#17: A winter festival of community resilience

Hayley is the Marketing Manager for East Gippsland Marketing Inc. and has played a crucial part in establishing the East Gippsland Winter Festival. What started as an idea to attract tourists back to East Gippsland after the bushfires, has led to over 90 community-driven events (both small and large), across the East Gippsland region.

I first met Hayley through the amazing Jodie Willmer from Happy Changemakers. Jodie and I did a podcast a few episodes ago. Jodie is a passionate local of the East Gippsland region who I’ve known for many years, and she reached out to me when she heard of the community-led idea of a Winter Festival. Jodie told me about this group who were looking to create the East Gippsland Winter Festival to build resilience and support the recovery of the local East Gippsland region.

It was an idea from the very talented and creative Adam Bloem. Putting my hand up to help, Jodie and I provided some pro-bono time to the working group to help them identify their capabilities and gaps in delivering on their idea. While running some strategic workshops I met Hayley from EGMI, and I must say I was so inspired by her and the EGMI team’s passion for the success of the region. With only a few weeks to go until the East Gippsland Winter Festival launches, and it will brighten up the region in these very wintery months, it’s so great to have Hayley chat with me today. So Hayley, let’s start.

1. Can you tell me a little bit about your role at EGMI?

Hayley Hardy
So, at EGMI, I am the marketing manager. And I have a team of admin assistants or marketing assistants and stakeholder assistants. So, I’m essentially the person in charge.

2. Nice, and what is the EGMI? Just for those who might not have heard of it before?

Hayley Hardy
So, marketing or EGMI is the regional marketing body for East Gippsland. We are the body that encourages people to visit, live, work and invest into East-Gippsland.

Renae Hanvin
It’s such an important role. And it’s such an important association in that part of the world because East Gippsland, as we know, has been impacted by the bushfires. But it’s such a beautiful part of Victoria and Australia. In the introduction, I mentioned how we connected and hearing of Adam’s idea.

3. So how did you come to hear about Adam’s idea of a winter festival in East Gippsland?

Hayley Hardy
Well, Adam and I have actually been friends for a really long time. We actually met at school as with any small town. Adam returned to East Gippsland a few years ago, and I returned to East Gippsland after university. And about five years ago we reconnected when he joined the EGMI board, so we are managed by a 13 member volunteer board, which is made up of people from around the community and in the business world. Adam joined our board and, last year after the fires, he raised the possibility of doing an event that encompassed all of East Gippsland, encompassing the arts and food and wine, and all of these various communities that had not been directly impacted by fire but by the tourists leaving. All of these businesses had been hard hit financially, [and he raised the possibility of] how EGMI could assist the festival from a marketing and advice standpoint. So yeah, we discussed that and how what we could and couldn’t do and how that could roll out. But yeah, that’s how that came about. So it’s a great, fabulous idea.

Renae Hanvin
It’s such a great idea. And as I alluded to when Jodi, beautiful Jodi, reached out to me and was like these community people have got this idea about a Winter Festival. And what I love so much about it is the fact that it’s inclusive. It’s not something that everyone has to be unified to do. You can do it and participate in your own way. And what I loved about it when I was privileged enough to do a couple of workshops with you guys, it’s a way of bringing everyone together and celebrating the region and creating a really wonderful event for the region. But also, it enables all the communities and the businesses, groups and communities to come together and participate in the right way. It’s for them. And as you say, the arts and the lantern making and the crafts and the food and seeing everything on social media over the past few months has just been awesome seeing it come alive. Your region has obviously been through a lot with the bushfire. And then obviously, we’ll throw a few COVID cases. And, in fact, today we’re in another snap lockdown in Victoria.

4. So why is the festival needed in the region?

Hayley Hardy
The festival is needed for a couple of different reasons. And you’ve just touched on that. Obviously, the key thing is to get tourism to return to East Gippsland. The financial or economic benefits are really important. Winter has always been a time of year when we typically have a low point in our tourism. A low visitor spend, I suppose, in East Gippsland. And so, I think Adam was really cognisant of that when he raised the idea around the event, because we didn’t really anticipate what COVID was going to do. It wasn’t even a real thing when we first raised the idea. What we wanted to do was encourage people to come back to East Gippsland and continue to come back into East Gippsland. Obviously, with COVID, with borders closed people are doing a lot more road trips, which is fabulous. But that doesn’t really encompass everything. So, over the past 12 months and going back a couple of years, East Gippsland has been through drought, bushfires, and now COVID. Businesses and the community are really exhausted, they are really tired. So, what this event has actually done, has created this sense of optimism and hope and a real sense of bringing people together. So with some of the funding that Adam has managed to achieve for the event has done something really simple – and that’s just to provide community with, you know. here’s $500 to get your little lantern parade off the ground. Or, here’s another $1,000 to get a band to play at the local pub. And all it’s done is to get people together and actually be able to go ‘Yes, I can do that. I can do that for my community, I can actually get things done.’ And we’ve ended up with almost 90 events across East Gippsland.

