Seven months out: Judy and Peter Anderson flank Wayne Park as they discuss the future of the 2024 Rochester Mural Festival, which will be staged from April 6-14 next year after the event was cancelled in 2023 due to the impact of last October’s floods.
Rochester Mural Festival’s motivated and forward-thinking organising committee is planning to spend the next seven months returning the annual celebration of art to “business as usual’’ status.
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The committee members admit you would be hard-pressed to find anyone in the town claiming to be operating without some sort of hangover from the October 2022 flood event, but they are equally as determined to deliver an event worthy of the show-stopping edition that occurred only months before the town was inundated by an overflowing Lake Eppalock.
A “meeting of the minds’’ at the Moore St Opperman Gardens and Mural Park last week offered up an alternate version of the festival which would, if successful, deliver a new element to the celebration.
Agricultural art: Farming Part Present and Future was the title of this Murray Ross and Jill Conway mural that won the 2020 people’s choice award at the Rochester Mural Festival. It has been offered up by the Wileman family to be displayed at the Rochester hospital site.
Wayne Park and Peter and Judy Anderson surveyed the site which celebrates previous winners and pointed to the fact they were now ready to start working towards delivering a 2024 Rochester Mural Festival.
“A lot of our organising committee were affected by the flood and that made staging the event this year impossible,” Mr Park said.
“Most of them had water through their house, which is why we decided to put it off until 2024.
“We are now ready to start working toward April next year, but we need some young blood on the committee.”
Signs are positive for the group, with a Rochester businessman sharing Mr Park’s vision of expanding the festival to potentially include a junior mural competition.
“We don’t necessarily need new ideas, although the youth component is a good one, we just need some new people to get involved,” Mr Park said.
He said he was hoping for a repeat of the 2022 event, won by international mural artist Marco Pennacchia.
“Paint us a song was a great theme,” he said.
Rochester Mural Festival was first held in 2015 and last year had a record amount of applications, including from overseas artists.
COVID-19 pandemic limitations meant their involvement in the event was impossible, but the doors will be swung open for the 2024 theme inspired by the words of American civil rights activist and Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jnr — “I have a dream’’.
“We already have three entries. It is a thought-provoking theme,” Mr Park said.
Next year’s festival will be held from April 6-14, during the Easter school holidays, with the aim of involving more youths in the event.
There is a push from within the community to have a youth element included in the festival.
“They would be smaller murals, one panel instead of four, and we hope to speak with the Campaspe Shire Council about a second location,” Mr Park said
The skate park has been discussed as an option because of the vacant fence line that borders the facility.
Meanwhile, the community presence of the mural festival remains strong, with about 40 murals among the 50 art attractions in the town.
“There are two more stands to be constructed in Moore St and one more at the hospital,” Mr Park said.
“Brett and Sally Wileman have donated a mural that was taken on David’s (Wileman) property and was painted by Murray Ross and Jill Conway. It will be displayed at the hospital site.”
Mr Park said the murals continued to attract people to Rochester.
“I am meeting people all the time who are here to see the art, including a couple that spent two extra days here to visit all the murals,” he said.
Mr Park and his committee are hopeful that signage and promotion for the Opperman Gardens and Mural Park will be enhanced to further promote what is on offer in the Moore St art precinct.
