“There’s music everywhere!” says Judy Turner, convenor of the inaugural CresFest taking place between April 1-3. For two days, the township of Creswick is throwing open its arms and its doors and inviting visitors to savour two of life’s transformative pleasures: music and dance. CresFest will celebrate the return of live music and performance while showcasing the beauty of Creswick’s historic architecture, its pubs, cafes and public spaces and the great beauty of the Central Victorian landscape.
Judy’s desire to entice visitors to Creswick arose from her feeling it was underused, underknown and underappreciated with a plethora of lovely buildings just waiting for someone to bring a festival to town, and to share the talents and spirit of the local community with a broader audience. Drawing on a lifetime’s experience of coordinating festivals, fundraisers and cultural events for a broad range of audiences, Judy decided it was time to drop a big old pin and mark Creswick out on the map.
“People tend to dash through Creswick on their way to somewhere else and we want it to be a bit more known”, says Judy. “The Goldfields region is a beautiful place to come and explore, people can stay in Ballarat, Daylesford or Clunes and be here for the festival in fifteen minutes. It’s a beautiful part of the world to visit and CresFest is happening at a beautiful time of the year.”
A festival committee was formed of like-minded locals from Creswick Folk Club, the Neighbourhood Centre, Leavers Wine bar where open mic nights have run for many years, and the Creswick Theatre Company. Together, they have fought for funding and been shaping the show, growing it from the ground up for many, many months. CresFest now has an enviable program which has grown to include 360 musicians.
In addition to a phenomenal line up of headline acts including Emma Donovan and The Putbacks, Eric Bogle Trio, The Maes, Lucy Wise, Fiona Ross, Kee’ahn and oodles of others, CresFest offers a whole other program – the Armband Program – filled with an exciting range of opportunities for community participation.
Festival goers can sing along with the Creswick Chorus led by Stella Savvy, strum and hum in the Creswick Ukestra led by Jen Hawley, strike out with Strat and Lyndal’s street band, and the Creswick Brass Band or be blown away by a Bollywood Dance ensemble. In addition to all of this and more, CresFest will include a series of live theatre shows called ‘Stories of Us’, funded by Festivals Australia, interspersed with short films in which music plays a key role.
A kids’ choir has been created with funding from a local family and open mics will be running all weekend, some hosted by the alumni of Youthrive, a statewide group based in Creswick working to support kids from rural areas in supporting their education and bringing their skills back home. For lovers of flips, tricks and ollies there is a YMCA skate competition included in Sunday’s program.
The festival’s ticketing model gives punters the choice of buying a pass for all of the activities taking place in and around the town as part of the Armband Program, with an additional ticket required for access into the Town Hall where the headline acts will be playing across the weekend, offering what Judy calls ‘two levels of commitment’.
“There’s also heaps of free stuff” Judy says, “for people passing through or wanting to dip their toe in the water. The famous Creswick market will be home to an outdoor stage which in turn will host Saturday Breakfast from Ballarat ABC in a first live OB from Creswick.”
In addition to putting Creswick on the map, the committee hopes CresFest will increase the role and prevalence of shared participatory music making and performance for people of all ages within the Creswick community as well as communities from the surrounding small towns who have been brought into the festival fold.
As Judy says, “that idea that people love getting together to sing, play and perform has been at the heart of what I’ve been doing all my life.”
Planning this event has taken nerves of steel, and CresFest appears to have struck lucky in being able to proceed in a window of opportunity when other regional town-based festivals held earlier in the year had to be cancelled. As Judy says, “everything is fraught when you’re surrounded by uncertainty, particularly when it’s the first time doing something”. Undeterred, Judy has been driven on by holding in mind the sheer joy that making music and performing with others can bring, a bug she caught back in the 70s when she began performing at folk festivals:
“For me, it is really all about amateur music and the power of performance. I just love the atmosphere and the chance to sit down and play and play and play until I can’t play anymore, and I like to provide that for other people.”
The inclusive and collaborative culture of CresFest extends beyond the music and dance. Local businesses have provided backing and volunteers of all ages have been drafted from across the community with plenty more still needed.
“We have a terrific team of people on the job, a mix of younger professionals and older volunteers, and it has worked really well and everyone is doing a terrific job. If anyone would like to be involved we could do with more stage managers, front of house people, we need people to serve the food in the artists’ green room, we need trouble shooters who can be runners, we need gofers, and before that we need people to put up posters!”
CresFest sounds an incredible way to spend a weekend. For ticket bookings and information about how to participate in the festival – become a CresFest volunteer, put up posters or offer a billet to a visiting act – click here, and and be sure to try and get yourself and everyone you know there.
CresFest: April 1-3, 2022. Creswick is just 1.5 hours’ drive from Melbourne, between Daylesford and Ballarat. It is accessible via V/Line on the Maryborough route. For more information visit http://www.vline.com.au or call 1800 800 007
Written by Deb Carveth, Online Editor for Community Music Victoria with Judy Turner
Community Music Victoria 