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Otago Daily Times

Matariki extravaganza a no go

Matariki will be a lot quieter in Kaiapoi this year, with a popular festival and colourful interactive Light Path cancelled due to funding shortfalls. Karl Howarth, the co-owner of BlueSky Events, which organised the event, says it is sad news. This year Matariki falls on Friday, June 20. ''The cost to run these events is over $60,000, and as Matariki is a free community event the funding comes from grants, sponsorship, vendor fees, and by running a ticketed Lightpath event.'' He said he was trying to pull something out of the fire right up until the last minute, but nothing would work logistically. ''Everybody tried their hardest. We were talking to sponsors and they were all keen to come on board again, but we would have had to find extra sponsors which I already know is very tricky. ''The key thing for us this year was the grant funding bodies. ''We applied to a number of them, but we were only approved by a couple so we have a shortfall of around $10,000 in terms of where I would be comfortable in running the event.'' He says that is still way short of actually covering any of the costs of the event as the sponsorships and grants only cover about a third of the costs. ''The rest of it is made up with market vendor fees, and running last year's Lightpath attraction. ''The Lightpath was how we managed to get the revenue to fund the costs of the Matariki festival, but it's a commercial ticketed event and we don't know how many tickets we will sell until the week of the event. ''It's nearly a $30,000 risk hoping we will sell enough tickets from that event to cover the costs of the Matariki community festival, which we don't charge people for.'' Howarth said this year his risk levels are a little bit lower because he has to cover this himself, because BlueSky Events is not a council funded entity. ''My cafe is my only backup along with the contract work we undertake. ''It's just too great this year.'' If he had been successful with a couple more grant applications, he says he probably would have taken the risk. ''We took a big risk with it last year and we know what we could have expected from the Lightpath, but with a couple of funding bodies not approving our requests we just can't take the risk.'' He says a number of community events have struggled this year because of a lack of funding and this is no different. ''We knew that last year and this year things are a lot tighter.'' The funding bodies all say the same thing - they have more applications than they have money for. ''We have a wonderful relationship with the Waimakariri District Council, they offered us funding and we have several grants from them, but we needed more and a couple of grants didn't come through this year, which in previous years have funded Matariki.'' ''This year it put more onus on the Lightpath to fund that and I wasn't prepared to take the risk.'' Howarth says he is already planning for next year's event. ''We know the event works well, we know people love it, and we know the rural community is bouncing back a little this year and that will hopefully flow through to the general economy and then our normal sponsors will come back on board and the grant bodies won't be so overwhelmed with applications.''