Entertainment
25 January, 2024
Amphitheatre under review with community invited to have input
WITH a new year purpose of becoming the home of performing arts on the Tablelands, the Kuranda Amphitheatre wants people to have their say in the future of the venue with a set of community consultation sessions aiming to draft a masterplan for the next decade.
Having received a grant from the Foundation for Rural & Regional Renewal (FRRR), the community-ran performing arts centre, is looking to renew and revamp the venue, bringing on board the ideas of the community through community consultation sessions on Wednesday, January 24, Saturday, January 27 and Tuesday, January 30.
Management committee member Sarah Rizvi said this was an opportunity to breathe new life into the 40-year-old beautiful rainforest venue while boosting the local performing arts.
“The Kuranda Amphitheatre was established 40 years ago, and it has been managed by volunteers in that whole time. It has a capacity of 3500 people, and it is also a live music venue,” Ms Rizvi said. “We won a grant from the FRRR for a master planning process because it’s a fantastic facility but it’s aging, and it needs some renewal, but rather than make decisions as a committee we opened it up to the whole community.
“We encourage people to contribute their ideas because so many people in the community have had a role in Kuranda and the wider performing arts community and have so many ideas on how they’d like to see the facility improve.”
The community consultation kicked off with a ‘Big Sky Thinking’ session last Wednesday (Jan 24) from 6.30pm to 8.30pm where people pitched their ideas, then the Saturday (Jan 27) session from 1pm to 3pm will look at those ideas and sift them through a reality filter with the last session on January 30 from 6.30pm-8.30pm for prioritisation of the ideas that made it through the filter.
“We separated into three sessions and, although we’d like people to attend all three, we realise it’s not practical so we’re doing a parallel online process so they can input their ideas for a community-based design process,” Ms Rivzi said.
“There’s a registration process for the purposes of catering but anyone can come along; we’re hoping to get 20-40 people participating.”
To register or more details visit https://bit.ly/3vP5fLF
