Arts administrator Lesley Newton’s career began in the most un-arty of sectors – banking.

When she left the world of finance in the 1980s to work for the Jam Factory, she says she had no idea that working in the arts was even a job.

"It was a whole new world for me," the now Head of Programming at the Adelaide Festival says.

Fast forward several decades and Lesley has built a reputation as being one the best in the business,

Arts identity and previous Adelaide Festival Artistic Director Paul Grabowsky calls Lesley the backbone of the Festival, a tireless professional who 'carries weight, keeps us upright and gives us coherence and structure … with the largest corporate memory of anyone in high-level art administration in this, or most other, countries".

And it’s this passion that saw Lesley receive the Premier’s Award for Lifetime Achievement at this year’s Ruby Awards.

The Ruby Awards celebrate South Australia’s arts, cultural and creative industries. Named after late arts patron, Dame Ruby Litchfield, the Ruby Awards this year celebrated its 20th anniversary.

When asked to describe her role in a sentence, Lesley chuckles.

"I guess it's really enabling the artistic director's vision," she says.

"It's making the contacts with the artists and getting all the information and the terms and conditions, the budgeting, the scheduling of venues.

"And it's really having those conversations with the AD about what they want to do and helping to achieve that vision and delivering that dream.”

Lesley says that of the many projects she has worked on with the Adelaide Festival team, it’s the big operas that she’s perhaps most proud of.

"A lot of those operas are done in opera houses in Europe, which have a bigger support system and bigger venues and to be able to consistently deliver and pull off those sorts of things is pretty amazing, especially on an annual basis," she says.

"But there have been lots of really fantastic things. I look back on Little Amal (a giant 3.5m puppet that was part of the 2024 Adelaide Festival, pictured) and think 'wow, how did that happen?'.

"And of course I’m very proud that we could put on a festival through the Covid years. Even in 2021 we were one of the few festivals in the world that could do that. We managed to deliver a full festival program, and even an opera, which is something most other festivals weren’t able to do."

Lesley says she’s proud to accept the Premier’s Lifetime Achievement award on behalf of all who work behind the scenes to make the performing arts possible.

"Awards are often for the front people, the ADs and GMs and the artists, but not often for those working behind it all," she says.

"There are so many people who are taking on a challenge and making the impossible possible.

"I think that is what is so great about this award – it was that acknowledgement that we are part of that fabric of the festival.

"I've worked with so many different ADs and EDs, and that’s been fantastic, but for me it's about the Festival. That transcends everything else that goes on.

"The Festival is the end game, those 17 days in March.

"So to get an award for that is really important, and I would hope that others doing this work can also be more recognised. There are so many people doing good work."

It’s a sentiment backed by previous Festival Artistic Director Robyn Archer, who says that the stability, wisdom and corporate knowledge held by Lesley in the delivery of the largest arts festival in the southern hemisphere, enabled her and many other Artistic Directors to "think differently and dare new things".

Robyn says that over the past 20 years, "the Rubies have had a justifiable focus on those in the frontline", and not so much the "back-of-housework that maintains the platforms and possibility for all those creatives".

For a full list of winners from this year’s Ruby Awards click here (external site).