Bigger and longer festivals for 2021

DUE to COVID-19 restrictions two annual Ballarat festivals will be slightly adjusted and celebrated over extended time periods this year.

As a result the Ballarat Begonia Festival will be held from 6 March to 28 March and the Ballarat Heritage Festival is now scheduled for 7 May to 30 May.

The City of Ballarat’s executive manager of events and arts Jeff Johnson said the decision was made to alter the structure of the festivals to ensure they could continue under current COVID guidelines.

“We looked at a range of options to still have this element of community pride as well as bringing tourists to town without having large mass gatherings,” he said.

“We couldn’t fit it into the footprint as we normally do it, both physically and over the normal three days, so we thought let’s make it over a three-week period.

“I would expect crowds to be less but then they have three weeks to come and visit Ballarat and have a look around.”

In increasing the festivals’ timeframes and geographical size, the City of Ballarat is aiming to not only be COVID-safe but also provide an opportunity for businesses to capitalise on the events.

As part of the City’s economic recovery, Mr Johnson said the events won’t be hosting food trucks this year and instead, visitors and tourists alike are encouraged to visit the regions hospitality venues and retailers.

“Decentralising both the content and footprint as a way of spreading the crowd gives us the opportunity to still do that destination marketing of Ballarat into Melbourne in a way that benefits local business owners,” he said.

“We’ll be looking closely and measuring how successful the festivals are, if the businesses are benefiting and if the community is embracing it, I think why wouldn’t we do it in years to come?”

Although the festivals have extended schedules, the programs will remain largely the same including the iconic Begonia Display at the Robert Clark Conservatory and the Tweed Ride as part of the Heritage Festival.

“We’re unshackled from having to keep the event inside of the gardens and we can actually use the whole of Ballarat now,” Mr Johnson said.

“We’re trying to use a lot of public art in a floral way, and we’re going scatter art installations around Ballarat and surrounding nice gardens such as the Eureka Centre Gardens or the Buninyong Gardens.

“There will be a lot more of it based in the CBD where our hospitality and retailers are based, we’re looking to use it as a catalyst to get people to where our shops are based.”