The short-term future of the Horizon Festival is a hot topic as Sunshine Coast councillors heavily debated how much longer they would fund the event.
To kick off the discussion at the recent council meeting, a report was presented to the chamber highlighting the economic, cultural, financial and community benefits the award-winning festival brings to the Sunshine Coast.
The report also highlighted that the increase of costs this year could impact the scale of the festival.
The first Horizon Festival was held in 2016 and has been endorsed by council for multi-year funding twice since then.
This is the Festival’s third request to council for multi-year funding.
Councillors were originally set to vote on providing the outlined funding ($682,000) for 2022, then subsequently different amounts each year, for five years.
But Div 1 Cr Rick Baberowski threw a spanner in the works, calling for an amended motion to reduce the funding from five years to three.
Div 9 Cr Maria Suarez moved the amendment and expressed her concerns around the report.
“While the festival and the content is sound – around the issues highlighted – it is not the number of years of funding we are applying to the festival but when the funding requests come forward,” she said.
Cr Suarez said an information session highlighted to council that not granting forward-funding into that final third-year was creating a lot of uncertainty for sponsors, staff and artists.
Cr Baberowski supported the amendment, pointing out the journey of the festival “has been to some extent, a really difficult challenge over the last few years”.
“We’ve been trying to grow the program and brand of this relatively new festival which has this fabulous aspiration to become a signature event for South East Queensland,” Cr Baberowski said.
“Then for two years COVID almost killed the physical performance side of it … but the agility of the team was demonstrated when they very quickly changed the format to digital.”
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Councillors voted on the new motion, agreeing that nurturing the festival and potentially having it as an option to showcase the region, its Indigenous culture and its creatives at the 2032 Olympics, should be a future focus.
What transpired was regardless of whether council decided on three or five years, the festival would come up for review at budget time each year, so, as much as all of the councillors and community support it, the longevity of the festival is never fully guaranteed.
Cr Suarez argued she did not see how cutting the funding from five years to three was going to detrimentally jeopardise the festival, and that the timeframe allowed for more wiggle room.
“We haven’t had the Caloundra Music Festival review – and they could be delivered (potentially, at the 2032 Olympics) better, hand-in-hand,” she said.
“We will also have the report about the Olympics and that gives us better scope, rather than locking it in for five years.
“I know we will endorse it year on year, that will give us some flexibility to make some bigger changes sooner in the process.”
Div 10 Cr David Law was vocal in his objection to only funding the festival for three years, instead of five.
“I don’t understand why we want to limit the capacity of the team to develop the festival over a five-year period to deliver this award-winning festival,” Cr Law said.
“Tying the hands behind the back of people who are trying to build, develop and grow the festival is not the best idea.
“If it makes no difference whether it’s three or five, then why won’t we endorse it for five.”
He expressed it was unsatisfactory for council to be in that position.
“It’s not logical,” he said.
“If this is defeated at this moment, we’ve lost the festival right there.”
Cr Suarez said there was no debate whether the council supported the Horizon Festival and the benefits it brings to the community and the artists within it.
“By reducing funding to three years, we are not hamstringing the festival,” she said.
“We are leaving it open to more flexibility for it have larger funding in the future.
Cr Law was the only councillor to oppose the new motion to fund the Horizon Festival for three years.
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