Adelaide Fringe Secures $200,000 Maitri Grant To Grow Creative Exchange With India
This two-year partnership with Kommune’s Spoken Fest will create new artist exchange, touring and audience development pathways between Australia and India.
Image Samuel Graves
Huge news concerning Adelaide Fringe broke last week when it was announced the South Aussie festival has been awarded a whopping $200,000 via the Australian Government’s Maitri Grant Program.
With support from the Centre for Australia-India Relations, this grant will be used to deliver a two-year cultural exchange with India in 2027 and 2028, in partnership with Kommune, producers of Spoken Fest.
Spoken Without Borders aims to “connect Adelaide Fringe and Spoken Fest through storytelling, poetry and performance, creating new opportunities for artists, producers and programmers across Australia and India.”
The partnership will build on Adelaide Fringe’s Honey Pot international arts marketplace, offering reciprocal artist exchange, industry connection and audience development across both countries
It’s an incredible opportunity for both Aussie and Indian artists, who will get the chance to perform at both festivals across 2027 and 2028 and help build a support network across beteween Australian and India.
The announcement follows the Third Australia–India Annual Summit Joint Statement, published by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, which stated: “The Prime Ministers underscored that people are at the heart of the partnership, noting that the Indian community in Australia was now Australia’s largest overseas-born group.
“The Leaders valued the important role the Indian Australian community played in Australia’s vibrant, multicultural society, and welcomed the announcement of $10 million for the Centre for Australia-India Relations' Maitri grants to deepen economic collaboration and people-to-people links.”
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Adelaide Fringe Executive Director Programs and Development Jo O’Callaghan is excited about the partnership and said, “We’ve seen Adelaide Fringe audiences respond with amazing positivity to Indian artists and works in recent years. This partnership presents an incredible opportunity for Adelaide Fringe, and for the artists, producers and programmers who use Fringe as a launchpad to access the rest of the world. India has one of the world’s most exciting storytelling cultures, and this project creates a practical bridge between artists and audiences in both countries.
“Through Honey Pot we have grown our partnership with Kommune, and we will continue to strengthen touring pathways for independent artists and companies, build new creative relationships and bring more Indian artists and audiences into the Adelaide Fringe program.”
Centre for Australia-India Relations CEO Ryan Neelam added, “People-to-people connections are at the heart of what makes this relationship endure. Maitri celebrates the shared stories, ideas and creative exchange that bring Australia and India closer together.”
Mumbai-based director of Kommune, Tess Joseph, said, “In 2025, I went to Honey Pot with a notebook, curiosity and came home with the beginnings of a show and a dream to build a partnership across borders. In 2026, the show I imagined came to be because of an Adelaide Fringe grant and won an award. Now, in 2027 and 2028, we have the chance to open that door much wider. Spoken Without Borders is about Indian artists arriving in all their complexity, language, humour, politics and imagination, while Australian artists enter a real and living relationship with audiences and collaborators here in India. Let’s build the largest listening party across India and Australia!”
The project will also include an Expression of Interest process for artists in Australia, and can be submitted via http://adlfrin.ge/fringexpoken.
