Australian Regional Events Alliance article: Meet Kelly

Kelly Mapleston – Events Manager Port Macquarie Hastings Council (NSW). AREA member since 2020.

As the token local government employee on the newly founded Australian Regional Event Alliance (AREA), I’m conscious that I’m representing the many regional council events staff out there. So, when considering what to write in this blog, I tried to think of what other LG events / sponsorship managers in my position would write.

Through many zoom industry meetings where we discussed how the events industry was being affected by COVID and all the flow on industries, I felt lucky to also be tapping into how event owners felt right now towards councils, funding bodies and grant criteria. This in turn helped justify my council’s funding model to be more fluid and open-minded (for a council). 

My role is titled Events Manager but I’m working with the actual event managers and managing them on this side on behalf of a regional NSW Council. I don’t have the worry of the weather/ publicity/ attendance etc. My small team (me +1) basically sponsor events that fit with our region’s venues, calendar, and our brand. Then deal with the community complaints: yep believe it or not, there are always people who don’t like events in their regional town. 

We have (almost) always looked at events bed nights and tied our events sponsorship funding to out of region marketing. All I now hear from the events industry that was suffering from COVID restrictions was that was the worst thing possible. Event numbers now needed to be low to keep under caps and they needed to spend funding on artists and fencing and extra COVID marshals etc. 

We have made small changes here in my Council in the hope to still support the Event Industry return to regional centres and I can only imagine that others have very quickly done the same. 

However, as I have now been in this role a few years, I can see what potentially being dangerous for sponsorship programs like the one we deliver is the way that most event owners expect Councils to be thankful that events are coming to our region. And that Council should provide funding and not expect deliverables to be met. All it takes is a new executive, new CEO, new councillors that can’t see the return and all of a sudden that event manager is gone and that funding program stopped. 

Don’t mean to end on a negative… just remember that Councils act like businesses as well.