The Festive Season Program includes a broad range of activities including events, pole and tree decorations, and banners, which are all supported by Council. The Festive Season covers Christmas, New Years Eve and Australia Day celebrations across the Sunshine Coast.

The Festive and Commemorative Events Grant Program funds community-led festive events. This has been key to the success of long-standing events and also gives new communities the opportunity to celebrate.

We invited feedback from our community members to ensure that festive events are meeting community needs and expectations. The data and information gathered through this process will be used to inform future programming and delivery.

Feedback will help us understand:

• marketing and awareness for Council events
• awareness of community funded events
• demographic and location patterns
• broad festive attendance pattens and motivations.

In addition, a targeted survey was conducted with community groups who receive funding under the Festive and Commemorative Grants Program, to deliver their own community events. The targeted survey will assist in measuring the effectiveness of the current funding program. This data will be combined with the broad community survey to inform future festive season programming and funding.

Consultation was open from Monday, 4 November to 5pm Friday, 20 December 2024.

Council currently provides funding support under the Festive and Commemorative Events Grant Program to over 30 community organisations to deliver their own festive activities. We deliver a New Years Eve event at Mooloolaba and also install festive decorations across the region.

To test the effectiveness of these activities and to inform Council’s future direction and planning, we have conducted several broad and targeted surveys in the last six years:

• 2023- sought feedback on Council support for festive season celebrations
• 2023- sought feedback on Council's Festive and Commemorative Grants Program
• 2020- sought feedback on Council support for festive season celebrations
• 2018- sought feedback on the New Years Eve event in Mooloolaba

To ensure we have a future delivery model that meets community needs and expectations, a councillor festive workshop was conducted in August 2024. A key outcome of this workshop was the identification of several planning and delivery elements for the Festive Season program and funding. These elements included:

• the timing of the fireworks event
• festive events funding through council grants
• the effectiveness of council’s marketing of the program.

We aim to validate and test these planning and delivery elements through the community surveys.

We will review and analyse the feedback received from the survey which will inform future festive season programming and funding. We will report back to the community in March 2025.