Running the nation's biggest festival is a job that would unnerve even the most confident of creative directors.
But for Gill Minervini, the woman behind Sydney's Vivid festival, it's a challenge she likens to a drug — an unpredictable but intoxicating ride.
"If I sat back and thought, 'Two-and-a-half million people. What are they going to think?' Yeah, I'd probably get spooked. But I choose to be excited by that," she said.
The self-described "festival junkie" has organised large-scale events before.
Ms Minervini was just 26 when she was appointed as the first festival director of Sydney's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
Managing Vivid, she says, is an undertaking of a much larger scale.
"I thought I'd done big events before but Vivid makes Mardi Gras look like a 21st birthday party," she laughed.
"And that's not being rude — it's true."
Vivid opened on Friday night and is an annual festival of light, music, ideas, and for the first time, food.
The three-week event projects kaleidoscopic light installations and imagery across the city since its debut in 2009.
The Light Walk, spanning 8.5 kilometres from the Opera House to Central Station, is an offering organisers say will help make this festival their best yet.
"These are works of scale that Vivid has never presented before," Ms Minervini said.
Vivid began as a smart light festival for energy efficiency.
In 2022, it was the focus of community outrage as the festival went ahead amid a national power supply crisis.
The event coincided with messaging from the state government directing residents, public servants and businesses to reduce power use.
Vivid, and the then-NSW Energy Minister Matt Kean, were forced to defend it.
On its website, Vivid now promotes what it refers to as its "commitment to sustainably and environmental responsibility".
It says green-accredited renewable energy powered more than 80 per cent of last year's lighting installations.
"Creativity, technology, and sustainability is very much at the heart of what we do," Ms Minervini said.
"My main aim is to make sure that our audience has a fantastic time and they are challenged.
"That they have fun, that they see things that they would not normally necessarily see, and hopefully that we can make people think along the way."
Vivid festival runs in Sydney until June 17.
