Geelong After Dark cancelled again

GEELONG After Dark will not be held for the third consecutive year because of COVID-related concerns, and its return in 2023 appears unlikely.

However, the City of Greater Geelong says it will reveal details about a new festival for 2022 next week.

Launched nine years ago, the night-time festival and celebration of Geelong’s artistic community has been staged to large crowds each autumn since up until and including 2019, but not in 2020 or 2021.

A notice posted recently on the official Geelong After Dark website states that “due to the ongoing uncertainties related to COVID-19 and the impact restrictions are having on planning and presenting public events, the City of Greater Geelong has decided to cancel plans for Geelong After Dark for the foreseeable future”.

“However, as part of the city’s future planning for arts and culture, new public experiences and opportunities for artists and related companies are being considered, in line with the health and safety priorities in a COVID-19 environment.”

Earlier this week, the city’s director of planning and economy Gareth Smith said not holding Geelong After Dark this year was disappointing, but the city had redirected the allocated funding to Surround Sounds, which will be a new celebration of music from Geelong and the Bellarine.

“The decision to cancel Geelong After Dark was made in response to feedback collected during the development of our Arts & Culture Strategy 2021-2031.

“We heard from more than 1,700 voices during the development of the strategy, with the majority of stakeholders wanting to see more music across our arts and cultural programming.”

He said one of the key actions in the strategy was to launch a major annual live music program.

“Our new celebration, Surround Sounds, will feature local musicians and artists hosting their work in live music and cultural venues across our region.”

Surround Sounds will run as a pilot event across four weeks, from April 7 to May 8 this year.

“We believe that hosting a number of events across our region will bring more benefits to our arts and cultural sector rather than focusing our celebrations in one key location for one night,” Mr Smith said.

“We’re excited about announcing the first line up on Tuesday, February 8, with the full program to be announced on March 1.

“The city is also proud to be investing more than $4.9 million in Community Grants in 2021-22, with our next grant round opening on February 12. The latest round includes $400,000 in grants for the arts, culture and heritage sectors.

“We have also launched the new Geelong Women’s Street Art Commission Project to encourage women artists to create new works within Geelong’s CBD; along with a public art projections program.”