Tomorrow, the 18th February, will see the kickoff of this years Adelaide Street Art Festival, Street Dreams, as a part of the Adelaide Fringe Festival. This festival has a lot going on, from workshops and exhibitions, to T-shirt parties, to the amazing Dumpster Biennale, and everything in between – and it looks set to be a showcase of all of that is awesome about the Adelaide, and indeed Australian, urban and street art scene.

“Building on the success of the 2010 festival, Street Dreams is back to celebrate everything Street Art during the 2011 Adelaide Fringe. Running over four days the festival features exhibitions, murals, street art tours, workshops, an open air cinema and the infamous T-shirt party.

Street Dreams is run on a volunteer basis with the aim of building a platform to showcase and celebrate street art in Adelaide. We hope to build a greater appreciation for street art culture within the wider Adelaide community and strengthen connections between Adelaide based and interstate street artists.”

The very busy team organising the event also had a bit of time for us to answer a few questions about the festival, just to give you an idea of whats going on, and how it has all been put together … so we’ve put it all together into a really really rough guide with links throughout (we’ve also listed all of them down the bottom), so you can click through and check out all that the festival has to offer.

So read on, and if you’re in Adelaide, get along to the events – and, if you’re not, head here and fix up.

Can you share with us some of the history behind Street Dreams, and how it has evolved up until the present?

Street Dreams was first held in March 2010 – some of the same people were involved in the 2009 ST5K street art festival.

Each year it’s gotten a little bigger and a little more refined – I guess it’s grown along with the Adelaide street art scene.

What are some of the main features of the festival and what will you be aiming to showcase?

The Dumpster Biennale is the main event. With 30 Australian and International artists we know we’re hitting above our weight in terms of what’s be done before in Adelaide –  I guess after last year’s festival we were pretty keen to see just what we could do. Although, the festival is a bit of a balancing act.

While we want to put on a big show for a wide audience it also has to be a festival for the artists – building connections between artists nationally and internationally has always been our aim.

Can you tell us a little more about the workshop and educational portion of the festival?

We have one workshops package with three sections covering stencils, paste-ups and freehand aerosol. It will go for about 4 hours in total and cost $15 – it’s aimed at people who want to start making street art.

Workshops start at 3pm on Sunday the 20th.

What about live art events? What will be on and that people will be able to see over the four days?

On Friday the 18th the festival starts with, emerging street and gallery artist, Kate Gagliardi painting a large mural in the city centre. The mural will form the frontage of the Format art space.

On the Saturday night Sam Evans will paint the side of a truck that was kindly donated by Burger Theory. The truck is to become a mobile burger bar.

There’s also the ‘Pimp Yo’ T-Shirt Party’. Everyone wears a plain T that gets tagged, stencilled, drawn on, spray painted and generally destroyed as alcohol and aerosol are mixed into one amazing party. It would be too kind to call it a live art event – it’s more of a paint soaked orgy.

Click on the above image for a high res version of the program …

Have you had a lot of support from local councils and organisations for the festival? Who else is involved and what they are bringing to the table?

We received some funds and space from Format and Magazine Gallery are hosting the Dumpster Biennale and Clinic 116 donated some paint – other than that we’re totally self funded.

All the links you need to know.

– You can follow the festival via the Street Dreams website and Facebook

– There is also a Flickr stream for all the event images here and artists involved – some amazing work on there

– Look at the list of events happening, or look at the event program

– Find the Dumpster Biennial Facebook event here

– The T-Shirt party Facebook event can be found here

– Get along to the Walking Tour and see a whole bunch of street art that Adelaide has to offer.

– The Facebook event page for the workshop events is here (these now appear to be all booked out)

– There is also an Open Air Cinema event running with the festival.

– Check out Formats website here.

– Check out the Magazine Gallery here

– Take a look at the Clinic116 website

– You can see all the Adelaide Fringe Festival events here

Ohhhh, I really, really wish I could make it to Adelaide this weekend.