Each year, Darwinites celebrate the start of the dry season at Nightcliff Seabreeze Festival along Darwin's stunning Nightcliff Foreshore. In 2024, it was held over three big days for the first time.

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It began as and remains, a volunteer-run and community-supported festival with a strong ethos of inclusivity and collaboration. Staging a free event such as this has been built on long-standing collaborations and partnerships across the wider community. The event comes together only through the willingness, connectivity, trust and input of
every single contributor to the festival, whether it be committee members and volunteers, paid independent performers, artists, arts workers and production crew, local businesses and contractors, local community clubs, groups, organisations, local, territory or federal government bodies, companies, schools, private studios.

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Each year the Nightcliff Seabreeze Festival supports hundreds of artists. Performance platforms provide opportunities for artists to grow and develop while encouraging cross-cultural diversity and collaboration in our community.

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HISTORY

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In 2004, a group of artists, small businesses and community organisations joined forces to create a community festival. Senior Kungarakan Elder (Litchfield area), Kath Mills was invited to join these initial meetings and named the potential festival 'Seabreeze'. 

A year later the org became an incorporated, not-for-profit organisation, affectionately known as Nightcliff Arts, Music and Culture Incorporated (NAMCI) and 2005 saw the inaugural Nightcliff Seabreeze Festival hit the foreshore with colour and culture.

The Nightcliff Seabreeze Festival has been showcasing Top End and NT remote talent in early May since 2005. Heralding the Dry Season, it kicks off at Sunset Park on a Friday arvo/eve, a week or so after the May Day Long Weekend and is followed by events along the Nightcliff foreshore over the weekend.

Throughout its history, the festival has aligned to the desires of its community and responds to the needs of the era. In 2017, it began 'Branching Out' into spaces and venues in the community who did not have the capacity to physically join us outdoors at the foreshore event. This responsiveness expanded over the years and strengthened further in 2020, with the decision to move the festival online, digitally and via local television broadcasting to make sure that artists, performers, creatives, crew and local small business were all still engaged and employed during the COVID-19 pandemic.