IT was a fantastic day of live music and fun activities at the 2023 Summerwave music festival held in Kerang at the weekend.
Headlining the festival, organised by a local youth-led committee, was Reece Mastin, supported by Perth band Those Who Dream and Melbourne act Sam & Sam.
Other artists who performed on the day included One More Weekend, Elias Lanyon, Grace Frost and The Known.
Northern District Community Health youth health promotion worker and event organiser Matt Allan told the Gannawarra Times it was great to be able to bring these acts to Kerang and to rural areas in general.
“I think what is inspiring about it is that there are young kids or youth that are interested in music and they are going to guitar lessons, they are going to singing lessons or whatever, and it is really great for those people to see those artists up on stage doing what they love or what they are interested in,” Mr Allan said.
“Seeing that, while they may not ever make it a career or anything like that, it does go places and they can have opportunities from the arts in general.”
As well as the music acts, some other activities as the festival included laser tag and mini golf, which were both new this year, while airbrush tattooing and face painting returned from the last Summerwave festival held in 2021.
“In 2021 we were capped because of COVID restrictions, so we could only have 500 people there in total, that’s including vendors and artists and sound guys and everything like that,” Mr Allan said.
“This year, we sold about 460 before the event, then another 70 or so on the day. So we were in excess of 500 people attending the event, and then obviously another 150 or so on top of that that were putting it all together.”
While he said he needed “a little bit of time to get over this one”, Mr Allan said the festival could potentially have a second wave later in the year.
“We are seeing what we can do to take it on the road and do a bit of a Summerwave tour possibly later on this year, but plans are not locked in at this stage,” he said.
