Not because she wasn’t qualified for the most coveted job in the city’s cultural scene but because she wasn’t a Queenslander.
“One of the hardest things when you come to a new place and curate a program is that people won’t let you in and share,” Bott says.
“There can be a tendency of ‘who is she?’ but I haven’t found that at all.
“Everyone has been so kind, and my family have said they’ve never seen me so happy. It makes me emotional but my sister said to me the other day, ‘You never talked like this when you were in Sydney’.”
Bott, who left the Opera House after five years as head of contemporary performance, took over from Mackay-raised Louise Bezzina in October 2025.
She says the festival team has embraced the change, including CEO Charlie Cush.
“Charlie’s incredible and just said, ‘Yep, new chapter, here we go’.”
And go they are. The 2026 festival kicks off this Friday and runs until September 26.
Australia’s largest international arts festival – more than two million people attended at least one of its 1300 performances last year and it delivers $64.8m to the economy – is down to the wire with final site checks and an excitement Bott describes as palpable.
South Bank will be turned into Festival Village, and it’s her hope all of Brisbane will descend on the riverfront site as they did years ago during World Expo ‘88.
But she’s also looking forward – to another not insignificant event called the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
“Our 2028 festival begins a week after the Paralympics finish in LA and that’s when the torch will be handed over so we’re going to make sure we really go, ‘Come on world, we’re waiting for you’,” she says.
“And yes, I already have some great projects underway; I never stop thinking of what’s next.”
The Games hold a special place in Bott’s heart, especially because of her mother Eileen, who died of breast cancer at age 61 in her hometown of Perth.
“I was 29 when Mum passed, but it was only in my 20s that I really got to know her,” she says.
Bott is one of 10 children – she’s number seven.
“Growing up, you can imagine with that many kids in the house you don’t get to develop a really close bond with a parent; the other side of that is you become very close to your siblings,” she says.
“I feel like I only scratched the surface of who Mum was, but I can tell you she was really adventurous, and she wanted all of her children to have adventurous lives.
“Mum loved the Olympics, loved them. She went to the 2000 Sydney Olympics – by herself because she couldn’t find anyone to go with her – and she chose all her outfits, green and gold; she just loved being an Australian.
“If she were alive today, she’d be saying, ‘I’m coming over and moving into your spare room’.”
Bott’s father Roland is 82 and a retired doctor.
“His vocation was caring; he was an incredible GP,” she says.
“It’s amazing when you go back to Perth and go to a cafe, there’ll just be generations of people coming up to say hi to Dad; he also was the doctor to the Archbishop of Perth and we all met the Pope (John Paul II) when I was 10.”
Bott, who turned 50 in June, describes her family as “exceptionally close” and she loves being an aunty to her 17 nieces and nephews.
“I’ve absolutely made peace with not being able to have children of my own,” she says.
“All my (five) sisters had their babies in their forties but also, to be honest, I’d always been very ambivalent about children. I was not quite sure if I wanted them,” she says.
“Everyone’s story is different but when I found out I couldn’t have kids I pivoted pretty quickly and asked myself, ‘How can I feel like I’ve got something to contribute?’.
“It made me really conscious about how I spend my time.”
In August 2024, when contemplating her next move and finding Sydney “a bit tricky to make friends”, Bott engaged a leadership coach.
“She got me to do a lot of working out my ‘why’ – why I do what I do – and it was harder than you think,” she says.
“She made me answer very specific questions like, ‘When was the last time in your job you felt like everything was zinging?’.
“What emerged was that I loved it when the team had a win – celebrating getting a contract signed, landing an artist, having a great board meeting.
“That’s where my zingy moments come from, and she said to me, ‘Have you thought about running a festival?’, and I was like, ‘Oh, no, I’m not a front person’.”
A few months into 2025 the Brisbane Festival role opened up and Bott decided to push herself out of her comfort zone.
“My mum’s best friend, who’s 90, called me on my birthday and said she couldn’t believe what I was doing now because I was so quiet as a child,” she says.
“But I can honestly say I’m exactly where I should be in the world. Before I applied, I came up to Brisbane and spent three days just walking around, and I slowly fell in love with the city.”
One thing that struck Bott – who’s also worked in Adelaide as its cabaret festival’s creative director – was how quickly Brisbane came alive after dawn.
Herself an early riser – she’s up at 5.30am and off to pilates most mornings – she immediately felt energised by the activity around her.
“People are not just talking about the night-time economy anymore but also the sunrise economy, and the money generated in Brisbane between 5am-8am is higher than any other capital city,” she says.
Responding accordingly, Bott has introduced a range of morning activities as part of this year’s festival, from musical mantras with Camerata (Queensland’s chamber orchestra) to Daybreaker, an alcohol-free dance party that has its origins in New York.
She’s pumped about the whole program, themed Switch On, Light Up, Come Alive, and the global exposure it gives to local artists.
“The role of an international arts festival is to inject a local arts ecology with artists from around the world, but also it’s about reciprocity – Brisbane artists meeting overseas artists and what that does for them going forward,” she says.
Among the incoming productions are Escape, a blend of dance, acrobatics and creative movement by Los Angeles’ Diavolo Architecture in Motion, Dead as Dodo by New York and Oslo puppetry company Wakka Wakka, the Fijian Flying Circus, and London’s stage sensation The Choir of Man.
Bott has also tapped Brisbane’s pop-rock duo The Veronicas to do a soundtrack for Bright Nights by ANZ, a free nightly water, light and sound spectacle, and of course there’s Riverfire, where fireworks paint the town every colour of the rainbow.
“It’s going to be stunning; the village is the beating heart of the festival, and I have this belief that when you can visibly see a festival it pumps blood all around the city,” she says.
While Bott describes the past year as “a baptism by fire” with a “very fast cycle of programming”, she’s grateful for the city’s open arms.
“I feel so blessed – Lou Bezzina (now artistic director and CEO of Brisbane Powerhouse) has been so warm and helped me settle in,” she says.
“Early on I was introduced to Kieran Swan (Metro Arts CEO) and Dan Evans (Queensland Theatre artistic director) and we’re all new in our roles and have become good friends.
“Philip Bacon (art dealer and deputy chair of Brisbane Festival) has been amazing, telling me who I should get to know, and (live entertainment impresario) Harvey Lister is a powerhouse who said straight away, ‘What do you want to do Ebony, how can we help?’
“You just don’t get that support and generosity of spirit anywhere else.”
Ebony Bott, artistic director, Brisbane Festival
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