Analysis  – Carol Altmann

The figures for the 2015 Fun4Kids Festival are in, and it’s a case of good news and bad news for the Warrnambool City Council and, by default, its ratepayers.

The good news is that it didn’t blow the bank.

In other words, it kept within the $450,000 budget that was set aside last October and avoided anything like the $150,000 blow-out of last year. Phew.

The bad news, however, is that the festival is attracting less people and therefore, you can assume, generating less economic and tourism benefits to Warrnambool but still costing $450,000 to run.

While there is still no official report on the results, the council released some figures to Bluestone today which said about 15,000 tickets were sold for the seven day event.

Last year, when the event ran over eight days, it attracted 19,758 people.

Of the 15,000 tickets sold this year, 24% were from metropolitan Melbourne – the highest percentage ever – which sounds like great news, until you work out that equates to only 3600 people compared to 3965 in 2015 and 5590 in 2013.

When you are coming off a smaller base, the percentages start to get wobbly.

It is extremely difficult to run a critical eye over a children’s festival – after all, it is aimed at children for god’s sake – but someone also needs to be the kid in the crowd as the Emperor marches by and point out that he is wearing no clothes.

So Bluestone, at risk of being deemed “too negative”, is prepared to say that the Fun4Kids Festival is getting precariously close to being bare-butt naked.

The reason is that the festival is no longer what it was designed to be, which was a major tourism attraction for Warrnambool.

Indeed in its heyday, the festival was pulling crowds of more than 32,000 people: double what it now achieves.

It was also costing less – far less – and at one point it was thought the council may not need to subsidise it at all because it would cover all of its own expenses. Such a notion now seems fanciful.

Here is the critical stat: in 2005, not long after the festival first began, it cost the council $156,354 and attracted 32,112 people.

This year, it cost up to $450,000 and attracted 15,000 people.

These are the cold, hard facts and why council staff last October recommended that the festival be discontinued because it had seemingly had its day.

But the decision to kill Peppa Pig, as it were, proved too emotional for the majority of the councillors and they agreed to press on in 2015 – turning the festival into more of a grassroots, simple-kids-fun kind of event with an extra heavy reliance on volunteers.

According to council spokesman Nick Higgins, this formula is set to be repeated in 2016.

“Council will shortly call for expressions of interest from local people keen to be part of the festival’s community consultation panel,” he said via email.

“The panel worked well this year and generated plenty of ideas and enthusiasm for the festival.”

It is wonderful to see such ideas and enthusiasm and I am sure most of the 15,000 people who turned up this year had a terrific time, but is this the best use of $450,000 each year to generate more visitors to Warrnambool?

Cr Kylie Gaston asked a question this week of Cr Brian Kelson, when he successfully pushed for free CBD parking over December and January, as to where the $70,000 in lost car parking revenue could be cut from within the budget.

I can think of at least one area….

For my money, I think free off-street parking over the busy summer period will do more for local traders than seven days of Fun4Kids where most of the action is confined to a plastic palace on the Civic Green.

If we want to continue to run a kid’s festival for, mostly, local and regional kids to enjoy, then let’s embrace that idea and stop pretending that Fun4Kids is a major tourism magnet.

It was once, but it is no longer, and there still needs to be a full and frank conversation about its long-term future.

 

 

OPINION

[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”] A [/dropcap]s Warrnambool restores the grass on the Civic Green after another whirlwind Fun4Kids festival, I can’t help but wonder when we will turn our attention to more permanent attractions for grown-ups.

As one local put it, “Warrnambool is great for kids and great for the elderly, but there is not a lot for people in the middle” – and she is spot on.

Most regional cities in Victoria are coming up with new ways to attract the cashed-up, time-poor, middle-aged, middle class who want to spend their dollars on unique experiences and personal indulgence, but Warrnambool persists with “big things” that lose money.

Two of our attractions – Fun4Kids and Flagstaff Hill – cost the Warrnambool City Council around $1 million a year to prop up. In a queer kind of logic, we continue to subsidise the cost of these attractions to ensure their survival, but still consider them successful and necessary.

It would be understandable if these attractions were just starting out and trying to find their feet, after all, every new concept needs time to establish itself. But Fun4Kids is in its 14th year – 14th! – and still doesn’t break even despite the valiant efforts of all those involved and how much fun there is to be had.

 

 

[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”] A [/dropcap] report commissioned by the council last year was upbeat in its assessment of Fun4Kids. It found the event created direct expenditure of around $1.9 million and that this, in turn, stimulates even more economic activity which – based on a series of sums and guesstimates – brings the total benefit to an estimated $3.69 million.

These figures, however, are always hard to quantify – where does this $3.7 million, if it exists, actually go?

From the council report, it appears local accommodation is a big winner through filling more beds in winter, but other traders are less affected.

Of the 95 traders who responded to a council survey, 50 per cent said their turnover remained about the same for this time of year and only nine (10 per cent) said it was significantly higher.

Some may consider $450,000 a year a small price to pay for an injection of winter tourists, but if we add up the total cost over 14 years – around $6 million – you start to wonder what we have to show for the money.

Perhaps the $6 million would have been better spent helping to establish a series of experiences that run all year round?

You only have to look at any of the recent Victorian tourism reports to see where the future lies: eco-tourism, food, wine, art, culture, boutique/quirky shops and unique, luxury experiences. In other words, fun for grown ups who may, or may not, also want to take their kids along.

