Dunedin's three main festivals may be in for a strong dose of direction if the Dunedin City Council prescribes better planning for events generally thought to overlap rather than dovetail cohesively.
The Dunedin Heritage Festival celebrated "arts and literature" this year, with poet and philanthropist Charles Brasch as its centrepiece.
However, organisers privately conceded they would have preferred to wrap the festival around Robbie Burns.
But, the Otago Festival of the Arts highlighted Burns in October last year.
"We were lucky we had someone like Charles Brasch to fall back on," festival director Sue Clarke acknowledged.
The Dunedin City Council economic development committee is now calling for submissions to its draft Festivals and Events Strategy.
The strategy, which will provide a festival and events blueprint for the next 10 years, aims to "develop a full events calendar that makes Dunedin a fun and exciting inner-city, celebrates our diverse heritage, history, our natural environment, our people and our successes."
The two-yearly Otago Festival of the Arts, which began in 1990, is held in October and focuses on bringing major international acts to Dunedin and promoting high-end performing arts.
It alternates with the Dunedin Heritage Festival, which started in March 2007, and aims to highlight Dunedin culture and heritage.
The inaugural festival had a music theme, while this year it celebrated arts and literature.
The Dunedin Fringe Festival began life as the slapstick sidekick to the arts festival, before striking out on its own as an annual event last year and shifting to an April time slot.
The DCC says it is unlikely to significantly increase events expenditure soon, while acknowledging that the cost of staging and running festivals and events will inevitably increase.
It plans to rearrange the events calendar so that festivals and events occur in a regular and planned way throughout each year, avoiding clashes or clumps of events in any one month.
In 2008-09, the Dunedin City Council budgeted $12.13 per resident from rates for events, based on an estimated population of 118,683 residents.
Submissions to the draft Dunedin City Council Festivals and Events Strategy close on April 10.
To make a submission, email: eventsstrategy@dcc.govt.nz
