Beer, bikes, jazz and organs. The New Year has become a busy time for Ballarat. While there will be those whose taste lies outside some of these more esoteric pursuits and the town can lay claim to a special quota of perpetual naysayers (who will probably be inconvenienced by the second coming) there is much to be said about what these events do collectively for the broader city.
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Ballarat Regional Tourism make the argument that its investment in these events fills motel beds, draws crowds and creates a welcome injection into the local economy. While the exact return on investment may be hard to quantify and is based on formula for average spend, there are times when the figures themselves make the case. Almost 20 percent increase in visitor numbers in 2015 and an estimated $23 million spent on accommodation show if nothing else that Ballarat is a place people want to visit.
But there are other benefits that transcend the utilitarian equations of an economic rationale. Somethings cannot be measured from a budget sheet and one of these is that elusive ”buzz” a city has when things are happening and people want to be there. Even though it may seem like half the population of Ballarat has fled to the beach in January, with this diverse array of events it can clearly be argued a lot of other people want to make Ballarat a destination around New Year. While tourist attractions remain of interest to a transient stream of outsiders, events are something different. They tell the visitor a lot more is going on than heritage buildings. Perhaps rubbing shoulders with local patrons, they may even wonder if it wouldn’t be such a bad place to live.
For events have power to make a name for a place in the “now”. While they may be deeply rooted in the past, nothing says more about where a place is at than what draws the people there. Bilbao may have been a declining Industrial city but it has reinvented itself around a single thriving building that people flock to. Gian Carlo Menotti understood a beautiful medieval village could remain nothing but a declining anachronism unless it was brought to life with people and new art. He had the talent and passion to do that, linking the town of Spoleto to other worlds and bringing half a million people to it annually. And this is but one example, albeit a spectacular one, that transforms a place with life and gives to the very name of the place, a defining degree of distinction, individuality and enduring civic pride.
