Village News

What's going on Behind The Scenes today? Well programming, that's what! Securing the epic activity forming The Village Festival Edinburgh Gardens 2017... stay tuned folks! L-R: Evi van der Niet on The Village World Kitchen, Ariel Valent The Village General Manager and all around ground guy, Lauren Mullarvey on Main Stage music program, Suzanne Kalk Artistic Director across the lot, Nathan Arnold Epic Tech Manager. Boom Room.

Mark your calendars for the inaugural Floriade Fringe presented by the The Village Festival. Returning to the capital for the first time since the Centenary of Canberra in 2013, The Village will continue the celebration once Floriade ends. Join us in the heart of the city for an incredible festival of theatre, art, music, food and dancing.19 - 21 October 2017

It Takes a Village! Take me to The Village! The iconic festival will be back again in Edinburgh Gardens. Lock in those dates, click Going, add this to your calendar, share widely and stay tuned. We'll be posting updates and program highlights. There will even be the chance to choose the wine served at the festival!

Over the last two weeks The Village World Kitchen travelled all the way to Tennant Creek in the NT with a team of artists from all over Australia to be part of The Desert Harmony Festival. We installed our new freshly built World Kitchen in the community gardens in the main street of Tennant Creek, a beautiful central spot. Every day lots of local people and travellers came in to our kitchen to make and taste golden angels with uncle Phil Ahwang (these golden treasures became the highlight of everyone day over the last few weeks). Uncle Phil also hosted a Kup Murri (traditional Torrs Straight Islander way of cooking in the ground) and told many stories about his country and taught the local kids his traditional songs and dance.... We cooked up some local bush medicine with Aunty Tina and we created mad healthy smoothies with the local kids. Part of the project is to create a big visual story book about the Dreams and Dreamings of the people from Tennant Creek. In the garden we set up a mobile studio inhabited by our visual artist Viv Mc Dermot who will compile all these dreamings into a big visual book. This book will stay here in the community in the library. Castlemaine food artist Nikki Valentini has been cooking up beautiful healthy meals with and for the community, lots of interesting stories around food have been shared and many friendships have been made. Melbourne Pod cast artist Cat Mc Gauran has been talking to many local people and is compiling an audio story book about peoples dreams and dreamings. Long time Village artist Jules Chaple hosted an Iron chef competition at the multi cultural night last night as a carrot the competition was an "egg off" between two local ladies... We are having lots of fun here in this beautiful community tomorrow is the last day of the festival and The World Kitchen will host another "steamy" Iron chef competition between two local food lovers ....to be continued...

We are stoked to be heading to the Performing Arts Exchange (PAX) in Sydney in August. The Village will be hosting an Encounter Session, focused on our unique model of co-creating dynamic arts festivals with communities. If you're attending PAX, we'd love to have you as part of the discussion.Or if you are in a community (or know of one) that would benefit from The Village coming to visit, please register.If you can't make it PAX, but are interested in The Village working with a particular community, feel free to get in touch anytime.

What say you about creating cultural democracy? Read on from this UK case study.

Friends, we've been thinking... and appreciating the work of our independent artists. Here's an article for thought... an oldie but a goodie. What do you reckon?
https://www.google.c...peter-bazalgette

Each year, The Village Festival presents an arts village at the Falls Music & Arts Festival, one of Australia's finest, longest running, boutique music events. The Marion Bay location in Tasmania is stunning, and the arts ranges from circus to kooky installations, and from interactive theatre to superb music.Enter through the gates of The Village and discover a myriad creative expressions. You can even get involved yourself. Relax by day, party by night!

Each year, The Village Festival presents an arts village at the Falls Music & Arts Festival, one of Australia's finest, longest running, boutique music events.The Village is an oasis, described by The Age as "a haven of weird and wonderful creativity".The Village will feature hundreds of performers: live theatre, comedy, music and all the strange things that could only really happen at The Village. Relax by day, party by night!

The Village is working with Benalla Rural City Council to re-invent one of the icons of the Benalla Festival: join us on the foreshore by the lake to experience a multi-faceted and fun community festival. The creative folk of Benalla will be on display with some special guests.Don't miss The Famous Village Dog Show, So You Think You Can Interpretive Dance and The World Kitchen. Finishes with a fireworks spectacular on the lake.

The imaginary love child of Nigella and the Swedish chef, The Village Festival's World Kitchen is a food performance venue that hosts food demonstrations from the serious to the spurious, featuring chefs from local restaurants, home cooks and special performances. It's a unique way to share food, culture and performance.On this weekend, you can see St. Kilda's finest chefs, alongside home cooks, and cooking demonstrations from the serious to the spurious.

