Talking Regional Events Andrew Squires from Noosa Alive Festival
Hi guys, you’re listening to the Talking Regional Events Podcast.
My name is Linda Tillman, and on this show, we talk about how a successful tourism events economy can drive regional growth and community pride.
We offer you tips, insights and even some great case studies on how you can create a sustainable visitor economy. Now let’s talk!
In this episode of the Talking Regional Events podcast recorded in 2021, Linda speaks with Andrew Squires from Noosa alive!
In 2021 we asked event experts from across Australia about
Their top learnings from COVID-19 - the silver linings for their event, or for events in their region.
The biggest change they can foresee for the events industry into the future (something we should all be preparing for now!)
A recommended resource for event organsiers (such as a podcast, Facebook group, newsletter, alliance, etc)
Transcript
Linda Tillman:
If you could start, Andrew, by introducing yourself and the event Noosa alive!, and I'm also interested in what happened with your event in 2020 as a result of COVID.
Andrew Squires, Noosa alive!:
Hi, everyone. I'm President of the Noosa alive! arts and cultural festival.
We're going into our 20th year in 2021, bringing arts and culture to the Noosa region. We bring quality events both nationally and internationally to the Noosa region. We attract international and national attendance, and it gives the local community the opportunity to see arts and culture and performances that they may not have the opportunity to see.
During 2019, we had a wonderful festival. In February 2020, we were geared up just about to go to print with 20,000 programs and engage a lot of performers and we had to shut down for COVID restrictions. So we closed the whole festival.
Luckily, it didn't impact us too dramatically financially, but we closed the whole festival for 2020 and what that did was give us the opportunity to do a bit of a regroup and a re-evaluation of where we're sitting; what we're looking at for the future because as we move through COVID, we understood that things potentially aren't to be anywhere near the same as they had been that we were used to.
So we took that opportunity to re-evaluate our administration, our processes, our strategy, get some external people in to give us some advice on how we can move forward to make the festival more sustainable, and to run more efficiently as we move forward.
Linda Tillman:
Wonderful.
So you've mentioned that you have taken the opportunity to use the time that you've been given to review, and look at strategy and a plan for the future, which is I think is a silver lining for events because we don't often have that time to actually stop and do that strategic or creative thinking that is required.
What would you say would be other learnings or positive things that have come out of this process for Noosa alive! over the last 12 months or so?
Andrew Squires, Noosa alive!:
So after 2020, it gave us the opportunity to really delve deeply into our running costs, our processes and how we could streamline that, make it more efficient. We cut quite a lot of costs that have just been sitting there over the years that everybody just took for granted. We found that we didn't need to pay them, and there were a lot of other better ways that we could utilise those funds. I think that was a good learning for us.
Another one was communication. I think that was such a very big flag that came up. It's really to keep abreast of what's happening within the industry and what we're doing with the festival and then sharing that information as best we can with the community and key bodies.
We're a volunteer organisation, of course, so sometimes I feel it's time poor. But having that ability to send newsletters and so forth it keeps the community abreast of what is going on.
Linda Tillman:
What do you foresee as the biggest challenge for the events industry moving forward?
Obviously we've been through a lot during 2020 and there's been a lot of discussion about events needing to reimagine, to reinvigorate, to adapt, to look at their strategy moving forward and their model.
Andrew Squires, Noosa alive!:
So couple of things probably. I think one of the biggest things that we as event coordinators is being aware of your financial management and forecasting and planning. I think that's going to be a massive consideration moving into the future because sometimes there's unforeseen events that may happen, especially in the COVID restrictions. That may or may not apply, and sometimes we don't get any real notification of that but it's here and you can't do any events. You can't have more than 20 people, 500 people, whatever that may be.
So I think having that financial strategy in the background and that's where you're going to get hurt – by the finances and committing to performers and venues, and then not being able to put the event forward.
I think the other good thing is local talent. Australian performers are available and are really screaming out for work. And we as Noosa alive!, quite a lot of our events were international events and we are obviously unable to do that at the moment and what it's given us the opportunity now to explore local and national performers and arts.
We're finding some fantastic people and some fantastic opportunities to engage with up and coming performers and identifying more with schools and communities and so forth to collaborate with those types of organisations and associations, so it's opened our demographic up a little bit and it's also given us the opportunity to engage with people more now than perhaps we may not have done as a standard first.
Linda Tillman:
Yeah, I think that's exciting. It's really allowed people to think creatively about their events to innovate and consider how they can do things differently, and I think we needed that for the industry. That freshness and change. I think that's a real positive, but I guess it comes down to those that have the energy and the capacity to actually do that.
I mean, when you've got a volunteer team and you know you are already pretty much at your limit to deliver an event it can be hard to find the energy and the time to consider those more strategic or creative elements.
The finances are absolutely spot on. I think it'll be very interesting to see what happens, particularly with those events that are dependent on external funding and how much of that will be available in the future.
So my final question is, as an event committee, I'd imagine that you would tap into other events, knowledge, or other networks.
Do you have a recommended resource that you feel other events could gain value from?
Andrew Squires, Noosa alive!:
I think it’s really just delving deeper into to the connections that you have already as a festival, and getting that referral, that expansion of that. You're coming from a fairly good, solid base and you can just expand out: key stakeholders, community, Council, tourism bodies and so forth, and do a lot of networking events, so you get your name out there. If something comes up in that realm, they know where to send it to, so we get a lot of performers coming directly to us and off our website, so making sure that's up to date as best as we can so if people do see us on social media, they can tap into the website, put up their credentials and performances, and then we can add it to our database and hopefully utilise their skills and what they're offering moving into the future.
I think it's just really getting amongst the community and getting out there.. You do need to be proactive getting out amongst like-minded people and like-minded events. We have started engaging a lot more with the art gallery here who also have a great network of contacts that we can then tap into.
So that's an example of how we've expanded our connections, plus we've also been very lucky that two of our volunteers are now are on the committee, very excited about finding new acts. They're going out to the market and they're coming up with some great stuff.
We're planning our next event in March and then back to July for our normal festival. So we're all systems go at the moment and utilising the grants that are available and hopefully some good sponsorship and more funds as we move through Christmas in January. Fingers crossed.
Linda Tillman:
Thank you so much, Andrew. I really appreciate your time.
Andrew Squires, Noosa alive!:
Great talking to you.