You see the NinchFest posters everywhere around Rye down the Mornington Peninsula: by the milk bar, near the carnival, on billboards on the corners of highways. But as it is for most other independent festivals, ticket sales were so slow as to give Drew Heyes and his fellow directors the heebie-jeebies. Nine days before the event, they made the call that 2023 would have to be the last NinchFest ever.
Drew Heyes, co-director of NinchFest.Credit: Eddie Jim
On the surface, this doesn’t make sense. The festival has doubled to a capacity of 1000, grown to two days from one. Kids who have flown the coop travel back for it each year and locals muck in to help. Members of the pétanque club held at the same venue attend, having been won over since their initial vote not to accommodate the festival. But NinchFest is an all-too-real casualty in the changing habits of ticket-buyers post-pandemic. Its seventh year will be its last.
“It’s sad because there’s so much love for the event,” says Heyes. “Every person we talk to when we’re walking down the street is like, ‘I can’t wait! I hope it’s not sold out!’ But door sales on the day make it hard to predict what to do and how much money to spend.”
A 2022 survey from entertainment marketing specialists Bolster and ticket resale marketplace Tixel found 71 per cent of event-goers have changed their ticket-purchasing behaviour. While 27 per cent bought more tickets to make up for lost time (Heyes suspects events held immediately after QR codes and social distancing were shelved probably did well, before the novelty wore off), 24 per cent were buying closer to the event and 20 per cent bought fewer tickets due to cancellation or health fears.
It’s increasingly common to see touring bands and festivals alike make appeals on social media, and being transparent about costs. In January this year, Goomfest – in Victoria’s Wangoom – posted on Instagram: “We just need to sell another 146 tickets to make this event possible, so if you are able to buy one or encourage a friend to, we will be a step closer”.
Happily, the community responded, spawning another post: “WE’RE F#%K’N DOIN IT! We needed you and you pulled through!!”
NinchFest has fast become a cornerstone of the Mornington Peninsula community, but this year marks its final outing.Credit: Kylie Robertson
The survey found that price remains the biggest barrier to purchase, fuelled by market saturation and economic instability (NinchFest has had to raise its own ticket prices, although kids 13 and under go free). Other factors include festivals competing with personal events that were postponed during the pandemic, such as milestone birthdays and weddings, and people waiting until the last minute to see if an event will be cancelled due to bad weather.
Wild weather conditions have hit Victorian festivals hard in recent months. Loch Hart Music Festival in Princeton; Grapevine Gathering in the Yarra Valley; Hopkins Creek Festival in Tatyoon; Almost Summer in Bendigo; and OK Motels in Charlton were all either cancelled or partially shut down. (In a swift “how nice is that” move, the OK Motels organisers responded by holding an “It’s Not Okay” fundraiser gig in support of the community groups who battled the flooding.)
Then there are the rising costs. The first NinchFest cost around $35,000 to put on, with the latest approaching $300,000.
“We have grown the festival, but the prices of everything have gone up, from building materials to temporary fencing, which used to cost us about $1 a metre and now it’s $9, and the stage, which went up $2000 in just one year,” Heyes says. “These companies haven’t been able to operate for a few years.”
Bands are also raising their fees, which Heyes thinks is understandable.
“They’ve been out of work and they know there are grants out there that have been given to the music industry, so putting their prices up is their way of getting their piece of the pie,” he says.
NinchFest was awarded a $50,000 grant in 2022 from the Mornington Peninsula Shire Council. Speaking more generally, Heyes points out that many grants given out as pandemic relief were to be acquitted within one year, rather than spread over a few years to help longevity. The grants have also seen many new events crop up, including council festivals, adding more competition. It’s made the NinchFest team realise that the most obvious way forward would be to return to roots and scale down the production, finding a bush site without EPA restrictions, away from the expensive holiday accommodation of Rye.
Drew Heyes doesn’t want NinchFest “to go out with a sob story”.Credit: Eddie Jim
“We don’t want to go out with a sob story,” Heyes says. “We were all sentimental yesterday and feeling sad, but there’s an easier path somewhere that will present itself. Maybe something more electronic, getting all the young people involved. At this stage, we’re really happy with what we’ve done.”
The inevitable NinchFest “final party” post has gone out, attracting comments like that of Red, chief engineer of the Moonah Arts Collective: “It will live on in every festival that we all do from hereon in. The power of NinchFest is now within all of us.”
That sentiment is nicely embodied by The Domesticated Animals, a local band booked to play this last hurrah. The teenagers wouldn’t be the only people to say “we should form a band” while pie-eyed at a festival, but having made that vow at NinchFest in 2019, when their youngest member was just 13, they’ve stuck to it.
“All credit to Drew and everyone involved – they’ve been through the wringer,” says frontman Nash Carne, who met most of his friendship group at various NinchFests. “Hopefully we can go full circle and inspire some other kids to start a band.”
NinchFest will be held for the last time at the St Andrews Beach Recreation Club from February 10-11.
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