Renae Hanvin
Wow.

Hayley Hardy
And, it’s also been able to get people thinking about what’s next, what else can I do for my community? And it’s just been astounding, and the amount of happiness and optimism and go ‘Yep, this is really simple. I can do this, and I can do it myself.’ And because we’re not running these events. The communities are running them.

Renae Hanvin
I was going to say it’s just the perfect example of community led resilience. So, in the disaster space, obviously, you know there’s a national framework around community-led recovery and community-led resilience. But, by you guys setting up the structure and the opportunity for people to get involved has enabled them to get involved. And again, as you said, it’s that hope. It’s that reimagine. It’s picking the time and the town that is the low season or whatever. But now there’s so much excitement, and even just all the social posts and the conversations we’ve been having with people in the community. They are so excited. There’s a reignited kind of, you know, enthusiasm that, as you said, there’s been a lot going on in the region. So, from the business perspective, so we obviously do a lot with businesses, as you do with your EGMI as well. And I think it offers locals and businesses to almost really look at what role their business can play as well. In a sense of can they open different? Can they have a different menu? Can they run different events? Can they have a special food offering, you know, celebrate the local foods. And the other thing that I really liked about the structure of what you set up behind the scenes, is that it’s about local communities celebrating with other local communities as well. So very much not about ‘us and them’ and fighting for the tourism dollar, etc. But it’s like, what are you going to be in your community? And then how can we celebrate that and complement that in our community too Which again, comes from the leadership team.

5. So, if I’m a visitor stuck in Melbourne, or coming from another state, what’s the Winter Festival going to offer me as a tourist?

Hayley Hardy
Well, we’ve got a real wealth of events. So, there’s obviously the art lead events, which is one of the key ones for those is the Lakes Lights Lanterns. So that’s running, obviously, in Lakes Entrance on June 27th. And that’s a real key event, I would highly recommend that one. Some of the more foody ones, which I highly recommend, is Deep Winter from Sailors Grave, which is one of our craft breweries. They do some amazing really imaginative brews.

Renae Hanvin
We’ll need a few of those.

Hayley Hardy
Yeah, absolutely. After this week! There’s also a Sodafish, which is a hatted restaurant in Lakes Entrance. They’re doing a winter seafood feast. They’re doing a couple of dinners there. A bit afield, Omeo, is doing at Burger Bonfires and Banta night up in Omeo. Metung, as a township, has got all sorts of events on there’s some ice making some lighting up the town, they’ve got like murder mysteries, a few different other things, there’s all sorts of things happening in that township. Bairnsdale’s got a laneway augmented reality, sort of showcase, there’s a whole laneway in Bairnsdale where they’ve had artists paint huge murals on. Some of them will be lit up with some augmented reality, which is quite exciting.

Renae Hanvin
Wow, Cool.

Hayley Hardy
So, there’s some really key events. But if you if you want to have a bit of a peruse the website is www.egwinterfest.com.au. And you can have a bit of a look through and see how that works with a weekend away and children because there are lots of different workshops as well for kids.

Renae Hanvin
Yeah, amazing. I will definitely be sharing the link on the podcast, and then also through our socials. Absolutely starting to promote it soon. So, when we were doing the workshops, we talked a lot about the prevalence of connections as we do a lot of work with Professor Daniel Aldrich around social ties and social capital. We’ve sort of alluded to it a little bit, but this winter festival has got a massive potential to really build people’s connections and resilience in communities. Because, while the festival is obviously a fun with 90 events that people can attend, it actually has underlying resilience-led capability building, that is the secondary outcome.

6. So, having watched all the social media stories coming through, do you feel like the connections are building stronger in the communities and across the communities from the process of creating this festival?

