Speech 11 - Launch of the 2003 Words in Winter Festival
LAUNCH OF THE
2003 WORDS IN WINTER FESTIVAL
(Speech written and delivered by Warren Maloney, as Mayor, on Friday, 1st
August
at the Daylesford Town Hall)
Friends,
Neighbours and Visitors
Welcome to the second
Daylesford WORDS IN WINTER Festival.
Let us firstly
acknowledge
·
We are on Jaara land, the land of the Dja Dja Wurrung people; we
acknowledge and respect their history and traditions.
·
Let us also acknowledge the great community and family traditions that
have helped to forge this Shire over the last 170 years
On behalf of the
Words in Winter committee, I would like to thank
·
the Rotary Club of Daylesford for their practical support in helping to
organise this year’s Festival. Thank you
also to the participants who’ve devoted their time and energy to ensure that
this year’s Festival is a success.
·
David Hall for his vision and hard work in establishing the Festival.
For the past two years, David has guided an energetic committee who have worked
with dedicated and enthusiastic event organisers to pull together a broad-ranging
and exciting program of events.
·
Our thanks and acknowledgment of a job well done go to Marjorie
Atkinson, Carol, and Brian Hofmeyer, Sheila Hollingworth, Gaye Leago, John McHardy,
and Bryan McMahon.
The first Daylesford
WORDS IN WINTER Festival took place during the first weekend of August
2002. It was a fantastic weekend, with
local people packing out venues and revelling in the wealth of talent their
community had to offer.
Thank you to the
people of Hepburn Shire for establishing the Festival as a landmark event for
the region.
That first Festival
was run on a shoestring, a wing, and a prayer.
This year’s Festival has been supported by
- grants from the
Victorian Writers’ Centre, Arts Victoria, and Hepburn Shire Council.
- Major financial
assistance has also been given by Daylesford Accommodation Booking
Service, Daylesford Real Estate, Ellender Estate, Macedon Ranges and Spa
Country Tourism, Reader’s Retreat, The Spa Country Holiday Shop, and
Stockdale and Leggo.
- Other
substantial financial contributors to the Festival are Joy Brisbane, Peter
Dunn, and Kate White, ChillOut Daylesford, Rural Access, and the
Daylesford Spa Country Railway.
Support has been
given to the Festival by many individuals, businesses, and organisations – too
numerous to mention here. You will them
listed in the back of the Festival program.
On behalf of the organisers and committee, a heart-felt “thank you” to
all the supporters of the Festival.
Thanks, must also go
to Rob, Terttu and Luke Mancini who’ve done a wonderful job in designing the
Festival program. Rob, a gifted local
artist, came up with the Festival logo – the pen tree – and designed the
posters for the Festival poster and for tonight’s concert.
Since its release,
the program has been in demand in Melbourne – where 150 were delivered to the
Federation Square Visitor Centre – and across the Central Highlands
region. In fact, the program has proved
to be so attractive that a letter arrived from the Avoca Visitor Info Centre
asking for more. Not having delivered
any there in the first place, it came as a bit of a surprise to Festival
organisers.
The Daylesford WORDS IN WINTER Festival reaches
many people on many levels:
§ It entertains,
stimulates, and involves all members of our community.
§ It nurtures emerging
and established talent
§ It provides our
writers, poets, filmmakers, performers, and musicians with the opportunity to
reach a much broader audience than would otherwise be available to them close
to home.
As you’ll see by the
program, the Festival is an inclusive, community-based celebration of words,
with appeal to a broad range of people with diverse interests. To ensure that the Festival is accessible to
everyone, wherever possible admission costs have been kept to a minimum.
Tonight, I’d like to
announce that there will be a major extension of the Words in Winter
Festival. The organising committee, and
a majority of event organisers, have agreed to take the Festival to other parts
of Hepburn Shire. Discussions have begun
with potential local organisers in Clunes, Glenlyon, Trentham, and
Creswick. The idea is for these towns to
host Saturday festivals in late August/early September.
The programs will
include a selection of events from the Daylesford Words in Winter Festival,
with contributions from local artists and performers.
The Hepburn Shire
Council welcomes this natural expansion of the Words in Winter Festival and has
made a grant towards transport costs and other expenses.
While there were many
success stories from last year’s Festival, there was one event that defied all
expectations.
“What Brought Us
Back? An Oral History of Daylesford”,
was a forum facilitated by local historian Kate White.
During that event,
people told stories about their memories and links with the area – which often
dated back to when they were children – and their reasons for coming back to
live here. The thread that connected
them all to Daylesford was their sense of belonging.
Lake House, the venue
for “What Brought Us Back?”, expected no more than a moderately sized
audience. As it happened, six times the
anticipated audience packed into the conference room, causing a stir among the
catering staff when the cry went out for more supplies for morning tea.
This year at Lake
House, Kate White will facilitate the oral history event, “Remembering
Daylesford”. At that event people will
be invited to share the accumulated wealth of their lifetimes: their memories.
Last year, “What
Brought Us Back?” signified Daylesford’s strength as a caring, nurturing
community. This year, “Remembering
Daylesford” will connect people through their recollections of a shared
history.
Caring, connecting,
sharing… isn’t that what life – at its best – is all about?
It’s the
sharing of our lives and our time here – in one of the most beautiful places on
earth – that’s at the core of this celebration.
Writers, artists, and
performers make to us a gift of their talents.
They reveal to us their thoughts, their emotions, and their
aspirations. Often, we discover that we
think just like they do. But if we
don’t, their point of view can be so interesting and so challenging that it
forces us to take another look at ourselves, to reassess our beliefs.
Their view of the world helps us to learn and to
grow and, in that process, to recognise who we are, both as individuals and as
a community.
The WORDS IN WINTER
Festival presents our writers, poets, filmmakers, and performers with the
opportunity to speak to their own community.
This weekend, at over 30 events, the people of Hepburn Shire – and
beyond – will be only too keen to listen.
It is with great
pleasure, Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, that I officially launch the
Daylesford WORDS IN WINTER Festival 2003.
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