From 9-11 August, the Shire of Ashburton celebrated its annual Tom Price Nameless Festival. With traditional events, stalls, entertainment and much more, the Festival is an important calendar event.
Now in its 32nd year, the first Festival was staged in 1971 when Tom Price was a closed mining town, thus catering largely for mine workers and their families. With the process of normalisation during the 1980s, the Festival is organised by an enthusiastic team of community volunteers. Originally a one day event, it now commences on Friday evening and concludes Sunday night.
Council provides all facilities used during the Festival and assists with funding applications. This year grants totalled $7,500. However, it is the enormous efforts by volunteer organisations in planning and running of the Festival that ensures its continuing success.
Why the Nameless Festival you may ask? The Festival is in fact named after Mount Nameless located on the doorstep of Tom Price.
The Festival provides a great opportunity to profile community talents, and this year was no exception. Some of the highlights included a wall mural painted by local children and visual theatre performance coordinated by Artworks, a Perth based theatre group. Coordinated by the Baha’i Institute of Arts, a large number of children from the Shire designed and painted a mural on the wall of the local sports pavilion.
Council funded Artworks to run performance workshops with local students from the Shire in the two weeks leading up to the Festival. From these workshops, 20 students presented a visual theatre performance during the Festival where they painting a backdrop while telling a story. The theme for their performance was ‘Diversity, accepting people for who they are’.
Other highlights of this year’s Festival included the Hamersley Iron sponsored fireworks, a street parade, the Nameless Ball with the theme ‘Arabian Nights’, an exhibition of local crafts and artworks as well as performances by local dance groups, bands and entertainers.
