An interview with Greg Walsh from G&G the Goosebumps Company and Adam Byars from Grid Worldwide.
Luxury events in South Africa have traditionally leaned on familiar cues, exclusive venues, champagne towers, and velvet ropes. But in 2025, a new wave is reshaping what luxury means. It’s no longer enough to host a spectacle; people want to be immersed in a world that feels intentional, layered, and transformative.
That thinking gave rise to The Luxurious Marble Circus (LMC), an ambitious collaboration between Marble Group, known for their unmatched luxury hospitality; G&G – The Goosebumps Company, precision architects of large-scale experiences; and Grid Worldwide, branding and design specialists, and storytellers who turn ideas into cultural properties. Together, they set out to reimagine what a festival could be.
What began as a conversation in late 2022 has since become one of South Africa’s most intriguing cultural experiments. In speaking with Adam Byars of GRID Worldwide and Greg Walsh of G&G Productions, it’s clear that LMC is more than your average festival, it has become a case study in how South Africa can define its own language of luxury and fun.
Origins: A Different Kind of Festival
The seed was planted when Dino Constantinou from Marble Group posed a simple question: “Can we do a festival as Marble?”
Greg recalls that moment as both exciting and daunting.
The first ideas were interesting, but they lacked something,” he explains. “We wanted more than just another festival with a luxury badge on it. When Grid Worldwide came into the picture, they pushed us back to the drawing board. They asked the hard questions: what does this mean, what’s the story, how do we make it more than a once-off night? That’s where the real genesis of The Luxurious Marble Circus happened.”
For Adam, the attraction lay in the potential of collaboration.
Marble has hospitality in its DNA. G&G has decades of experience building and executing events at scale. GRID brings the storytelling and brand platform thinking. When you put those three things together, you don’t just get an event, you get a new property. A cultural IP that can live beyond a single weekend. That’s what excited us.”
Redefining Luxury for South Africa
For all three partners, the key challenge was to rethink what luxury means in a South African context.
Greg frames it this way:
Luxury here can’t just mean opulence for the sake of it. South Africa has such layered realities, and you can’t ignore that. So for us, luxury was about making even a general access ticket feel like VIP. We asked ourselves: how do you make every single person who walks through that gate feel like they’ve stepped into a dream, into something whimsical and intentional?”
Adam extends the thought:
We have an opportunity in South Africa to reframe luxury. Globally, luxury is often boxed into exclusivity, if you can’t afford it, you don’t belong. But our approach was different. Yes, it retains craftsmanship, detail, and a sense of the extraordinary, but it’s also about accessibility. Through experience and storytelling, and storytelling, you can create an experience where someone feels luxury without it being locked behind a velvet rope.”
Storytelling as the Silver Bullet
Where most festivals rely on lineups or aesthetics, The Luxurious Marble Circus differentiates itself through a unique narrative.
Adam explains:
Storytelling is our silver bullet. Without it, you just have production. We wanted to build a world, whimsical, fantastical, almost like you’re escaping into a new reality. That’s why the circus metaphor worked so well. It gives us permission to play, to surprise, to make people feel like kids again. That’s the kind of memory-making luxury people don’t forget.”
For Greg, the design process is equally important.
What makes LMC special is that it’s a blank canvas. This is the one event where we get to dream up our ultimate experience and then execute it. It’s not about following a formula, it’s about inventing a new one each time. From the stage architecture to how guests move through the space, every decision has a narrative behind it.”
Legacy: Luxury With Responsibility
One of the most distinctive elements of LMC is it’s Legacy programme, a deliberate set of initiatives ensuring that the event, enabled by title partner, Investec, and driven through key partnerships, LMC Legacy has developed into a programme that underpins every element of the festival.
Greg outlines the pillars:
We couldn’t in good conscience create a luxury festival without responsibility. That’s why we built Legacy into the DNA of the event. It’s about feeding mouths through food gardens in Muldersdrift. It’s about creating magic, like internships where students learn firsthand from Grid Worldwide and G&G. It’s about fashion, upcycling, showcasing local talent, giving them a platform. And it’s about mindfulness, making sure even the way we power the event reflects sustainability.”
Adam is quick to clarify that Legacy is not window-dressing:
This isn’t CSI. This isn’t PR charity. Legacy is about building a platform that has an always-on impact. We want The Luxurious Marble Circus to mean something in people’s lives every single day, not just when the lights are on. If luxury doesn’t contribute to culture, community, and creativity, then it’s just excess.”
The Hard Work Behind the Magic
For all its elegance, The Luxurious Marble Circus is built on grit and relentless effort. Adam uses the metaphor of an iceberg:
What the audience sees is seamless, like using an iPhone, it just works. But underneath, there’s this massive engine of logistics, problem-solving, and craft. That’s where the real work happens. Creating something that feels magical is anything but easy. It takes belief, late nights, risk, and a refusal to compromise.”
Greg agrees, highlighting the mindset required:
Ideas are the easy part. Everyone has them. But to take an idea and manifest it at this scale, you need tenacity. You need to keep knocking down walls and finding solutions. It’s hard work, but that’s the point. If it were easy, it wouldn’t feel luxurious or meaningful.”
Conclusion: A Blueprint for the Future
As The Luxurious Marble Circus moves into its next chapter, what the partners have built is more than a festival. It’s a new way of thinking about luxury, one that merges escapism with responsibility, opulence with storytelling, and spectacle with legacy.
“Ultimately, this is about creating a cultural property South Africa can own,” Adam reflects. “A world-class standard that doesn’t just replicate what we see overseas but defines something uniquely ours.”
Greg adds, “For me, it’s about memory. Luxury isn’t just what you consume in the moment, it’s what stays with you. And if LMC can give people that, while leaving a positive legacy, then we’ve achieved something truly worthwhile.”
The Luxurious Marble Circus proves that luxury in South Africa can be whimsical, responsible, and world-class all at once. It’s become a manifesto for what the future of experience design could look like.
* Experience it for yourselves, tickets are available online at www.luxuriousmarblecircus.com
