Perth Voice Interactive

THIS year’s Beaufort Street festival was a huge success—almost too huge, with an estimated 160,000 people packing out the street.

Now in its fifth year it’s skyrocketed from the 50,000 at the inaugural festival.

This year the crowd was too tightly packed to go ahead with a planned Mexican wave.

Festival director Paul Fletcher from JumpClimb said “providing a safe environment  for all patrons is our number one focus, and in order to ensure this was the case, we decided not to proceed with the Mexican wave”.

Facebook feedback suggests many punters unhappy with the level of cigarette smoking, with plenty of calls for the event to be made smoke-free.

Mayor John Carey is keen to see the WA government stick its hand in its pocket via Eventscorp or other bodies to support the festival, saying it’s become too big for Vincent to properly resource by itself.

There were long lines to grab a snack but vendors seemed pretty happy: Jumplings Tasty Dumplings reports selling 4500 jumplings, using nine litres of chilli, six litres of Kewpie mayo, and 40 litres of Japanese Ponzu sauce.

Along with the usual events like the dog fashion show, this year the Laneway Project saw Jerome Davenport and 30 other artists transform a tired suburban laneway into a gallery of wall murals.

On the day Davenport painted locals’ portraits writ large on the wall, and the Voice came across him still putting some finishing touches on as mid-week rolled around.

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• JEROME DAVENPORT is creating a mural for the Laneway Project that features portraits of ordinary locals. Called 20 Faces, the models are some of those who responded to his call. The mural is organised by the Beaufort Street Festival and Vincent council. Davenport is a WAPA graduate and is busy with commissions in Australia and overseas. Photo by Matthew Dwyer

by DAVID BELL