The launch of the five-week Neon Playground by Chinatown festival of art, lights, music, food and community has delivered tangible impacts for businesses around the Asian Australian cultural hub of Dixon Street, which was hard-hit by the pandemic.

Neon Playground received funding from the City of Sydney’s Precinct Activation Grant in response to the impact of COVID restrictions. The festival was formally launched by the City of Sydney’s Lord Mayor Cr Clover Moore, with partners and the community in attendance to mark the event.

Neon Playground partner Aura Group’s founder and Managing Director, Eric Chan, said the potential to reignite interest in Chinatown was part of what drew him to supporting the festival.

“With my family having migrated from Hong Kong to Australia in the 1980s, I spent a lot of time in Chinatown growing up,” says Chan.

“I’ve seen it develop as an ecosystem of Asian culture and a thriving commerce environment for new businesses to incubate and existing businesses to scale. More importantly, I have seen the community expand from a predominantly Asian network to a multiracial community that allows Asian culture to thrive in Sydney.

For this reason, we were excited to support Neon Playground and contribute directly to the local community with which I have a personal connection.”

Chinese-Australians have lived in Sydney’s Chinatown – also known as Haymarket – since the 19th century. Dixon Street was originally a timber storage yard but became the centre of Chinatown by the early 20th century, with cook shops, lodging houses, restaurants, grocery stores and more steadily opening.

The festival has not only been a success for the participating artists and musicians, including Chris Yee, Jason Wing, Amy Wong and others. Local businesses have also reported a quantifiable increase in patronage following the first weekend of the festival, with some indicating Saturday’s trade was the busiest it had been in more than four-and-a-half years.

Creative director of the festival, Anthony Ho of Basalt Studio, said the results demonstrate the value of community-led events and festivals in placemaking.

“Neon Playground is an urban design experiment and a great way for us to step outside the norm and explore architecture and urban precinct design from a completely different angle,” said Ho.

“Projecting the patterns and nuances of cultural and generational shifts of the next decade, we saw Neon Playground as a great opportunity to help shape the precinct for the future. The city is envisioned as a series of rooms; restaurants are our urban dining rooms, takeaway shops our urban pantries and the streets our urban living rooms.”

Neon Playground continues to run until 20 November, with art and light installations on Dixon Street, nightly buskers (weather permitting) and events scattered throughout the precinct.

To make the festival accessible, Market City is offering two hours free parking to all Neon Playground visitors from 11am – 10pm.