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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