A call to all bands.
Perpetua McInnes, or Petti as all within the entertainment realm affectionately knows her, is the Festival Events Coordinator for The City of Kingston. She managers everything from site build, programming, venture mix, site layout to all staff and contractor management, and its because of McInnes insightfulness that has allowed up and coming musicians the opportunity to showcase their talent at the many festivals she organizes
So who is Petti McInnes?
Prior to her full time engagement with The City of Kingston, she was employed part time as programmer and selector of all the entertainers for the four major festivals each year; a huge undertaking to achieve within a limited time frame each week. Luckily The City of Kingston recognised the need to bring her on board full time.
She operated Linx, her own Festivals Company in WA for ten years, which did an array of festivals, regattas, sporting and music events. In fact, McInnes was and still is considered a major force within the entertainment community of bringing together people and creating very successful events. To her long list of credits add the Culture Tour for the Queen when she visited in 2001. That alone is an honour and an impressive bow to add to her many talents. She was invited to work at the Sydney Olympics on contract with the company to manage all the international performers on the community stage, and has won state awards for most innovative for tourism. Impressive to say the least and extremely fortunate for Bayside and Mornington Peninsula residents as well as musicians alike, because everyone gets to experience her diverse event organizational skills in the form of these awesome festivals.
Says McInnes, “I try and get diversity in the mix with the performers and love to blend in emerging and up and coming performers with long standing and experienced performers.
I have developed The Jam Café at all the festivals for that reason. It’s basically a smaller acoustic stage for emerging artists to have the opportunity to perform to a big audience. This allows the audience to get a good mix of the artists performing through the different types of music on offer. I love working with creative people as I originally trained as an artist therefore I have a creative background. Recently I changed the entire layout and mix of the Mordialloc Food and Wine Festival and invited different performers and got different street theatre and entertainers. I’m catering for a broader range of ages because I do believe music can be appreciated from all ages.”
Petti would love to hear from any performers who want to perform at any of the City of Kingston festivals. She is giving a call out to all musicians to lodge an application by visiting the City of Kingston website: www.kingston.vic.gov.au
Application selection opens 1st July and closes 30th August. Apply on line.
