the Rain – and I actually ended up stage managing it.
"That’s when I totally fell in love with working in the arts. I thought 'this is something I have to do'."
After completing a Masters of Arts and Cultural Management at UniSA, Georgi landed an internship with the Adelaide Fringe, going on to spend six years with the arts festival, before moving on to the Windmill Theatre Company where she worked as a producer.
DreamBIG Children's Festival, then, seems like a natural progression.
The longest-running curated children’s festival in the world, DreamBIG – which many older South Australians will remember as Come Out – celebrates 50 years in 2025, and Georgi couldn’t be more thrilled to be in the Festival Director role.
"I feel like DreamBIG kind of combines a few of my skills and passion areas," Georgi, who’s 18 months into the role, says.
"I feel so fortunate to be working on something that's so beloved.
"It's got such a strong legacy, particularly for schools – there are so many teachers who just love it and will just come to DreamBIG every time.
"There's a lot of trust there in the community, so I'm very lucky, but also I really want to make sure that I keep it to the same standards."
All up, more than two-and-a-half million South Australian children, families and teachers have taken part in Come Out/DreamBIG since 1974 making it, Georgi says, one of the largest arts festivals for young people in the world.
"There are a couple of festivals in Scandinavia that rival it, but it’s probably the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere,” Georgi says, saying its success points to South Australia’s willingness to wholeheartedly embrace the arts.
"I think we have a great culture of adults supporting the arts, and people want to share that with their children.
"There's something so wonderful about arts events in terms of the way that it connects us as a community, and I think that people want to share that with the young people in their life."
Georgi says she thinks a connection with the arts that’s forged early is something that young people can carry right through life.
"Most people coming to DreamBIG won't grow up to be artists," she says.
"They might not even be audience members, although we hope that they are.
"But I really think that the arts is about instilling really positive values in young people, for them to feel empowered and get those skills to th
rive both now and when they grow up.
"And so we just kind of hope that we help shape, in a very small part, these children to become amazing grown-ups in the future."
So which bits of DreamBIG is Georgi most looking forward to in its 50th anniversary iteration?
"We're bringing back the parade, so that’s very exciting," she says.
"We've got 1200 students coming next Wednesday (May 7) to do a parade here at the Festival Centre, but we've also gone out to a whole lot of regional centres and about 30 different schools on board.
"But there are some really amazing performances as well.
"We've got an adaptation of IMAGINE LIVE, the beloved picture book by Alison Lester, which takes all her beautiful illustration and turns them into a kind of digital puppetry right in front of front of the audience.
"And we have a really amazing performance called Mini SPIN by three deaf dancers, like an interactive dance rave for kids, and we also have Zindzi and the Zillionaires (pictured), who many people know from Play School. She is an amazing hip hop artist who puts on incredible performances for kids.
"And we also have the BIG Family Weekend on the 10th and 11th of May, where we have a whole lot of activations all around the Festival Centre, and a lot of it is free."
DreamBIG runs from 7 to 17 of May. For a complete list of events click here.
