By CAROL SAFFER
Clunes was a small town sitting on the shelf. Now everyone wants to take a leaf out of their Booktown.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is the latest organisation wanting to learn the secret behind the success of Clunes Booktown.
The first Clunes Booktown was a one-day festival in 2007 attracting 6000 visitors. By 2012, the event had grown and Clunes became a member of the International Organisation of Book Towns.
This year, the town’s locals welcomed about 18,000 people to last weekend's festival, with 55 booksellers and more than 40 speakers in attendance.
Creative Clunes is the organisation four residents set up, hoping to bring life to their dying town.
Group co-founder Graeme Johnstone says the event has always been about "rejuvenating Clunes”.
In doing so, they adopted the concept of Booktown from Richard Booth in the Welsh village of Hay-on-Wye.
Mr Johnstone says Booktown offered an exemplary model of sustainable rural development and tourism that “was definitely needed”.
The festival increases the town's population by a factor of 20 over the weekend.
This year, the OECD invited Creative Clunes to present a case study of Clunes Booktown for their 2017 Tourism and the Creative Economy report.
Mr Johnstone says by inviting Creative Clunes to contribute to the annual study, the OECD will hear how a small band of Clunes locals created a “rural renewal project” in a “warm, friendly, welcoming village”.
And there is more good news to give the small town a boost. "There is every indication that we will be appointed [to hold the] International Book Town Conference in 2018,” he says.
The organisers say a good percentage of visitors came on both days of the latest Booktown event to enjoy the expanded program of authors’ talks, exhibitions, and family entertainment.
The festival’s main focus is second-hand and antique books. There is also a Kids Village with circus performers, colouring tables, a hay bale maze, and superheroes.
Booktown newcomer Lucy Brisbane, who was presenting her books Percy the Bravest Dragon, says she came for the “specific audience” of book lovers. The Percy books were written by her late father in the 1960s to read to his young children. Brisbane re-discovered them and added illustrations, making them a colourful treat for young book buyers.
Mount Beckworth Wines owner Jane Lesock has been involved in the festival since the beginning. Booktown has made a “huge difference” to business and the town, she says, and it is “magnificent”.
Hepburn Shire Mayor Neil Newitt is the owner of an eponymous photography gallery on Fraser St.
“I would not have a gallery business without Booktown,” he says.
The locals often drop in for a drink and a chat at the wine bar at the rear of the gallery. It is hard to measure the deep “sense of community”.
Mr Newitt says many businesses in Clunes have achieved sustainability through not only the annual festival, but with the BookTown on Sunday series. On the third Sunday of every month, authors deliver free talks at the Warehouse in Clunes.
The future for Booktown looks promising with the appointment of a new CEO and an artistic director.
Artistic director Ailsa Brackley du Bois is confident of the future.
“I don’t have a crystal ball but I do believe the growth will be ongoing,” she told The Courier