 

[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”] O [/dropcap]nce again, Port Fairy is leading the way. It is hard to believe today, but 30 years ago Port Fairy was a very cheap place to live because it was considered a dumpy backwater.

Since then, it has reinvented itself spectacularly by tapping into its natural assets – its seaside location, history, charming buildings (see our story this week on Coffin Sally’s bar) and its access to the rich, fertile soils that support a boutique food and wine industry.

The same week as Fun4Kids started, for example, Port Fairy used its Winter Warmer Weekends to launch an artisan food trail.

Shane Clancey, from Basalt Wines, Killarney, has teamed up with the Merrijig Inn, Port Fairy, and Shaw River Buffalo Cheese, at Yambuk – among others – to showcase the fantastic food and wine that is produced in the area.

I can see Melbourne folk salivating already at the thought of driving down the Great Ocean Road, taking in the 12 Apostles, winding their way through the 12 Apostles Gourmet Food Trail that incorporates the Timboon Distillery, Newton’s Ridge, Apostle Whey Cheeses and others, then zooming on to Port Fairy to do more of the same, before retiring for the night in a gorgeous 1800’s cottage with a crackling fire.

Why would they bother to linger in Warrnambool?

 

[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”] I [/dropcap] have written before about how frustrating it is that Warrnambool does not make more of its natural advantages. We have one of the most spectacular and accessible coastlines in south-west Victoria, but is there even one classy restaurant with sea views?

We have Tower Hill on our doorstep, which has already been identified as a potential tourism mecca, but what are we doing to help capitalise on its appeal to bushwalkers, birdwatchers and international visitors who appreciate our indigenous heritage far more than we do?

We have a city centre full of historic intact buildings – those that have not burnt down or been demolished – but what are we doing to assist those people trying to convert them into cafes, galleries, cosy wine bars, jazz clubs and boutique shops?

We have an incredible whale nursery, but is there a fun, interactive place for visitors to go and hear a whale sing, or to touch its ‘skin’, or learn about how and why they come to Warrnambool each year?

And we have an art gallery that was one of the best in regional Victoria when it opened in 1986, but has not seen any meaningful funds spent on it since – there isn’t even a cafe – and it now relies increasingly on corporate events and weddings for income.

Imagine, just for a moment, if we didn’t spend $450,000 a year on subsidising 8 days of Fun4Kids, but instead divided this money to help kickstart great ideas – food trails, artisan studios, laneway cafes, cosy bars, boutique shops, a bush tucker cafe at Tower Hill and the like.

Perhaps then Warrnambool would have some enduring funk – as well as fun – for people of all ages.

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“My friend the wind will come from the hills
When dawn will rise, he’ll wake me again
My friend the wind will tell me a secret
He shares with me, he shares with me…”

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] G [/dropcap]rowing up in Warrnambool, we had one “ethnic” record in the house and that was Demis Roussos’, My Friend the Wind.

This was a fitting choice, as Warrnambool can be very windy. We all know this. We all talk about it, occasionally even obsess over it, and it is usually the first thing that people mention when you say you are from Warrnambool: “Oh it is such a beautiful place, but boy, it is so WINDY!”

Last Thursday, it was incredibly windy.

It was the kind of wind that scoops up the fully laden recycling bin from the kerb and dumps it three doors down. As I retrieved a fortnight’s worth of wine bottles from the neighbour’s verge, I thought, “boy, do we really drink that much wine?”

I then had another thought: why don’t we make the most of our wind?

Granted, a Festival of the Wind would need to be delicately titled, but there is potential for Warrnambool (and the South-West coast) to embrace what has hitherto been considered one of its drawbacks.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] T [/dropcap]asmania – or more particularly, Hobart – has done this very thing with its long, dark, cold winters.

Last year, it held its first mid-winter Dark MOFO art festival which included spectacular light installations around the city and, in one widely televised event, a group of hardy Tasmanians stripping off to dash into the Southern Ocean for a dip.

Tasmania is incredibly fortunate to be the home of philanthropist David Walsh, who has spent large chunks of his gambling fortune transforming Hobart into the vibrant, artistic, brave little capital city that it has become in the past decade.

Imagine if some of Warrnambool’s wealthier families – you know who you are – plunged some of their fortune into creating a funky Festival of the Wind (okay, we really do need to work on that title). It could be held during the September school holidays when, it seems, the wind blows its hardest.

The events could be wide-ranging and include such things as a kite competition with large-scale kites like those found at Semaphore Beach, Adelaide, where they already hold a kite festival every Easter (they cottoned on early).

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] W [/dropcap]e could also host a kite surfing competition like Townsville (damn, they cottoned on early too), hold concerts featuring wind ensembles, encourage people to make and hang wind-chimes in public spaces, bring windmills onto Warrnambool’s civic green as part of a wind-power demonstration, create a ‘Second Wind’ dance party, organise kid’s boat races on Lake Pertobe, launch a competition for hairdressers to demonstrate their best ‘wind-swept’ designs, host a Gone with the Wind theme night at the Capitol Theatre…and on we go.

If nothing else, I think such a festival would put the wind up those who dismiss Warrnambool as being too windy.

And here, of course, would be the opening act:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTgloMcGh7k

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