With a free Elder Park concert to mark the opening of the Adelaide Festival, and the start of Writers' Week, there's a lot to see and do around Adelaide this weekend.

Words Zoe Rice and Suzie Keen

Music under the stars

Australian musician Tim Minchin and his band will perform a free concert in Elder Park on February 29 to mark the opening of the 2020 Adelaide Festival and the event’s 60th birthday. The show itself starts at 8pm but gates open at 5pm and, with large crowds expected, you’re encouraged to get along early and stake your patch of grass.

Human nature

This year’s Writers’ Week is themed “being human” and will explore how humans engage with each other, technology and the natural world. Catch the authors, poets, journalists, historians, scientists, politicians and academics in action across a host of free sessions in the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden from February 29 to March 5.

Strings attached

For a different kind of Fringe experience head along to the SAHMRI Auditorium on March 1 or 2 for the Australian String Quartet’s Project Ludwig, a work celebrating the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. The ASQ has teamed up with design company Sandpit to create an interactive listening adventure that uses cutting-edge technology and lets the audience decide which of the composer’s quartets will be played live.

See the light

Interactive family show The Lighthouse is “part installation, part scientific quest, part rave”. Created by Adelaide’s Patch Theatre and showing at the Queen’s Theatre until March 7 as part of the Adelaide Festival program, it showcases light through all kinds of hands-on experiences and wizardry guaranteed to hold kids in thrall.

Swinging ’60s

The runway will be in full swing at the McCracken Country Club in Victor Harbor as the Zonta Club of the Fleurieu Peninsula host the Leap Back in Time fashion show on Saturday, February 29. Funds raised from the event will go towards projects involving domestic violence, women’s health, homelessness and locals in need.