Every year about this time the worker ants behind the Shepparton Festival bring us the results of about nine months of planning, calling, persuading, locking in and nailing down artists and their art.
That’s not a job for the faint-hearted. Cat herders have it easy compared to arts festival organisers.
I always scratch my head when I remember Shepparton has the longest running arts festival in the state. What started as an idea among a few hungry devotees is now a Shepparton institution with an almost 30-year record of providing a public platform for local, state, national and international artists to perform and create.
Along the way, the festival has filled a collective suitcase full of memories unique to this city and its people.
I can still remember a bamboo sculpture of scaffolding rising 30m above Fraser St near the mall; a moonlit maze of fruit boxes at Princess Park; the haunting film music scores of Enio Morricone performed at WestSide in Mooroopna; dancers on 20m-high poles swaying over Victoria Park Lake at sunset; a few thousand people gathered on a hillside at Tallis Wines to watch the Dunghala children’s choir and others, including an electric violinist with spacey sound effects, send their sounds across the Dookie hills.
Each of these memories, and there are many more, have stayed with me and have become nostalgic postcards of my time in this area.
Quite why the Shepparton Festival has survived drought, pandemic and floods to hold the record for an annual arts festival with the longest life is an interesting question.
Shepparton was never known as a regional centre of art and artists — unlike say Castlemaine, Daylesford, the Mornington Peninsula or Geelong, for instance.
Perhaps it is because the image of Shepparton as a place of industry, commerce and sport is so firmly entrenched in the public mind that art has become a talisman of change.
The city’s arts community, small though it is, and thankfully backed by Greater Shepparton City Council, believes we are more than the sum of our public image and has been prepared to relentlessly say so — to itself and the world for almost three decades.
Undoubtedly the move to a small professional team has also helped. Community festivals that rely on an army of volunteers inevitably fail because people get burned out.
Some things have changed over the years. Gone are the big-ticket events drawing lucrative and visible sponsorship from auto and real estate firms.
These have been replaced with a more secure funding model from state and council to allow smaller, participatory events with grassroots support.
Both types of events have their place in any festival program, but the driving rationale must always be inclusion, not exclusion because of price.
This year’s festival program strikes a good balance between exclusivity and accessibility.
A Spanish opera, ¡Ópera Española!, at Tallis Wines and The Wine Bluffs at Longleat Winery are not so exclusive to be a price obstacle.
There are workshops in drawing, ceramics, weaving, soil preservation and LGBTIQA stories.
There is much free music and local First Nations community involvement. A festival hub in Edwards St provides a visible focus for community involvement and for smaller events.
The well-established Converge on the Goulburn returns, and Shepparton Theatre Arts Group also provides its annual presence.
Then there’s the weird stuff — Dawn Chorus surreal bird walk, dance and sound installations and Transverse Orientation, an immersive projection-based event at The Vault.
Often these challenging and off-the-wall events are the ones that stay in the memory longest.
First-time festival director and practising artist Kristen Retallick has done a remarkable job in pulling this diverse and inclusive program together.
She has filled the big shoes of Jamie Lea with skill and flair. All that remains now is for the community to show its support, which on past performance will happen with delight and enthusiasm.
Happy 27th festival, Shepparton.
The 2023 program can be downloaded at www.sheppartonfestival.org.au
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