Grant Support
Mirboo North Italian Festa
Mirboo North Italian Festa is a regionally significant event that is an immersion into authentic Italian culture and traditions. Tens of thousands flock to this small rural town to enjoy the sights, smells, tastes, and sounds of Italy at this free, family festival two hours southeast of Melbourne.
The Festa is a big, warm-hearted Italian welcome with entertainment for everyone from bambini to anziani. The park is filled with laughter, green, white and red, grape-stomping, spaghetti-eating, Nonna’s cooking, children’s activities, the twirling of skirts to infectious toe-tapping Southern Italian music, the aromas of delicious food from all regions of Italy - gnocchi, arancini, gelato, cannoli, and biscotti, all shared with old and new friends and family - a joyous, inclusive event.
Project purpose
With the recent closures of major nearby employers such as APM, Loy Yang power station, and Hazelwood Mines, the Mirboo North community is in dire need of affordable events like Festa that bring joy and positivity. But delivering a major free event requires significant sources of revenue.
The committee have been so successful that Festa has almost doubled in just two years from around 15,000 attendees to around 27,000. As the crowds have grown, so has the need for infrastructure and labour to cope with the impacts of an extra 20,000+ people on a rural village, and to ensure everyone’s safety.
The committee sought Tilma Group’s help to apply for $100,000 in state funding.
Project overview
With the support of Festa coordinator, Rosie, Tilma Group wrote the grant application and redeveloped the previous year’s post event report to clearly articulate
The value of the event for economic impact and destination awareness
The challenges the community faced that meant the event required funding to continue and grow
The breadth of local business and community engagement in the event
The opportunities to grow benefits from the event, such as extended length of stay
Project outcomes
Though the grant application successfully secured some funding (much less than requested), Festa coordinator Rosie re-used parts of the application and the post event report to apply for – and win – three times more money from a different state grant!
Referee
Rosie Romano
Coordinator
Mirboo North Italian Festa
www.italianfesta.net
