It has been a very long, hard and frustrating road for Victoria’s event industry to get to the point where we are today – where there is finally a roadmap out of this crisis.  The roadmap isn’t perfect, but the main thing is that there is one now and we know where we stand.  We can start planning.

We have worked incredibly hard behind the scenes to push all this along as well as ensuring the event industry’s situation has received a lot of coverage right across the mainstream media in Victoria over many weeks.

The key thing now is ensuring that there will be financial support in place to ensure that the people and businesses in the event industry can survive until events are properly back up and running again.  We know that for many this won’t be until early 2022 – such are the lead times of a lot of events.  

The Federal Government Disaster Payments and the Victorian Government’s Business CAP grants are both due to end shortly.  We desperately need these payments to continue for the event industry to ensure that people and businesses can survive until events are properly back up and running again.

We know that governments are aware of the financial situation in the event industry.  But we need them to now act.  It is always a good day to ring your local state and federal MPs about this.  Certainly nearly all the Victorian ones are aware of the situation but phone calls from constituents do help push things along.  This link will quickly bring up the details of your local state and federal MPs so you can give them a call.

The event industry has a long rebuilding process to go through.  Many key parts of our industry – such as the technical side – have lost a huge amount of their talent.  So it is a long road ahead for our industry to rebuild.  Just as it will be for many of our businesses.

The COVID pandemic has had a profound impact on the whole community over the last 18 months.  It has taken a huge toll on people, organisations and communities. 

We need to bring people back together again.  We need to share a vision for our future.  We need to start rebuilding confidence, optimism and energy.  We need to start rebuilding community by community, organisation by organisation, region by region, and sector by sector.  

This is what events are great at doing.  

We need governments to be starting today on planning an event led recovery.  For governments to put real money into getting events started again from the community events right up to business events and public events.  This is outlined in the Vision and Strategy below.

Victoria should be having an Event Led Recovery.  Australia should be having an Event Led Recovery.

Today was a good step, but it is a long road ahead for a lot of our industry.