The Village Festival is part carnival, part village fair and part arts festival. Enter through the impressive façade and discover an alternative utopian world chock-full of of music, theatre, visual art, installations, puppetry, story-telling, cooking, workshops and a whole lot more. This year The Village has a special focus on works by young, emerging and experimental artists. Students from Fitzroy High School and Alice Miller School in Macedon lead Maze of Motions, a creative collaboration looking at the depth and complexity of our emotions. The festival will also feature a preview performance of The Garden of Sorrows: Snuff Puppets’ giant puppet adaptation of the illustrated book of fables by John Hughes and Marco Luccio in which iconic Australian animals take on human qualities.The Main Stage music program will feature the best of Melbourne’s emerging and established musos including Masco Sound System,
The Number Nineteens, Copperhead Brass Band, Hello Tut Tut,
Low Down Big Band, All Day Fritz and Chaos Magnet.The Village World Kitchen is the imaginary love-child of Nigella and the Swedish chef. This fun, performative food stage invites chefs and home cooks from around the world (and around the corner) to share their stories about food, all whilst cooking scrumptious dishes to taste.As always, The Village encourages active participation. Opportunities to get creative, include crafty workshops and stalwarts like So You Think You Can Interpretive Dance and 10 Minute Dance Parties.Friday 27 October: 6pm-12midnight
Saturday 28 October: 12midday-12midnight
Sunday 29 October: 12midday-8pmNo advance bookings. Entry by donation.

Hello Village Winter Festival friends,
Hereby letting you all know that we won't be doing a Castlemaine Winter Festival this year. We are taking a break but we will be back refreshed and with excitement next year winter 2018.
This year we won't be sitting still though we are conducting a creative development with some visual artists here in Castlemaine working towards a spectacular event we will perform at next years Winter Festival. The Village is also very busy this year travelling to many other communities in Australia. We will travel to NT, Tennant Creek in July, Canberra in Sept, St Kilda in October (The Village world Kitchen) and to the Edinburgh Gardens in N Fitzroy dates for the EG festival are Oct 27th till 29th. After this we will travel to Benalla for a Village Festival on the 11th of Nov. And towards the end of this busy year we will travel to Lorne and Marion Bay Tasmania to perform once again at The Falls Festivals.We'll keep you posted on this site about our special creative development this year with pictures and video's.
We hope to see you all back next year Winter solstice for The Village Winter Festival 2018. Greetings, The Village team

Village Festival update 2017:Our team at The Village Festival is preparing for a very exciting and busy year.
At the moment we are designing and building our new mobile World kitchen to get ready for our travels. The world Kitchen will be traveling to Tennant Creek, Alice Springs, Canberra, St Kilda, N Fitzroy, Benalla and maybe to Marion Bay Tasmania. How adventurous.We are also preparing for a surprise Winter event in the bushland of Castlemaine on sat the 10th of June. This is a one night event we are cooking up a visual feast with some of the local artists in Castlemaine. More info on this coming very soon.After this Winter gig we are off to the warmth of Tennant Creek and will spend a few weeks working with the local artists and local community we will be working on story telling and dreamings . We will keep you updated on this as well.After visiting Tennant Creek we are hoping to visit Alice Springs where we will set up a mini Village in the middle of town. In September our World kitchen will travel to Canberra so if you are visiting the capital around that time keep an eye out and taste some delicious local food created by eccentric Canberrans in the World Kitchen in the CBD.Our annual Edinburgh Gardens Festival will take place from the 27th till the 29th of Oct. Lots of fantastic projects already brewing with a focus on young people and probably some big puppets...From there The Village will travel to Benalla The Village will help to create a fantastic final festival weekend with the community (Nov the 11th). We are very excited to get to know the local people and to collaborate on creating a spectacular event for their town.In December The Village will be preparing to once again bring our small and intimate arts festival to our big sister The Falls Festival. This will be the12th year that we are spending New Years at The Falls either in Lorne or Marion Bay. We love being there, we love our Falls friends who work every year very hard to make this massive festival a brilliant success .

Hey everyone, we're waiting for you at the Gasworks Arts Park doing our Midsumma Festival hub.You don't wanna miss it!!Take selfies with the giant inflatable #rainbow, wander around the park and enjoy the bar-and-lounge, Cuddle Puddle and a rnage of shows in the #pink #pavillion. Village Festival faves include "So You Think You Can Interpretive Dance", 10 Minute Dance Party Caravan, Penny Candy Sideshow and more. #midsumma #gasworksartspark #villagefestival #midsummafestival #pride #lgbtqiFree to enter and hang out. Tickets to shows from $10.
https://www.facebook...567942966738756/

Hey everyone, we're waiting for you at the Gasworks Arts Park doing our Midsumma Festival hub.You don't wanna miss it!!Take selfies with the giant inflatable #rainbow, wander around the park and enjoy the bar-and-lounge, Cuddle Puddle and a rnage of shows in the #pink #pavillion. Village Festival faves include "So You Think You Can Interpretive Dance", 10 Minute Dance Party Caravan, Penny Candy Sideshow and more. #midsumma #gasworksartspark #villagefestival #midsummafestival #pride #lgbtqiFree to enter and hang out. Tickets to shows from $10.
https://www.facebook...567942966738756/