By Jenel Hunt
The recognition of the Granite Belt Art and Craft Trail in 26 January’s Southern Downs Australia Day honours will add the final pop of colour to a successful season for the five-year-old organisation.
GBART has been named this year’s Cultural/Community Event of the Year for the southern part of the region.
Now a biennial event, the Granite Belt Art and Craft Trail was originally an annual event and could be described as being born from hardship, rising like a phoenix in a year of drought and fire.
In fact, the event’s maiden run was just six weeks after Stanthorpe’s diagnosis of ‘zero water’ and followed 2019’s second bushfire.
Rather than simply being an event of exhibitions, this is a personalised meet-the-maker and try-it-yourself celebration, filled with studio tours, demonstrations and workshops.
It attracts both new and repeat visitors as it promotes the region’s attractions as well as the art that can be found in many guises.
Founder Rosy Chapman’s vision is still as clear as the day she came up with the concept.
“Its objectives remain to generate economic uplift for the community, to support community wellbeing, reduce isolation and generate a new community identity as an arts and cultural tourism hub for creative industries,” she said.
“For our visitors, GBART promotes the region as a place to enjoy arts, culture, the heritage aspects of the region, good food and wine, world class national parks and natural settings and unique experiences not available elsewhere.
“We’ve worked to make it worth visiting by high value travellers engaging in domestic leisure travel. It’s very popular as a girls’ weekend away.”
Ms Chapman said that across the four events had been held so far, it was estimated that approximately 5500 visitations were made to various commercial and private studios.
Most arts trail enthusiasts attended an average of four venues per weekend and stayed three-plus nights so they could enjoy other tourism offerings in the region with their friends. Southern Downs Regional Council modelling put the after-party of visitations in this order: wine, accommodation, food, retail and national parks.
“The total contribution by visitors to the SDRC economy is estimated to be in excess of $3 million. This does not include the funds raised externally to the community to cover the event’s operational expenses. The policy of the committee is to spend funds locally wherever possible,” she said.
The latest GBART offerings have been an artisan development program which included workshops to develop their marketing and other skills, an upgrade to the website to include an online shop for artisans who did not otherwise have a digital presence (who can now sell their work online year-round).
The organisation supports its sister trail, the Condamine Country Arts Trail (CCART) and has taken a busload of artisans from the Granite Belt to the northern parts of the Southern Downs to support the trail that began from the GBART template.
GBART is also a registered volunteer workplace with Services Australia, offering opportunities for qualifying volunteers to log ’hours of work’ with the organisation.
If all this sounds inspiring and something that people would like to be involved in helping to run, the next AGM of the group is Tuesday, 27 February at 6pm at the Stanthorpe RSL Club.
