Ten Days festival appoints new marketing head as planning continues for 2021 event

Planners at one of Tassie’s favourite festivals are hoping life will be back to normal by March next year – but they expect audiences may still be wary of crowds.

TASMANIA’S acclaimed Ten Days on the Island festival has hired a nationally respected arts marketing professional to steer its marketing campaign ahead of the 2021 event in March.

Perth-based Georgia Malone has been appointed as head of marketing and partnerships for the biennial festival.

And with the entire nation’s arts and festival sector effectively shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ten Days faces some unique challenges for its next festival.

CEO Jane Haley was hopeful that by March things might be returning to some semblance of normal, but audiences might need some reassurance before coming to any event involving big crowds.

Sonya Lifschitz performing as part of A Weekend in the Life of a Piano for Ten Days on the Island.

“Even months into the future there is talk of theatres only booking every fifth seat for safety, so we do have to consider how people might feel about gathering like this, sitting close beside someone else in a theatre or concert hall after being in isolation for so long,” she said.

“Festivals are a great opportunity to bring people back together in an organic way that works for them, rather than force a big stadium event on them,” Ms Malone said. “So we are able to do this in a way that acknowledges what people have been going through.”

The 2021 Ten Days festival will also have a heavy emphasis on featuring Tasmanian artists and performers. This is partly because it is uncertain when international travel bans will be lifted, but also it is a conscious effort to support and nurture local artists as they struggle to resurrect an industry currently in hibernation.

Jane Haley, chief executive of the Australia Business Arts Foundation (AbaF).

“We are looking at how we can work with Tasmanian artists to help them to pursue whatever ideas they may have already presented, or they keep in their bottom drawer, encouraging them to come to us and put those ideas to us,” Ms Haley said.

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Ms Malone has been an active member of the Australian arts industry for 20 years, working with some of Australia’s most significant contemporary arts organisations, including the Perth Festival and the Sydney Dance Company, and she worked with the 2019 Ten Days festival in a consultancy role.

Her task is to increase the public’s investment in and engagement with the festival, helping Tasmanians to feel deeply connected with the festival and what it brings to and out of the community.

“The arts sector was the first hit by this crisis and will probably be the last to come back,” she said.

“But with the arts, everything starts at the grassroots, rebuilding it from within.”