Hayley Hardy
Yeah, I really do. There are some really beautiful stories coming through the towns and some are totally unexpected consequences for us. I’m not like you, I don’t normally work in the recovery or resilience space. But, some of the stuff that’s coming through say with the laneway event, which these accomplished artists are doing these amazing murals, they’ve been talking to some of the youth around East Gippsland. Who like with many other townships, we’ve got some young kids who have gone around the town tagging things which has annoyed some of the business community, which is not unusual for any town, but these kids haven’t tagged any of these murals. Not any of it. But they’ve been talking to the artists and talking to them about the art that they’re doing. Asking them “can you not paint over this particular tag because that’s a tag of my friend who died”, you know, and telling them all about their life stories. And all this other stuff. There are some really lovely stories that have been coming out around all sorts of things at the moment. And it’s, you know, a lot of mental health type stories. And I just think it’s going to have some really beautiful, long term impacts, I think, across all sorts of communities.

Renae Hanvin
I’m shivering with just hearing those sorts of stories, because I think, again, a lot of what we do and what we talk about, it’s the small things that make the biggest difference. And, for those kids to be talking to the artists, you know, who knows what world of possibilities that opens up just for one child, in the region by doing something like this. I mean, it’s extraordinary. And there must be many, many, many other stories under that as well. I can’t imagine the enthusiasm in the community, again, to have something and a focal point to deliver to, but obviously, you can’t do it all from funding in the community. And obviously, I know there’s some grants that have been applied for.

7. What kind of partners and sponsors have you got involved, and partners are local?

Hayley Hardy
So obviously, we’ve got a lot of grants. We’ve got some grant funding from Creative Victoria and PHN, which is the Public Health Network. So, they’re the main ones. And it’s a local sponsor as well. So, they’re the ones we have had involved and we’ve got some local sponsorships, too.

Renae Hanvin
What I love about that though, is it’s again, local, local, local.

8. So, what’s the vision for the festival? Is this a one-off? Or are you anticipating that it will be bigger and better next year?

Hayley Hardy
I would hope that it would continue on. I’m not sure that we could guarantee that we would get 90 events next year. But look, I think it will evolve each year, because it really has been completely embraced by the community, which has been amazing. And I yeah, I do think it will continue on, because we don’t have anything like this in East Gipps

land. There are no other winter events at all, or any events that go over a period of time. So yeah, I absolutely think it will continue.

Renae Hanvin
Yeah, I hope so. And again, totally happy to put my hand up to help a bit more if you need it in the future to keep it going. And if there are any corporates or philanthropic funders who are listening to us today, who might be interested in having a conversation with Hayley, we’ll put Hayley’s contact details as well. Because it’s, I think it’s obviously having such a great impact in this beautiful part of Victoria. If we can help it and evolve it and make it a really important part of the community moving forward, I think that’s just so special. And again, such a simple, great idea from two little high school friends who’ve created this. Obviously, lots of others as part of the working group and volunteers to create this amazing outcome of the East Gippsland Winter Festival.

Hayley Hardy
One thing that we’ve really noticed locally, in East Gippsland, is that while we’ve had lots of people who are incredibly well intentioned to come to East Gippsland since January last year and wanting to offer their services or providing funding or that sort of thing. Often, it’s to say, ‘here’s my services, here’s my money for this thing, or here’s this thing for your community’. But, most of the time, those services or whatever, don’t take into consideration what the community might need. They don’t ask the questions about community requirements. And often, and particularly with government, it doesn’t provide the community time to go through a bit of that shock and grief process to then think about what they actually might need going forward. Often, particularly at the moment, the communities are just starting to, particularly the ones that were hardest hit, are just starting to think about – actually, these are the things we want. But a lot of the big funding grants, from the government particularly, have closed. The biggest thing that we’re noticing is, communities need to be asked what they need.

Renae Hanvin
So, after they are given time, I think is what I’m hearing from you to enable them to consider. And yeah, again, we’ve got one of our initiatives, the Disaster Giving Collective is to try and mitigate that problem of assumed giving, because you’re correct. Communities trying to recover in the chaos of what disasters bring. And then there are all these assumptions of what other people’s think that you need to have on top of that. And, giving you things that they think you need to receive, which you might not. And not only have you not had time to think about what you need to receive, it’s like you’re then having to accept things that you probably don’t even want. Which I think, is a big gap in the disaster space. Hayley, thank you so much for your time. So, I’ve been speaking to Hayley Hardy, and she’s the marketing manager at the East Gippsland Marketing Inc. And we have been talking about a Winter Festival of Community Resilience, and it’s completely related to the East Gippsland Winter Festival. All the links are on the website if you can attend, do or look it up online, and maybe get ready to attend next year. But Hayley, thanks so much. It was really great to chat with you.

Hayley Hardy
Thanks Renae, that was great.