The Aireys Inlet Open Mic Music Festival is a music making festival, not a money making festival. It runs on sponsorship and donations and is free to attend. The festival team are a bunch of passionate locals who volunteer their time for the love of music. All the money raised goes back into hiring all the marquees, great sound equipment and awesome sound techs plus a million other bits that are needed to run the festival!
The festival runs the weekend after the March long weekend and has been historically considered an off season weekend for the town until the Music Festival was created. The weekend has now become our biggest weekend outside of the January peak tourist period. This helps local business and provide employment for locals.
The festival gives up-and-coming artists a great opportunity to showcase their talents. The special mystery guest that closes the festival on the Sunday creates a great talking point in the town. Previous guests include Colin Hay, Dan Sultan, Tim Rogers, Mark Seymour, The Hoodoo Gurus, Rockwiz Orkestra with Ella Hooper and Vika and Linda Bull, and Tash Sultana.
Donations are used for everything that is needed to run a festival and it is incredible that this festival is soley run on sponsorship and donations. Here are a few things donations go towards: Staging, lighting, sound engineers, security, posters, artwork and everything in between.
