The highly anticipated return of the Saltwater Freshwater Festival was announced today. The 2022 Festival will be held on Saturday 28th of May 2022 at Unkya Reserve, Eungai Creek in the beautiful Nambucca Valley.
Since its inception in 2010 the Festival has traditionally been held on Australia Day each year.
Saltwater Freshwater Arts Alliance and our Board of Directors have been committed to this date as a way to celebrate and share authentic Aboriginal living culture with the wider community on a day that is difficult for our people. Our Festival has delivered incredible outcomes to our communities and we are proud of this inclusive celebratory event.
Sadly, we had to make the difficult decision to cancel our Festival in January of this year due to COVID – 19 restrictions and are committed to the Festival continuing in 2022. We welcome news of the revised NSW Roadmap to recovery and the phased easing of restrictions through to December 2021. It remains however, that organising to deliver a successful event in under 4 months’ time is not feasible. Obtaining firm commitments from sponsors, suppliers, performers, stallholders and volunteers in the current environment is challenging.
With much consideration, the Saltwater Freshwater Board has decided to move our 2022 Festival to the first Saturday of Reconciliation Week, 28th May 2022. We are excited for this new opportunity to share our event on a date in alignment with our Festival’s focus of positive reconciliation through active participation. Saltwater Freshwater has been fortunate to receive seed funding for this Festival from the Nambucca Valley Council’s Bushfire Community Recovery and Resilience Fund, through the joint Commonwealth/State Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements. We are working diligently to secure additional sponsors who are vital to ensure that we can deliver an exciting event in 2022.
We are continuing to curate the Festival program and are happy to announce the headline performance for 2022 is Gumbaynggirr artist Emma Donovan and her band the Putbacks. Further updates will be announced over the coming months through our social media channels and our newly redesigned and updated website.
For more information about this media release and our Festival please call Rick Gonsalves, our
general manager on 02 6658 1315.
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