Welcome to the combined January-February issue of Limelight, where we pack two months’ worth of good reading into one magazine – your perfect summer arts companion.

Draft cover of Limelight's January/February 2025 issue

In the first of our major features, 2025: Business as Usual?, writers Jansson J. Antmann, Paul Ballam-Cross, Steve Dow, Yvonne Frindle, Deborah Jones and [Limelight editor] Jo Litson take a nationwide look at everything coming up in classical and chamber music, opera, dance, theatre, musicals and festivals in Australia. They explore how the cultural sector is navigating uncertain times and the changes it has made in response to the great disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. More than just a ‘what’s on’, this is an in-depth and essential ‘why’.

Related in some ways is another feature, A Cultural Leadership Crisis, in which Samuel Cairnduff argues that Australia’s arts sector is experiencing a watershed moment. The arts, he says, have the opportunity to become the leading space for nuanced discourse – but only if there are major changes in thinking at the top tiers of management.

Also in this issue, in Waking the Dead, Limelight Editor-at-Large Clive Paget delves into the recent rediscovery of...