The Format Collective

Adelaide creative types doing it for themselves! A miracle! I love youse guys.
I’m tempted to go on a rant here about how difficult it is, as a creative and ambitious person, to stick it out in Adelaide and maintain your inspiration and energy (not to mention cash flow) all on your lonesome. We’re small, yes, and there is very little support, financially or otherwise for getting your creative on in a sustained and meaningful way.
Support and community is what it’s all about, and my favourite thing in the whole world is when people stop complaining and start making. Format have done just that. A hugely positive addition to the city, and selfishly, to me as well.
Music, art, community. Get involved.

Format’s Adelaide’s best example of hipster culture doing it right. They might despise the hipster label, but come on, zines? Experimental warehouse art? Basement gigs? Hand drawn signs???
The best thing about Format is that unlike a lot of other hipster-​y groups and movements around the place, they prioritise product and experimentation over image. Their shows, zines and art shows can be hit and miss but it’s always fresh and soulful.
Nostalgia’s a pretty strong theme in the Format movement as well. People in their twenties can expect a stumble across kitsch childhood memories in one way or another at Format. I remember a playing a firey game of goon fueled foursquare just outside their headquarters one summers night.
I highly recommend getting along to the Format Festival in February to check it all out, because if you can choke down the hipster vibe, you’ll find some properly memorable stuff here.

Think young trendy underground, trying hard to not be trying hard; sort of hip, but a bit too mawkish to actually be hip and you’ll start to understand the Format Collective crowd — they don’t care what you think mostly. They are a mixed group and none of them are particularly concerned about being real cool, they just want to explore their particular bent be it music, computers, film making, video art, painting, cartooning or social speaking, and to get on with things like drinking alcohol and fornicating with their chosen partner. They are young, but older than their years and they are absurdly un-​trendy for that is their main aim I think, to be but not to be.
If you consider underground publications photocopied and stapled together interesting artifacts then you will love Format. If you like post punk and alternative rock you will enjoy Format. If your idea of a big night is moshing on a small dance floor to a Melbourne underground band who are releasing an limited edition EP you have hit the jackpot here.
They are a combination art gallery space, band gigging venue and computer geek experimental group with free internet that is a bit intermittent but it’s the thought that counts. They have had poetry readings, zine workshops, talk festivals where they discuss how young and different they are (while they still are young and different in some cases, and while they are no longer either in others but remain in denial about that).
They may have an obscure band in one night and a gallery opening the next night attracting many local geeks and inked freaks all in it for the cheap unpretentiously chilled out good time.
To an outsider, a newbie to their group it may seem like they are nothing but a gaggle of masturbators, and that would make some of them laugh out loud while others of their number would cross the road and never speak to you or of you again, preferring to pretend that you do not exist. I personally enjoy my Format adventures and go along whenever I can. I think the group who run it are a little odd, but I’m sure they couldn’t care less, and they may well think the same of me — whatever any of us think we always enjoy a good peaceful time in a largish group with no violence or actual vomiting, that’s got to be good!

The Format Collective are a group based on Peel Street in the city who run the Format Festival, Street Dreams art, the zine shop, and a variety of art exhibitions, live music, and community and art based events. The Format Festival, which was a surprise success and is what they’re most well most known for, is on every year in February and gets all the DIY kids riled up.
The zine and DIY fair is hugely popular, and what a great opportunity to pick up strange little publications you’d never normally read. Over the last two I’ve noticed the number of cat based zines to normal zines ratio is about two to one, and I personally hope that trend continues. The great thing about Format events is they’re come one come all, you can rock up without having any sort of connection to this crew, and have a great time and always guaranteed see and learn something new. I for one am very excited to see what they come up with in 2012.