Summer Arts Festival '25 celebrates another successful year and looks toward the future...

Contents: Key Objectives and Metrics | Lessons Learned | Where to Next? | Acknowledgements

In late May 2025, Golden Bay Community Arts Council (GBCAC) members and over 30 local creatives gathered to celebrate this year's Summer Arts Festival, share experiences and begin visioning what the 2026 festival will look like. The gathering was an opportunity for festival organiser Gary Smith to share the GBCAC's key objectives and metrics providing insight into the festival's performance.

Key Objectives and Metrics:

This year's key objectives were:

• nurturing relationships with the community's creatives AND empowering them to explore their creative potential.

• building effective relationships with funders and sponsors as the event develops its ability to be self funding.

• identifying and engaging with the event's key market.

Invaluable funding from One Foundation, a handful of targeted social media campaigns, support from The GB Weekly and a strategic organic post campaign on social media supported significant increases in engagement:

Marketing Social Media:

2024 | Reach: 12,400 | Interactions: 687

2025 | Views: 177,200 | Reach: 39,900 | Interactions: 1200

Website Traffic:

2024 | unique visits: 1300

2025 | unique visits: 2803

Of particular interest are website analytics featuring unsolicited navigation around the GBCAC website in general, providing evidence the Summer Arts Festival is beginning to lift the online profile of the Arts in our region.

Where these visitors came from is of particular interest to future marketing efforts:

Aside from Nelson (where we utilised stuff.co.nz to market both in print and online) we are guessing the festival has an organic urban audience who likely have an existing relationship with the region.

Financials form another key metric on a number of levels. Finding comprehensive funding for the festival was challenging, however financial support from Golden Bay Community Arts Council, Tasman District Council (Creative Community and Community Grant Schemes) and an anonymous benefactor provided a financial foundation for the festival to go ahead.

In hindsight, the funding challenge provided the impetus to accelerate exploration of self funding.

Ticket Sales:

2024 | approx. 200 sold | Revenue: $3,040

2025 | approx. 900 sold | Revenue: $22,550

The festival as a whole was 56% self funded up from 9% in 2024.

Returns to Creatives:

2024 | $8,200

2025 | $19,500

Returns to local venues and businesses:

2024 | $2,160

2025 | $8,600

The festival directly contributed approximately $28,000 to our local economy. This does not include incidental sales by local creatives at events like workshops, the Creatives Market and the Artist Studio Tour.

Further, returns to individual creatives showed a marked increase. The following cases show a comparison between very similar offerings:

Case ONE: 2024 = $320 | 2025 = $625

Case TWO: 2024 = $255 | 2025 = $420

From a number of perspectives the festival took a significant leap forward in the quality of events produced, depth of engagement with local creatives and capacity to be self funding.

Lessons Learned:

Below are the key learnings for the Arts Council:

• Finding funding is challenging at the moment but that gave us the impetus to explore self funding with more urgency which WORKED!

• 10 days is too long – we had to work really hard to keep the energy levels up for the whole of the event.

• We have an audience in Christchurch, Auckland and Wellington who most likely already have a connection to the region.

• The foundations and online systems we laid down in 2024 worked again, although the ticketing aspect of the website (especially for events with multiple dates) needs revisiting AND a local physical ticketing agent would support increased access for less technically minded community members.

• Venues still remain a challenge and could potential limitation to the festival's growth.

• More comprehensive marketing commencing earlier that supports event facilitators to utilise their networks.

• We still need to nail down the overall branding "look" of the festival.
  

Where To Next?

It was invaluable for the Arts Council to connect with the region's creatives in person. While as an organisation we have a vision, it is essential that vision remains aligned with the community we serve. More over, gatherings like the one in May reassure everyone our community remains at the heart of the festival. The following key objectives for 2026 were introduced for discussion:

• Explore funding avenues EARLY.

• Reduce the festival to FIVE days:

  • Proposed dates: Wed 18th – Sun 22nd February 2026

  • This will enable us to provide multiple options each day and build up to a peak on the weekend.

• Have the schedule 90% confirmed by late September 2025.

  • Package deals to an urban audience | Christmas present for some who has everything!

• Consolidate local support through email marketing and GB Weekly articles.

• Marketing to target the organic urban audience who have an existing connection to our region.

  • Give them another reason to visit the Bay this summer!

• Build on this year's foundational marketing into Nelson and the wider Tasman Region.

• Begin marketing directly into the Christchurch region.

  • Via social media and networking with arts communities.

Invaluable discussion around future potentials spoke to what is essential for those in attendance:

• Reducing the length would allow us to build to a peak during the festival.

• Discussion around composition and timetables suggested the festival could be a combination of a smorgasbord of offerings during the day (catering for individual interests) and an opportunity to come together for a collective experience in the evening (live music, performances, etc.).

  • The festival could then come to a peak with an event everyone attends.

• Bringing in national or international acts would require the development of a yearly curatorial statement (see the Nelson Arts Festival for an example).

  • This statement would focus on what would best serve and nourish our community collectively.

  • Bringing in acts could provide inspiration to local creatives, potentially attract higher 'out of region' attendance (with a flow on benefit to the attendance of other events) and create networking opportunities for locals outside of our region.

  • At all times the heart of the festival is to remain focused on empowering locals creatives and our community as a whole.

• Development of a taster/fundraiser prior to the festival could help support marketing the festival and those involved. Two ideas were suggested:

  • Labour Weekend (late October) when the Bay comes to life again (maybe linked in with Bay Art somehow).

  • Early January when the Christmas holiday makers are in the region.

  • Would require the schedule, booking system and marketing to be completed.

• Introduction of 'cross pollination' marketing to the festival marketing plan.

  • Each facilitator, performer, and/or group has a branded image and info package they share via their individual social media, tagging other facilitators, performers and groups in posts.

Also, we have received overwhelmingly positive feedback about the FOUR-DAY Artist Residency held in Totoranui in November 2024 - this was an invaluable opportunity for those involved in the musical theatre 'Rescue Remedy' to build connection, momentum and develop core material for their production.

Where to next? We would love to hear from you if you would like to be involved in next year's event! Where is the next 'edge' for BOTH you AND us to explore?!

Check out the Summer Arts Festival webpage for details including how to register your interest: https://www.gbarts.org.nz/summer-arts-festival

Acknowledgements:

The Golden Bay Community Arts Council would like to express a huge THANK YOU to all the creatives who have "got in behind" this project... it is only due to the immense depth of talent and generosity of our creative community that this festival is even possible. We wish to acknowledge Rosa Silverfinch, Sarah Thomas, Mazarine Fitzgerald, Kathy Reilly, Martine Baanvinger and the DramaLab crew, Grant and Hahna @ Art Vault, the Balfolk Collective, Jochen Maurer, James Alker, Tim Firkin (aka BornOfTheMist) and crew, Alan Galanjah, KiwiJam, The PlumDogs and Kabra Kadabra, Tara and Poppy, Mark Raffills and the local poetry community, Mary Nicholls, Onekaka School of Blacksmithing, Lisa van der Meer and the studios who partook in the Studio Tour.

Thank you also to the amazing efforts of Georgina West which enabled the festival to support Te Waka Kura o Mohua students to have a presence, with an exhibition of local youth artwork (which over 350 people visited) and THREE students receiving sponsorship to attend workshops.

The festival was also supported "behind the scenes" by Jo @ The GB Weekly, Marg @ The Pohutukaka Gallery, Pohara Top 10 and Sarah from the Pohara Hall Management Committee.