South Dunedin Business Association chairman Craig Waterhouse said he came up with the idea for the inaugural South Dunedin Busking Festival when travelling to a wedding in Australia last year.
During his stay, he came across a busking festival in Croydon, a suburb of Melbourne.
He knew the festival could work in South Dunedin and asked the Croydon organisers for a copy of its successful template.
About 90% of the buskers at the Croydon festival lived within 2km of the suburb’s main street.
He hoped the South Dunedin festival would mimic the Australian event by attracting mostly local talent but the inaugural invitation was open to buskers in any part of the city.
The buskers must perform twice on February 25 at the four areas set up in front of closed shops in King Edward St.
He hoped 32 buskers would enter, to fill every festival slot.
"We’ve got some high-quality entrants so far, but we want to make this a huge day for South Dunedin, so we’re keen for more."
The festival would bring the community together, attract customers to retailers and allow buskers to showcase their talent.
Busker Trent Hawthorne (15), of South Dunedin, had entered to perform at the festival on his tenor ukulele.
The Kings’ High School pupil won the instrumental section in the busking competition at the New Zealand Gold Guitar Awards in Gore last year.He would be playing "relaxed, chilled out instrumental music" at the South Dunedin festival, such as the song Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol.
He had never busked in South Dunedin before and was looking forward to the "experience".
Any money from tips or prizes won would be a "bonus" on top of the opportunity to perform.
Mr Waterhouse said that the festival had five compe-tition categories, each with prizes for first ($100), second ($50) and third ($25).A panel of three judge would decide the winners of the categories — for musicians aged under 13, aged between 13 and 18, and solo performances and group performances with an open age limit.
The other category was for circus and performance arts.
"Anything goes in Dunedin’s most diverse community," Mr Waterhouse said.
Buskers could accept tips and perform at the festival without entering a competition category, he said.
Busking festival
• Saturday, February 25, between 10am and 2pm.
Enter: www.southdunedin.org.nz
Related Stories
Comments
Awesome to see !!! about time we start to see things like this in Dunedin. Keep the momentum going for South Dunedin. Why not close off King Edward Street from Hillside road to Macandrew Road every Sunday 0600 to 1200 and have a street Market. Allow current shops to have a stalls if they wish, charge others to have a stall, Hotdogs vans, Ice cream vans, chips, crafts, Wood fired Pizza's, Furniture, Coffee vans, Fruit and Veg, Car boot sales, second hand goods. South Dunedin can do it, Start small and grow.
Give the children of Dunedin fond memories of going to a market, eating chips hotdogs, laughing, meeting friends from school. Dunedin is missing out .
just keep Cull away from it.