As Melbourne today (4th October 2021) achieved the dubious record of becoming the world’s most locked down city at 246 days, and videos gone viral all over the world of police overreach against thousands of protesters on its streets, Save Victorian Events has launched a ‘Vision for an Event Led Recovery for Victoria’. This is a strategy to use events to bring people back together to help drive Victoria’s recovery and return to prosperity.
Simon Thewlis co-founder of Save Victorian Events said “Communities are disconnected – Everyone is struggling to see the future and how we can get there. We have lost confidence as a state.”
“We need to bring people back together again. We need to share a vision for our future. We need to give people reason for hope. We need to start rebuilding confidence, optimism and energy.” He said.
The document is in two parts, Vision & Strategy and the Vision is to run many modest sized events to bring people together and rebuild confidence.
The Strategy calls for government to allow an event led recovery for Victoria and provide the resources for a speedy recovery. This includes a roadmap and guidelines for events, government backed COVID cancelation insurance, continuation of existing financial support for businesses and workers, a continuation of the existing business CAP financial support for businesses, and disaster payments for workers until events are properly happening again.
“Without a major change of approach, there will be relatively few events in Victoria until well into 2022, which will have a dire impact on the event industry and Victoria as a whole.” Said Thewlis.
The plan was sent as an email to every Victorian MP on Sunday evening (3rd October) and achieved a 40% open rate that night. By Monday 53% of all Victorian MPs have opened the email.
