The BendArts Guide app was developed in Bendigo by Doomsday Tuna Media with the help of a community grant from the City of Greater Bendigo.

Founder of BendArts Hugh Waller said the idea had been permeating with him for a few years before the chance to develop it came along.

BendArts was founded in August, 2011, as a Facebook group to help artists, performers, musicians and others involved in Bendigo arts and entertainment scene develop a network.

“A few months after setting up the BendArts guide on Facebook, I had the idea that it would be more suited for the public to find out whats going on (in the region),” Mr Waller said. “The guide allows those creating events to post them and for the public to see what’s going on.

“The app occurred to me a couple years ago and was the obvious next step. We applied for a community arts grant from the council started working on it.”

Doomsday Tuna founder Stefania Cola said they started developing the app in August last year.

“Hugh Waller had the idea ticking over for a while and we developed it from there,” Ms Cola said.

“The actual development took us about two months and from there we did testing and beta rounds to continue to improve it as we needed to.”

“We are really hoping the Bendigo community take this tool and use it along with the arts and music communities. We see it as a really useful tool.”

Ms Cola and Mr Waller are confident that the app will be popular.

“It’s got the potential to reach thousands of people,” Mr Waller said.

Co-ordinator of arts and culture at the City of Greater Bendigo Maree Tonkin said the app would help develop bigger audiences.

“(People will be able to) share, collaborate and build relationships to develop an audience for (their) work by using and supporting this resource designed by artists for artists!," she said.