Yes - we now own our very own Palace! The relocatable venue known as the Pacific Crystal Palace, that is such an iconic part of our festival, has been purchased by a group of five regional New Zealand festivals - we are the only South Island festival.

Many thanks to Otago Community Trust for their grant, and additional funding from five private donors that enabled us to make this significant investment. Each donor will have a booth named after them in recognition of their support which they can use exclusively when the Crystal Palace hosts music, dance, theatre and Aspiring Conversations.

Trust Chair Hetty Van Hale said the joint purchase of the Crystal Palace was a significant investment for all five festivals involved but made sound commercial sense. “Securing ownership has been a wonderful example of regional arts communities working together with a shared vision. Hiring the venue has always been one of our biggest costs so the joint purchase will have long-term financial benefits for each festival and help us all plan for the future. We will have saved money within two festivals and I would especially like to thank all our funding partners and individual ‘Palace Partners’ who have so generously supported this project,” she said.

“The Crystal Palace has been the Festival of Colour’s iconic home venue since our first event in 2005 and everyone loves it. The quality and character of the finished building with its bar area, wooden booths, stained glass windows and velvet seats means you quickly forget it’s a temporary structure that arrives in containers. People get really excited when they see it going up – it’s a very visual sign that the festival is about to start!

“We’re very pleased that the Wanaka Hotel has very generously allowed us to have the Palace on their lawn once again. Huge thanks to the hotel management and Irvine family for their amazing support. It’s the perfect town centre location and we’re looking forward to Amigos restaurant and Beanie Café providing food and drink in the Palace next autumn,” said Hetty Van Hale.

Annual Meeting News

In other news at the AGM on Tuesday we were able to confirm a surplus of $33,885 for the financial year to 30 June 2016 including a contribution of $16,637 from the Aspiring Conversations festival of ideas in April. A report of the Aspiring Conversations event is available to download on our website.
Aspiring Conversations works well in it's April time slot and will stay there in the alternate years to the Festival of Colour.
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2017 Festival Planning

And finally at the AGM festival director Philip Tremewan gave a little teaser of what to expect next April. We are delighted to have secured not one, but three award winning international shows that he saw at last year’s Edinburgh Festival. Details of the shows will be released in due course but needless to say they will all be a knock out! They will also be performing at other festivals in Australia and New Zealand including the Bay of Islands’ Upsurge Festival. Our collaboration is a win win and means that we can share the costs of bringing such high profile shows down under.
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What's On

Barnaby Weir from the Black Seeds and Fly My Pretties is at Rippon Hall on Saturday 29 October. Tickets at Dash Tickets.

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