Castlemaine State Festival became conservative, failed to engage with the community and misread local audiences which resulted in "appalling" ticket sales in 2023, according to one local arts leader.
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However, according to Castlemaine Fringe Festival chair Jacqueline Brodie-Hanns, who is a long-term patron and sponsor of the state festival, the event, which enjoys very strong support and commitment, will definitely be back.
"This town will not let the state festival go down," she said. "The community will save the festival.
"There is absolutely no doubt about that."
Billed as the longest-running "flagship regional arts festival" in the country, the festival was put into voluntary receivership last week.
Administrators from Deloitte have taken on operational control of the organisation - which runs the Goods Shed arts space as well as the two-yearly festival - from March 26.
The board, which was largely refreshed in December last year, announced the move on March 28, the eve of the long weekend, describing their decision as "reluctant but necessary".
In a radio interview this week chair Lucy Mayes said it had been the "only responsible choice available ... to maintain the possibility the festival could be restored to a viable and sustainable future".
In December the committee had announced it suffered a loss of $300,000 in 2023, which it was trying to recoup.
While State Festival tanked, Fringe had bumper year
Some commentary on the issue has focused on the difficulty of staging festivals in the current economic climate, linking the failure to the recent cancellations of Splendour in the Grass and Groovin the Moo.
However, Ms Brodie-Hanns said Castlemaine's fringe festival enjoyed one of its most successful years in 2023, with a record number of attendees and huge number of events.
"It's not just the climate that's making things difficult," she said. "We didn't find the climate difficult, because we were engaged with, and working with and including our community."
Ms Brodie-Hanns, who has been "watching the state festival closely for two decades", said she thought "a lot of assumptions had been made" in 2023.
However, the state festival had experienced failure before and the "corporate cleanup" was positive.
"It may be the first time we've brought in voluntary administrators but the festival has been left in dire straits before, and last time it happened we had an absolute Phoenix rise from the ashes," she said.
The outspoken community arts leader traced the festival's current problems back to a shift towards risk avoidance as a result of COVID-19.
The decision to keep using an outdoor "Big Top model" after the peak of the pandemic had passed was "an absolute failure", she said, with the opportunity to attract people to the Castlemaine venues locals love lost.
A lack of community engagement was evident from the 2023 opening night, which rather than being a big, inclusive event involving hot rodders, various musical genres and community groups was simply a concert by Frente under the Big Top.
"Instead of it being a public spectacle of a celebration attracting thousands of people, it was a staged band with 800 people," she said
A previous partnership with the Rotary Club had not been renewed.
'Big white tent' left people in the dark
And in terms of the festival's presence and branding, "you wouldn't have known it was on".
"I mean, I'm a big fan of circus myself, but it was a big white tent. So nobody knew that's what the state festival was," Ms Brodie-Hanns said.
"There wasn't colour and movement around the town. They weren't working with the venues."
Given Castlemaine residents were spoilt for choice in terms of art and music, programming needed to be "cutting edge" but instead it was "very conservative".
Acts needed to be cutting edge
"We have live music four or five times a week in this town, we have so many art galleries," she said.
"There are always things happening in the creative industry space in this town, so for the state festival to occur ... every two years, they actually need to be cutting edge, and they became very conservative."
A lot of the acts, including headliners Vika and Linda Bull and American Kurt Vile, were "things you would see anyway in Castlemaine", usually at the Theatre Royal.
There was no theatre or public art in the program and no notable exhibitions, she claimed.
The innovative show 'Nightwalks with Teenagers', which saw young people leading arts tours around town, was exactly the sort of community-connected event expected of the festival, but there was "too little of it", Ms Brodie-Hann said.
Event a 'huge boon' to local economy
For all that, the State Festival did engage and support local businesses, like her own Shedshaker Brewing, and also generated employment and volunteer opportunities and was "a huge boon" to hospitality, accommodation and retail in the region.
But while the state festival may not be primarily intended to be a community event, "your community forms part of your market," Ms Brodie-Hann said.
"We can't get too far ahead of ourselves. This is still a grassroots festival.
"It's like me with my brewery - yes, we are in a precinct frequented by visitors and the tourists dollar is absolute cream on the top for us, but if we didn't have the support and the custom of our locals, the business would be out of business."
'State Festival means the world to community': festival board chair
Castlemaine State Festival chair Lucy Mayes told the Advertiser the board understood that news of the voluntary administration would be upsetting for "the many people who have supported, enjoyed and championed our festival over many years" - as it was for the board and staff.
She said the board had worked closely with stakeholders over the past year to understand and address the issues and that the staff and board were working hard to support the administrators and "assess the options available to restructure the operations, preserve the legacy of the festival and determine a path forward".
"The Castlemaine State Festival has shaped and been shaped by its community over its almost 50 years," she said. "It means the world to generations of Castlemaine locals, and visitors alike.
"We value the extraordinary community at the heart of this festival and we are grateful for the longstanding support of our patrons, donors, volunteers, audiences and the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria and Mount Alexander Shire.
"It's too early to know where this process will take us but we hope to be in a position to involve our community more fully in our recovery efforts at the appropriate time."
An earlier version of this story said that the Castlemaine State Festival board hadn't responded by deadline to a request for comment on Wednesday.
