The first Next Wave Festival took place in 1985, and established its focus on developing and presenting work by young Australian artists.
Forgoing a Festival theme, Director Georgie Meagher invited artists to 'think wide, listen deep and go long'.
Highlights include Nat Randall's 24-hour epic The Second Woman at ACMI; Pony Express's Ecosexual Bathhouse; The Delta Project's Under My Skin; Maurial Spearim's BlaaQ Catt, a series of Indigenous Language Workshops hosted in partnership with Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages, and a Writers in Residence program for writers with disability.
[9] Can art be challenging and meaningful in a risk-averse, overly cautious society obsessed with security, OH&S policies and micro-management of behaviour?
To usher Next Wave into a new century and millennium, Artistic Director Campion Decent quickly settled on the theme Wide Awake – Dreaming at Twilight.
The festival's web site was by far the most extensive thus far, including an events program, audience surveys, discussion lists, and an annexe to the community-building exercise Fest on the Net.
Zane was unable to complete his tenure, and Wendy Lasica seized the reins to see out the festival, providing 625 Australian artists opportunities to present their work and ideas to some 238,000 attendees.
In 1993 Next Wave produced South East, a collaboration of community workers, teachers, young people, and established and emerging artists described as a "cabaret for the nineties" with the spotlight on fusions of contemporary and traditional south-east Asian art forms.
BYTEBEAT gave witness to nine local 'techno pop bands' playing to 1000 revellers in the Great Hall of the NGV.
Berni Janssen coordinated the growing Writers Programme, with a video documentary of the program made by secondary school students.
As if psychically pre-empting one of the new decade's iconic themes, the 1990 Next Wave Festival opened with 'Planet Earth Boogie' – drawing attention to environmental and indigenous issues through the creative energy of thousands of teenagers and youth.
As another first, the festival included a significant program for young writers and readers, a fitting innovation for International Literacy Year.
With the second festival lined up to coincide with Australia's bicentenary in '88, Victorians endured a wait of three years for the next instalment of what was already established as the state's most significant arts event.
In that time the festival developed in size and scope, with more new works and proportionally more young people as performers, writers, directors, musicians and visual artists.
Now a festival institution, the opening saw an invasion of the Melbourne City Square, with a quintessentially '80s titled (6000-people-strong) party, 'The Next Wave Boogie'.
Kickstart Helix is Next Wave's major developmental activity, assisting early career artists across artforms, along with writers, curators and producers, to develop new work in a supportive environment.
Taking place in the non-festival year, Kickstart projects are developed with a view towards inclusion in the forthcoming Next Wave Festival.