Now that the Palerang Council Cultural Development Committee has been established, the Festival of Braidwood sub-committee can enlighten the Braidwood community about this year's heritage celebrations.
First, the sub-committee has decided on a name change. "The Festival of Braidwood" will allow a wider scope of activities to take place on Braidwood's special day of celebration. Second, we have decided to have an annual fixed date for the festival so we avoid clashing or competing with the Braidwood Show, Easter, Anzac Day and the bi-annual Two Fires Festival. Our permanent festival date will be the first weekend of May, this year being on Saturday and Sunday, May 3 and 4. Also, we will have more chance of drawing interested visitors from outside Braidwood when we steer away from the National Trust fortnight when just about every other town in Australia is celebrating its heritage. Our festival details will still appear in the National Trust magazine and the outline of plans for the festival have already been supplied for publication.
The Festival of Braidwood theme for this year is "Collections and Collectables". Collections of costumes, articles, demonstrations of skills and performances will all be acceptable contributions to the festival. Displays and sales of arts, crafts, collections and local produce will make up part of the entertainment in Ryrie Park on Saturday. The display and sales area will be open from 9 am to 3 pm and sites will be allocated by a member of the sub-committee.
It must be pointed out at this very early stage so that there is no misunderstanding that all participants in Saturday's activities in Ryrie Park must be able to provide proof of public liability coverage. This is a requirement of Palerang Council for the park to be used in this manner.
Entertainment in the morning will take place between 10 am and 12 noon in the form of a blackboard concert to which we invite anyone who would like to perform either music, spoken word or dance. Each performance will be limited to fifteen minutes.
The street parade will take place between 1pm and 2pm. We look forward to plenty of floats, vehicles, adults and children participating. The Council will, following a routine risk assessment, cover public liability for the parade. If the EI ban is lifted, horses and horse drawn vehicles will be welcome, but will need to arrange their own public liability cover. The parade participants will assemble at the bottleshop corner at 12.30pm.
At 2pm, following the parade, there will be a concert in Ryrie Park.
We plan to have a weekend long exhibition of collectables in the National Theatre, "Our Place" photographic exhibition, heritage town walks, cemetery tour, drive yourself tours to local village attractions and a decorated business window competition. "Our Place" will result in the winners of each section having the opportunity to have their photograph printed as a postcard that will be sold to promote Braidwood to the rest of Australia and the world.
We look forward to your enquiries and expressions of interest in the festival. Please contact Secretary Jan on 4842 2887. If you would like to assist the sub-committee over the festival weekend May 3-4, please contact Jill on 4842 2626.
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