About Sunshine Arts Fest

Since opening our doors in 1994, Sunshine Plaza has been at the heart of the Sunshine Coast community. We’re proud to have created a world-class experience while retaining a sense of place — a place where the Coast connects.

Whether it’s about exploring exceptional brands or stocking up on every day essentials; meeting for a meal, a drink or an experience — Sunshine Plaza has been one of the community’s favourite places to gather for close to three decades.

To this end, we launched Sunshine Arts Fest in 2023 to reflect our continued commitment to connecting our local community. This high school competition both celebrates our region’s brightest creative young minds and provides an opportunity for the community to engage with their installations with the help of augmented reality (AR) technology.

In 2023, Sunshine Arts Fest gave six high schools from the Sunshine Coast region the opportunity to create visually engaging installations, using augmented reality to tell their story. Schools designed and installed their interpretation of the competition’s annual theme which, in its inaugural year, was: Let the sunshine in.

Participating schools also had the opportunity to learn from our Artist Ambassador, Sarah Sculley, who hosted two free workshops with students and teachers at each participating school to guide them through the process.

Installations were on display at Sunshine Plaza and based on our independent judges as well as votes from the broader public, in July 2023 we were thrilled to announce the winning schools, who shared in the $5,000 prize pool and secured the highly coveted title of Sunshine Arts Fest winner!

Sunshine Arts Fest encapsulates our community values by:

• Bringing our community together to encourage and celebrate our next generation of creative minds.
• Creating a new experience for our community by combining more traditional art forms with exciting new technologies that are transforming the way we experience and engage with the arts.
• Encouraging collaboration in schools as they strive to create both a visually engaging installation to entice our shoppers and incorporating cutting-edge technology.
• Stimulating interest and exploring new digital skills that young creatives can transfer into the jobs of the future.
• Giving our community the opportunity to influence the outcome of Sunshine Arts Fest by voting for their People’s Choice winner.