The Didgeridoo Festival is on!
Below is a partial email from Peter Matic who is coordinator of the Didge Circle here in Melbourne:
Quote:
To kick off this year, we intend to hold a major event, The Melbourne Didjeridu Festival at Mia Mia Gallery on Saturday 20th February 2010. We propose to run the event from midday through to 8.30pm, with stalls, workshops and a concert.
In the latter part of last year, Colin McKinnon (Mia Mia Gallery – Manager), Henning Gerlt and I developed a funding proposal for consideration through the Manningham City Council – Community Development Grant Program and were advised in mid-December of our successful application. We now have a limited budget to help make the festival a reality, but we have a significant amount of work to do over the next 6 weeks to make it a success. Our proposal included the following “Project Description” and it is this that we are aiming to achieve.
"Project Description"
The Melbourne Didjeridu Festival will provide a unique one day festival event in Melbourne’s cultural calendar. The event will showcase the wide spectrum of Didjeridu in this country, while including the Yolngu custodians of the Didjeridu from NE Arnhemland and the local Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation here in Melbourne, along with the most talented local indigenous and non-indigenous didjeridoo players. The event will showcase Mia Mia Gallery and Westerfolds Park while engaging locally talented indigenous and non-indigenous people within the Manningham community in supporting reconciliation and cultural appropriate activity.
The Festival intends to have Djalu, Dopiya and perhaps a few other family members down for the event. I put the word out yesterday to the Gurruwiwis and they are keen to be a part of it. The problem at the moment is that the grant from Manningham City Council does not cover interstate travel so the Festival organisers are looking for additional funding for this.
Anyway, for interstaters and those from overseas who might be around on the 20th of Feb, the Festival is going ahead. There will be some big acts like Ganga Giri, Bruce Rogers etc. I don't know how likely additional funds will be obtained for Djalu and family, best to contact Peter Matic about that, his email
pmatic@bigpond.net.au and phone number 0408 343 433.
Guan
