It has been a busy couple of weeks post our Homegrown Parkes event.

A massive thank you to everyone who responded to our request for feedback. We try to factor in your suggestions moving forward, particularly around demonstrations, workshops, educational opportunities and stallholder suggestions.

It does sometimes become evident that many people don’t understand the ethos behind the ‘homegrown’ concept. Whilst having 100 stalls in our park would provide a lot of diversity, it is really important that we maintain a standard that focusses on promoting local and regional businesses, not for profits etc. Bigger is not necessarily better. That is not our goal.

Central West Lachlan Landcare have committed to delivering Homegrown Parkes events for the next three years, twice a year. This is for our community. We don’t have a team of paid people running the event, Apart from me, we are supported by volunteers from our Committee, volunteers from the Parkes Community Arts Committee and with in-kind support from Parkes Shire Council.

I do also scrutinise the feedback and remove any inconsistencies from our stats. For example, if you tell me that someone said they didn’t know the event was on, when we advertise in the paper for months ahead of the event, promote through our Homegrown Parkes Social Media, Landcare Social Media and Council Social Media. The amazing Parkes Community Arts Committee has signage up in the Cooke Park and around the streets several weeks before, I challenge those people to start participating, engaging in our community and stop complaining.

When someone tells me there was nothing for the kids to do….but they used the free jumping castle, farmyard nursery and the watched the M&D Performance, didn’t attend any of the free workshops (that kids could attend as well), will never come back to another event and suggested painting as demonstration that we could provide and they spent up to $70, I just laugh. To the remainder of the respondents who averaged a rating of just over 9 out of 10 for our March event, thanks again for your support and suggestions.

To our amazing stallholders, who provided an equally pleasing over 9 out of 10 rating for the March event, we thank you and we were also pleased to see that you had such a fantastic day in terms of sales!

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