Golden Bay Summer Arts Festival
Friday 14th - Sunday 23rd February 2025
A Summer Festival which captures the essence of the Golden Bay/Mohua Creative Community. The festival consists of a number of individual events offered by local creatives and located at various venues around the region for you to enjoy.
Vision and Values
To empower the development of sustainable community-led practices, productions and events within the framework of a seasonal festival promoting Golden Bay/Mohua as a destination to experience quality arts and Ngā Toi.
EMPOWERMENT - the festival acknowledges the depth of experience, expertise and creativity held within the Golden Bay/Mohua community and will provide structures, processes and support that nourishes the potential, integrity and qualitative expression of these skills.
SUSTAINABILITY - the festival acknowledges when the creatives who contribute to the festival are nourished the festival will thrive.
COMMUNITY LED - the structures and processes underpinning the festival will be kept to a minimum to allow the freedom for champions from the diverse artistic communities in Golden Bay/Mohua to take the lead in defining the activites that make up the festival - recognising these communities know best how to manifest their artform.
ACCESS and WELL BEING - the festival also acknowledges the potential of emerging artists and artforms needing structure and support to participate in the festival with confidence and efficacy.
DIVERSITY - the festival embraces all artforms and cultural expression of creativity recognising those creating on the edge of an artform and/or the act of creativity are pioneers in human expression.
Golden Bay Summer Arts Festival Registration
Golden Bay Community Arts Council with support from the Ministry of Culture and Heritage are super excited to announce a Summer Arts Festival in the Bay in February 2025. The heart of the festival will be from Friday 14th February to Sunday 23rd February 2025 however our vision is for workshops and events happening a week either side of these dates to be included in the schedule.
What makes this festival special is its focus on being community led. In essence the festival provides a light structure to support our communities creatives and creativity to express itself. We are not looking at organising something that requires a small number of individuals to put in a lot of effort rather our vision is that individuals and arts communities think about something they can make happen at that time of year. This way the festival will be a collection of events giving the feel of something significant!
Gary Smith the festival coordinator, will be available to provide support and the festival
itself has the facilities to financially underwrite your event. Beyond this the festival itself
will provide comprehensive marketing and ticketing services taking care of another
significant aspect of event organising.
What we need is keen folk to champion their ideas! To register choose from one of the following:
If you are not sure or prefer to explore options in person please feel free to contact Gary, the festival coordinator on ph. 02102778363 or email artsworkermohua@gmail.com.
In essence this festival is about collectively celebrating the depth of creative talent and energy here in the Bay. The festival itself is committed to working in partnership with the diversity of art forms, creativity and cultures with a connection to our region. We have an eye on the event being held annually and moving into the month of February from 2025 as a mechanism for extending our summer visitors season.
We would love to see a number of workshops happening during and in the weeks either side of festival week, particular workshops focused on families or one day workshops for women wanting a creative break.
We imagine events could be held in the remote regional halls around Golden Bay/Mohua, so it’s an opportunity for creatives of all types to present their work in the small communities in which they live!
Register Event if you have a clear idea of what you want to do.
Register Interest if you have some ideas but would like to work with the festival coordinator to develop them
Register Skills if you have skills you feel are useful to the festival
Register Resources if you have resources you feel are useful to the festival
Volunteer because the festival sounds cool and you just want to be involved!
How The Festival Works
The festival is managed by a festival coordinator.
Creatives as individuals or champions of an arts community, register interest in being involved as following:
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Register Event - you have a clear idea of what you want to do and are ready to enter discussions with the festival co-ordinator.
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Register Interest - you have skills and some idea of what you would like to do and would like to work with the festival coordinator to develop these into an event.
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Register Skills and/or Resources - you are keen to be involved and have skills and/or resources you feel are useful and would like to connect with the festival coordinator to explore supporting an existing event or collaborating with others to form an event.
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Volunteer - you just want to be involved because the event sounds cool!
Creatives (and their community) build a partnership with the festival where they have the freedom to define what, how and where their art form is presented. The only criteria we have is that offerings have integrity.
The festival will provide the following:
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Support developing a comprehensive production plan (including a budget) for individual events.
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Support obtaining funding, sponsorship and exploring ways to generate a financial return from an event.
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Where needed, the financial underwriting of an event.
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Ticket selling services.
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An overview of the festival as a whole including looking for opportunities to network and collaborate across diverse arts sectors.
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Technical support (including recognising where resources can be shared).
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Where possible the support needed for creatives to develop skills and capacity, with a clear eye on sustainability.
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Support developing marketing material for individual events.
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Development of comprehensive marketing material and strategies for the festival as a whole.
Foundations of Partnership:
All partnerships between creatives (and creative communities) and representatives of the festival will be based on:
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Open disclosure of intention.
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Open and timely sharing of information.
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Commitment to learning and supporting others to learn the intricacies of building a sustainable relationship that values respect for diveristy and knowledge, and recognises the depth of meaningful connection.
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Recognising the value of trust, honesty and integrity.
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A clear procedure for conflict resolution.
Financials:
Underwriting Events - based on the development of a comprehensive budget, the festival will negotiate to underwrite the production of an event up to a specified amount. The festival will receive 15 - 25% of all revenue (with the exception of funding and/or sponsorship) associated with that event.
This return needs to be factored as a cost in the development of your events budget.
If the event falls short of the agreed amount the festival will make up the difference providing event producers with financial security.
Beyond returns to the festival the producer of an event will have full autonomy to determine how profits are distributed. The festival will advocate for a percentage of profits to be reinvested into you (or your community's) ability to have a presence at the next Summer Arts Festival. The festival is able to hold and earmark finances for your community to use in this way.
All events that are part of the festival will provide up to 15% return of all revenue to the festival as a recognition of the festival's support, organisational and marketing services.
All finances will be managed by the festival and the GBCAC for auditing purposes.