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Maggie Maguire and Associates run many of Melbourne’s largest public events and is preparing for that city’s biggest yet – Our Nation on Parade, which will have over 7,000 participants. Maggie is used to such large events, her previous largest was also Melbourne’s largest, the 1998 Moomba Parade which had around 6,000 participants and she regularly runs events such as Australia Day celebrations.
Over two years ago the Centenary of Federation, Victoria committee called for tenders for the two major Victorian celebrations - the Federation Parade to be held on May 6th and the Centenary of the inauguration of the first Australian Federal Parliament (May 9th).
The tender documents and the process were comprehensive and quite a number of companies bid for the events.
Maguire believes her company was successful in winning the Parade contract for a number of reasons. First up their experience in running Moomba (Maggie was once the General Manager of Moomba) and other civic events such as Australia Day.
However more importantly Maguire addressed the issues of community involvement in the event which she describes as looking for the best outcomes for the communities while at the same time “intervening in the nicest possible way” to ensure a uniform standard of quality over the whole event.
Community involvement
To achieve this Maguire appointed eight Artistic Consultants who have worked with around 10 community groups each. The Consultants are drawn back to Melbourne for fortnightly meetings to ensure the overall direction is being followed.
To kick the process off Maguire took to the road in Jan/Feb 2000 to visit communities throughout Victoria. She talked to groups from all sorts of backgrounds and asked them to consider a person or event of significance to their individual organization who/which could form the basis of their entry.
As most groups had never participated in such an event before Maguire then assigned the Artistic Consultants to “hold their hands through the creative process” and to ensure variety in the final product.
About half the entries are from regional areas and about a third are ethnic groups. All groups were asked to reflect on what happened in Melbourne in 1901 and what has happened in the state and in their community in the intervening century. One of the Chinese groups will perform with the Loong Dragon, the oldest in Australia and in fact it participated in the 1901 celebrations. The dragon is now housed in the Bendigo Chinese museum.
Some other ethnic groups are focussing on immigration during the last 100 years while other communities have focussed on issues close to the community, such as bushfires which are so much a part of our history (Macedon).
The western coastal city of Portland wanted to celebrate a home-grown hero, the Kelpie dog. The consulting team sent puppeteers to the town to work with the community to design a large puppet and to teach them how to manipulate the creature.
To ensure easy identification of the participating groups to viewers all groups will be preceded by an identifying placard. A souvenir program will be supplied as a lift-out through HWT newspapers in the week leading up to the event.
Production
Maguire has drawn together a very experienced team. Almost all of the section leaders and marshals have had experience with Moomba.
City Logistics
As this will be the largest event ever staged in the streets of Melbourne it is expected to bring the city to a standstill so Maguire’s team have had to work very closely with the Police, emergency services and the City of Melbourne. To complicate matters further, Melbourne’s winter religious observances will be in full swing. Two AFL matches are slated to follow the parade, one on either side of the city (Docklands Stadium and the MCG). As it will be some time before the trams are running at normal people intending to view the Parade and then move on to the footy are being advised to choose carefully which side of the street they chose for viewing.
New to Melbourne will be the use of barricades along the parade route. Normally Melbournians sit/stand behind a blue line. This event is expected to draw larger than usual crowds so more control is required.
The City Look
The Parade will traverse a 1.6 Km route down Swanston Street, over the Princes Bridge and into St Kilda Rd. The parade route will be decorated with banners and signage in a newsprint theme. Newsprint has been the major method of disseminating news during the last century and the signs will announce major events of the past century, newspaper banner style.
This themeing also extends to the souvenir program being supplied through the Herald-Sun.
Maguire and key members of her team took the opportunity to observe the Sydney parade at close hand, but she will rely primarily on her Moomba experiences. The focus of the two events is also quite different, while Sydney’s parade had a national focus and had to keep television coverage in mind, the Melbourne event will be more focussed on Victorian communities.
The only crossover from Sydney is the inclusion of the State and Territory floats that were commissioned for both events.
In summing up Maguire described this experience as “more time consuming and challenging than Moomba”, however she found it more gratifying as she had more connection with the communities involved. However she warned “don’t expect an Olympic Opening Ceremony, we don’t have $50 million to play with”
Editors Note
TV coverage of the event will be supplied by channel 7, so if you are really interested in seeing the parade make sure you get yourself into the city. 7’s coverage of the Sydney parade was diabolical.
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