Festival chair and director Christy O’Brien and vice-chaier Leonie Canham cut the ribbon on their inaugural event.
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Supplied
Whichever way you look at her, Christy O’Brien needs a strong cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down.
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She just doesn’t have the time.
Not for any, let alone all, of the above.
Because wrapping up Echuca-Moama’s inaugural Festival of Stories is not the end of the story, it’s not even the first chapter.
It’s still a working draft as far as Christy, the chair and Festival director, and all the organisers are concerned.
But one thing is sure so far.
It’s really working.
Although for all the time, effort and money sunk into version 1.0, the big job is still ahead.
The one, Christy says, where the real world and the dream need to come to a long-term agreement to ensure the Festival is the real deal for years to come.
It would be incorrect to describe the current concept as unique; as clever and as fluid as it is. Simply because everything is unique, even the most mundane of things – even you and me.
We all can, however, agree the Echuca-Moama Festival of Stories truly is something quite extraordinary and with even wider community and corporate enthusiasm can become not just special, but especially different in every annual incarnation.
No one part of the Festival in itself is original, but this may well be the first time someone has been gifted enough to bring them all to the one address and pretty well in the right order and at the same time.
Where would you match a setting like this for a workshop in basket weaving?
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Christy and Co are still processing just how well things turned out for an inaugural show for which there were no clear ground rules, no proven formulae and, in her franker moments, no idea.
They had all seen assorted festivals in locations around the state and country, and they could all see somewhere in the distance the concept of pulling all sorts of nuts and bolts into the one framework – and making it fit.
“Even the bits where it suddenly went wrong, literally as the curtain was going up, worked out in the end,” Christy laughed.
“The compere lined up for the big Saturday night on the wharf fell through, and Liam Guinan was pulled in at the absolute last minute and was brilliant,” she said.
“For a first go we sold more than 1300 tickets, events such as the wharf opening were sellouts, and even the free events filled up. The workshops were a smash hit.
“What we have discovered is the people who did come really got what we were doing, and that was finding a story in everything, from the written and spoken word to food, to the arts, something which let people tap into their creative side.
“We had one woman who flew down from Queensland, just for the weekend, and then flew home – this really is a case of build it and they will come.”
Don’t think for a minute this initial success will be the launching pad to something bigger than Quo Vadis.
Benny Walker, Dan Sultan and Liam Guinan on stage.
Photo by
Chris Hawking
The key word always bouncing around in Christy’s head is intimate.
Anyone can run a music concert, or a book tour, even a writers’ workshop. Echuca-Moama already has success stories such as the Winter Blues and Riverboats.
Festival of Stories will only succeed if it is owned by Echuca-Moama. Every visitor it draws is a bonus, but Christy and Team Festival want locals to be part of it all, not just observers or ticketed people who come and go but everything. Including the cadre of volunteers who brilliantly managed events, shuffled people from point A to point B and kept smiling through it all.
She wants locals to participate because everyone – e v e r y o n e – has a story.
“We cannot thank the community enough for trusting us to run this event and underpinning its inaugural success – and without our sponsors we might never have got off the ground,” Christy says.
“There were even people so excited about what we were doing they sent us, unprompted, their stories – you can’t buy that sort of personal investment,” she said.
“This isn’t one of those festivals where you have to have read the ‘approved’ books, or listen to the commentary elite, we want experiences, yours, ours, our visitors and our guest speakers, we want to weave them all into the fabric of the Festival of Stories.”
And the organisers are determined to be incredibly receptive to feedback and ideas – some of which saw things such as pop-up yoga, Fringe style events, even looping EMFM radio’s 30 th birthday celebrations into the program.
There are now more areas to explore, new people with whom to engage, headline participants to lure to the Murray.
But this time round there are runs on the board, people have been given a taste of what might, what can, be and Christy and her mates can point and say “like that”.
And there’s nothing like success to beget more.
No question, the full story of the Festival is still to be written.
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