Winter Games NZ chairman Eion Edgar, Festival Of Colour chairman John Beattie and director Philip Tremewan, entrepreneur Michael Hill, ASB JazzFest Queenstown director Harvey Maguire, The Hills general manager Sam Gent, Warbirds Over Wanaka events manager Mandy Deans, Winter Games NZ chief executive Arthur Klap, Challenge Wanaka race director Victoria Murray-Orr and Challenge Wanaka event director Kerry Quin sat down with Mr Geddes, council chief executive Duncan Field, arts and events facilitator Jan Maxwell, community services general manager Paul Wilson, plus councillors John S.Wilson, Cath Gilmour and Vanessa van Uden.
The organisers were there to present events they hold, illustrate how they do it and outline the benefits the community derives, in the wake of the council's draft events strategy, which is out for public feedback until February 3.
The draft strategy suggests the council's role in event maintenance and development.
It proposes forming a subcommittee of community services to consider partnership eligibility, applications and funding, with a discretionary $50,000 set aside in next year's long-term council community plan.
Mr Tremewan said it was a "very positive" meeting.
"We talked about our individual events but, more importantly, the role of events in building the prosperity of the region, especially at a time when our economy is flagging."
One of the outcomes was the decision to set up a working group of event industry representatives and council staff.
The representatives had yet to be selected but the working group would need to meet within the next six weeks, Mr Tremewan said.
The group would feed into the community plan, due out for public consultation at the end of March.
"We're all agreed about the importance and incredible value events bring to the region.
There's economic and cultural benefits and a lot of us stressed the community pride as being the key things."
Mr Field said the discussion continued a line of dialogue that had been going on for some time about council's role in attracting and retaining events.
"We want to understand what supports them and what are we doing right now that is an impediment to those events, [such as] road works and avoiding events clashing and splitting the audience."
