By Tania Phillips
Granite Belt Art Trail, that quirky showcase of the regions many and varied artisans, will officially kick off on 27 October but there is a lot to come before then.
The GBART organisers will run a series of development workshops for local artisans in the lead-up, aimed at helping them further develop their businesses.
The workshops are just one of a number of activities the GBART committee discussed at their Annual General meeting in Stanthorpe in late February as they gear up to present their bi-annual festival of community and creatives.
The Granite Belt Art and Craft Trail program encourages visitors to gallery hop their way around the Granite Belt.
The self-drive trail winds its way through galleries, workshop spaces, small halls, wineries and award winning cafes allowing visitors and locals alike to enjoy the talents of the regions artisans from artists to jewellery and cheesemakers.
Arts Trail founder Rosy Chapman said the event offers something for everyone, including, with the new workshops, the artisans themselves.
“We held our AGM at the RSL, had about 15 people in attendance and elected our executive committee for the year, it’s our event year, which is exciting because we’ve got a really strong skill set on the team,” she said.
“Now we’re just looking forward to getting into our strategy and planning as soon as we can.”
The new executive sees Roxane Scott as president, Linda Hodson vice president, Robert Ebenestelli treasurer and Rosy her self as the minute secretary.
“The first thing we will do is have our planning and strategy day but we have already got a lot of things underway,” she said.
“Our event has moved to bi-annual so we did a lot of planning last year in terms of getting some really strong foundations in place.”
The event runs from October 27-29 across the Granite Belt and the committee are looking to bounce back as we all emerge from the Covid cloud that fell over events in recent years.
“The second year of Covid was the most challenging because of the hard border closures,” Rosy admitted.
“Our major fundraising event had to be cancelled because our performing artist, who’s a local boy, lives in Sydney and couldn’t get home. We couldn’t get permission for him to cross the border for our major fundraiser. That’s done a bit of damage in just our ability to plan ahead with unattached funding. A lot of the funding we are able to access is attached to one aspect of the project but there are a lot of gaps we can’t get grant funding for that we need to fundraise ourselves.”
She said they are currently looking for sponsors for GBART itself and supporters for their Trail booklet which is sent out to the wider South East Queensland, Far North Coast area and outlines the trail, artisans and supporting places to stay.
As well as getting the “behind the scenes” details of running the event in place, the committee is already working on just who will take part this time around, with 18 expressions being received from individuals and groups across the region.
“There are some amazingly talented artists in this area,” Rosy enthused.
“GBART started in 2018 but the real crux for us was 2019. We had two bushfires in six-months and it was the middle of a five year drought. Our objectives for GBART are about economic uplift for sure but it’s also about community well-being.
“It’s a community well-being where we’re saying, bring everyone in to look at the amazing talent we’ve got here, let’s celebrate. We know that in a little town- population 5000 – we get a minimum 10 percent that get out and party, love it and just have a crack at something they’ve never tried before. It’s really good for artisans to showcase and meet people, it’s really good for the community because they get out and celebrate. We’re good at that here.
“But it’s also good because at that time we were struggling with our tourism industry so in 2020, which I think was the first year of Covid, we had Covid sensitive event, we pared it right back had 3000 visitors through 27 venues in three days. They stayed an average of three to four nights and they spent about $600 per person per day on – in this order – wine, accommodation, food and retail. That’s not what they spent at GBART, that’s just what they spent in the community. So the economic uplift for the Southern Downs was about $1.5 million from a second year event with a budget of $60,000.”
And while, of course the committee have their eyes on the main event, they are also looking to help the artisans in a more day-to-day way through their development workshops. And the artisans are responding well to the workshops, spread over the next few months, booking them out quickly as they are announced.
“We got a really lovely grant from the Rise Foundation and half of that money is purely on artisan development, without the artisans we don’t have a trail,” she said.
“There are a lot of people injecting a lot into the economy but we’ve got to make sure that the artists aren’t treated like Cinderella.
“This year we’re running the series of workshops. One of them is about creating a webpage to sell things on during year, it’s also about sharing and networking and introducing artisans to others.
“We’ve got a really great guest speaker for one of them but some of these workshops are already fully booked so while we can talk about them, there’s not many seats at the table, they filled up very quickly already. They’ve been really well received by the community.”
But with more workshops planned there will be more opportunities to go along and learn.
For more information contact artisan@gbart.org.au.
