Adelaide writers’ week sacrificed to save city’s prestigious arts festival, documents show

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Briefings obtained by freedom of information warned a ‘cascade of withdrawals’ could lead to collapse of 2026 South Australian festival

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Adelaide writers’ week was sacrificed to save the 2026 Adelaide festival, an event that ploughs more than $60m into South Australia’s economy each year, documents show.

After the 8 January announcement by the Adelaide festival board that controversial Palestinian Australian academic Randa Abdel-Fattah had been dumped from the AWW program, it wasn’t just fellow Australian and international guest writers and academics who began pulling out in droves.

Headline acts for Australia’s longest running and most prestigious international arts festival were also threatening to walk, according to freedom of information documents obtained by Guardian Australia.

Internal briefings prepared for an extraordinary board meeting held on 12 January – two days after three board members had resigned in protest and the day after the chair, Tracey Whiting, had stood down – warned of a “cascade of withdrawals” that could see the entire 2026 Adelaide festival collapse. AWW is overseen by the Adelaide festival board.

The internal briefings reveal major Australian theatre and dance companies programmed for the festival wrote to its artistic director, Matthew Lutton, warning they were “considering their positions” after the AWW boycotts began. The companies’ identities were redacted in the documents.

And while the local exodus was already in motion, management warned it was bracing for a second – and global – wave of cancellations, as the allegations of censorship and government interference reached international acts.

If an announcement was made within the next 18 hours stating the 2026 AWW had been cancelled, the briefing said, “it may prevent artists from withdrawing from the 2026 Adelaide festival program and will avoid a cascade of withdrawals in the coming days, thereby mitigating reputational and financial damage”.

Any delays in announcing the cancellation of the AWW would “significantly increase the risk that the reputational damage from Adelaide Writers’ Week is transferred to Adelaide Festival”.

Moreover, the briefing said future Adelaide festivals could also be at risk.

“Currently, when invitations are extended to national and international artists, they accept without hesitation, as they do not consider the possibility that their values may not align with those of Adelaide Festival,” the briefing said.

“However, if artists were to withdraw from Adelaide Festival, expressing concerns about its values, this could create significant friction in future years. Such withdrawals might lead artists to hesitate before accepting invitations and to reconsider their willingness to associate with Adelaide Festival.”

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At the extraordinary board meeting, AWW director, Louise Adler, told the three remaining board members, Lutton and Adelaide festival’s chief executive, Julian Hobba, that out of 165 AWW sessions, only 12 remained intact.

She urged the board to issue a full public apology to Abdel-Fattah and cancel the 2026 event – which was by this point unsalvageable – and concentrate on rebuilding for a 2027 return.

Adler then walked out of the meeting. Her detailed resignation statement appeared in the Guardian the following day.

The board continued its deliberations, ultimately deciding to axe AWW 2026.

While SA premier Peter Malinauskas has publicly denied his office exerted undue pressure on the festival’s independence, the FoI documents suggest his 2 January letter to the board was the primary catalyst for the crisis.

Minutes from previous meetings show that as late as 20 December, the board was standing by its decision to include Abdel-Fattah in its 2026 lineup, noting she had “a long and distinguished career in academia” and her cancellation “would risk placing her in the same category as individuals associated with hate-speech or hate-crime activity, which she is not”.

However, three days after Malinauskas wrote to the board, saying: “I am of the view that Dr Abdel-Fattah’s appearance should be removed from the Program”, the board complied, “in light of recent national events, and Government correspondence”.

“The Board agreed that Government involvement materially changes the risk profile and that failure to act could jeopardise current and future funding, and the Festival’s broader viability”, minutes from the 5 January meeting show.

Despite receiving $9.8m in state and federal funding, the Adelaide festival recoups almost all of that investment through more than $4m in ticket sales and more than $3m in sponsorship and philanthropy. It contributed $62.6m in gross expenditure to the South Australian economy in 2025.

In contrast, the AWW is the Adelaide Festival Corporation’s loss leader, driving foot traffic and hospitality spending to the state, but contributing virtually nothing to the festival’s box office bottom line. It recorded more than 160,000 attendances in 2025, but the vast majority of its sessions are free to the public.

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