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history ~ previous festivals ~ past winners History of the Boyup Brook Country Music Club
The Club acts as a peak arts body for our community and works closely with volunteers in a range of events and activities.
The Club's major activity is to organise the Boyup Brook Country Music Festival which is a relaxed, refreshingly authentic, and fun four day festival, and incorporates the West Australian Country Music Awards, the Boyup Ute & Truck Muster, a Street Carnival, Concerts, Workshops and WA’s Bush Poets Breakfast. This is the most prestigious event on the West Australian Country Music Calendar, with the 2008 event bringing some 17,000 visitors over the four days, to our town and region - not bad considering the Shire of Boyup Brook has a total population of approximately 1,400. The festival has now been hosted for twenty three years, and is a celebration of our country lifestyles and community spirit. This event is helping to bring in a high tourist flow to our region in the off peak season.
Our festival involves a huge range of community organisations and individual community members (36 organisations in all) who all come together to participate in and enjoy our event, which in the long term increases well being, social and physical health. This is the fabric that holds our community together.
Five years ago the Club committee identified the need to have a new venue for the festival and this set about quite a challenge for the community as the only place available was dirty and dusty, and had no power or stage area. Through a dedicated committee, hard decisions were made to move the festival from the Town oval, where it had been operating for 19 years and move to a new dry and dusty parkland venue central to town. With government funding, and the hands of many volunteers the community has built this dry parkland area into a beautiful Music Park. It is now reticulated with grassed lawns, has power and lighting and now sees a permanent stage and sound shell, where John Williamson was in attendance to officially open the stage and sound shell in 2007.
The festival creates a focus on our community and assists in celebrating our achievements and helps to foster a sense of identity and belonging. The community involvement develops long term benefits and a cultural growth, by assisting in the development of skills, and the chance to collaborate with national and international artists.
“The Boyup Brook Country Music Festival is a relaxed, refreshingly authentic and fun weekend. The Festival brings the grass roots of the country music experience to its warmly received guests, blending big name and WA original artists in a friendly, country setting.”
The Festival reinvigorates this town and further unites the Boyup Brook town’s people, building on their strengths, expertise and enthusiasm, uniting them in developing a significant tourism event. It enhances the projection of the local community image bringing them all together and encourages community ownership. Last year the festival generated approximately 1.4 million dollars for our regional area.
Boyup Brook is situated 300 kilometres south west of Perth and has a total population of 1,400 (only 500 in town). It is an inland, rural township, not located on any main highways.
The Club goals:
1986 First Festival 2008 Festival
Why was this Festival established and when? This event was established in 1986, after discussions with a number of Country Music Clubs around the state to focus on West Australian Country Music artists and recognising them with Awards. No other Clubs had the dream or incentive of what heights this event could be taken to. The Club has gone with the flow to continue to introduce new items to enhance the festival. Because of this the whole event has gone from strength to strength.
Details of the Development and Growth of the Festival
Over the past 10 years there have been many changes and requirements upon volunteers, funding and the way in which Clubs now operate. This has had a huge impact on our volunteers and the need for continued learning. This includes having computer skills, paying for our volunteers to attend courses, performances and other functions, attending conferences, developing skills for sponsorship, grants and funding, having jobs lists, dealing with legal policies and documents. Sometimes it has been very frustrating but the outcomes are generally rewarding.
Organisations involved in establishing and running the Festival The Boyup Brook Country Music Festival is solely organised by the Country Music Club, which consists of Executive Committee, General Committee and Sub Committees. As it gets nearer to the event the Club calls for other interested community groups to come forward, so that they can be involved in the planning and development of the festival. We hold several briefing sessions and a debriefing session following the festival. Approximately 36 local organisations are involved in some way. The event could not be held without the assistance of some 350 volunteers who come from these community groups.
Impact of the Festival
Each year we add more participants, who go home feeling quite overwhelmed with the country hospitality and the way in which the whole community joins in to share in a huge project, and celebrates community achievement together. Artistic participants nominate year after year to be a part of the following year’s event.
The impact of the event on our community has been massive. A survey was conducted at the 2007 festival which indicated that the festival now brings in approximately 1.4 million dollars to this community and surrounding towns. It is exciting to note that we are now bringing in overseas and interstate visitors. Some of these people actually booked their holiday around the festival. Overseas survey forms were filled from England, Japan, Germany, Holland, New Zealand and Ireland. Our interstate visitors came from Sydney, Tamworth, Darwin, & Victoria. There was also a proliferation of artists from all parts of the globe enquiring about performing as artists.
The broader community benefit, not just in a dollar value but in the way in which new friendships are formed, new networks set up and new skills developed.
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