100% Locally Owned, Independent and Free

Heated debate over funding for award-winning festival

Do you have a news tip? Click here to send to our news team.

Unheralded Sunshine Coast suburb set to boom

A relatively unknown Sunshine Coast suburb is predicted to become the next "hot" spot for real estate in the region. Rosemount is a rural locality More

Roadworks underway in bid to ease traffic congestion

Works are progressing to increase the capacity of the road network around a booming part of the Sunshine Coast. Night works at the intersection of More

Adventure playground closed for clean-up and repairs

A popular children’s playground is off-limits going into the school holidays following the recent big wet. The Hinterland Adventure Playground in Marara Street, Cooroy, was More

Future of electric vehicles arrives on the Coast

The electric vehicle revolution has landed on the Sunshine Coast as Pacific Motor Group welcomes one of the world’s fastest-growing and most innovative automotive More

Photo of the day: wall of water

“Wappa Dam spill after a break in the seemingly endless rain. The roar of the water had to be heard to be believed,” writes More

Site sold for almost $13m, Tesla dealership rumoured

One of the last undeveloped sites along a main inner-city road has been sold and could be home to a Tesla showroom. Lot 409 Flinders More

The short-term future of the Horizon Festival is a hot topic as Sunshine Coast councillors heavily debated how much longer they would fund the event.

To kick off the discussion at the recent council meeting, a report was presented to the chamber highlighting the economic, cultural, financial and community benefits the award-winning festival brings to the Sunshine Coast.

The report also highlighted that the increase of costs this year could impact the scale of the festival.

The first Horizon Festival was held in 2016 and has been endorsed by council for multi-year funding twice since then.

This is the Festival’s third request to council for multi-year funding.

A council report showed 3203 artists engaged in Horizon Festival, of which 614 were First Nations.

Councillors were originally set to vote on providing the outlined funding ($682,000) for 2022, then subsequently different amounts each year, for five years.

But Div 1 Cr Rick Baberowski threw a spanner in the works, calling for an amended motion to reduce the funding from five years to three.

Div 9 Cr Maria Suarez moved the amendment and expressed her concerns around the report.

“While the festival and the content is sound – around the issues highlighted – it is not the number of years of funding we are applying to the festival but when the funding requests come forward,” she said.

The council report showed the Horizon Festival to have an average annual economic benefit (all outside spend) of $2.5 million per physical Festival.

Cr Suarez said an information session highlighted to council that not granting forward-funding into that final third-year was creating a lot of uncertainty for sponsors, staff and artists.

Cr Baberowski supported the amendment, pointing out the journey of the festival “has been to some extent, a really difficult challenge over the last few years”.

“We’ve been trying to grow the program and brand of this relatively new festival which has this fabulous aspiration to become a signature event for South East Queensland,” Cr Baberowski said.

“Then for two years COVID almost killed the physical performance side of it … but the agility of the team was demonstrated when they very quickly changed the format to digital.”

Do you have an opinion to share? Submit a Letter to the Editor with your name and suburb at Sunshine Coast News via: news@sunshinecoastnews.com.au

Councillors voted on the new motion, agreeing that nurturing the festival and potentially having it as an option to showcase the region, its Indigenous culture and its creatives at the 2032 Olympics, should be a future focus.

What transpired was regardless of whether council decided on three or five years, the festival would come up for review at budget time each year, so, as much as all of the councillors and community support it, the longevity of the festival is never fully guaranteed.

Cr Suarez argued she did not see how cutting the funding from five years to three was going to detrimentally jeopardise the festival, and that the timeframe allowed for more wiggle room.

“We haven’t had the Caloundra Music Festival review – and they could be delivered (potentially, at the 2032 Olympics) better, hand-in-hand,” she said.

“We will also have the report about the Olympics and that gives us better scope, rather than locking it in for five years.

“I know we will endorse it year on year, that will give us some flexibility to make some bigger changes sooner in the process.”

The Horizon Festival runs for 10 days, bringing a 22.25 per cent average visitors to the region.

Div 10 Cr David Law was vocal in his objection to only funding the festival for three years, instead of five.

“I don’t understand why we want to limit the capacity of the team to develop the festival over a five-year period to deliver this award-winning festival,” Cr Law said.

“Tying the hands behind the back of people who are trying to build, develop and grow the festival is not the best idea.

“If it makes no difference whether it’s three or five, then why won’t we endorse it for five.”

He expressed it was unsatisfactory for council to be in that position.

“It’s not logical,” he said.

“If this is defeated at this moment, we’ve lost the festival right there.”

Cr Suarez said there was no debate whether the council supported the Horizon Festival and the benefits it brings to the community and the artists within it.

“By reducing funding to three years, we are not hamstringing the festival,” she said.

“We are leaving it open to more flexibility for it have larger funding in the future.

Cr Law was the only councillor to oppose the new motion to fund the Horizon Festival for three years.

SUBSCRIBE here now for our FREE news feed, direct to your inbox daily!

Subscribe to SCN’s free daily news email

Hidden
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
[scn_go_back_button] Return Home
Share