Ballarat Laneways: Local & Live is literally Ballarat's inaugural 'enlightening' experience. This event will take place over 3 weekends from 17 July to 2 August 2015 and it's free to attend. There'll be light installations, live music performances and street performance art. It'll take place in Alfred Deakin Place, Police Lane, Ballarat CBD laneways, and the George Hotel.
Local artists Beth Lamont, Damien Orriss, Diokno Pasilan and Saeed Salimpour will delight you with interactive and immersive light installations called the Ballarat Laneway Lumieres populating the space throughout the Festival period. The Lumieres will be bookended on Friday evenings with 'live' music performances staged in the Art Gallery of Ballarat, McCain Annexe and adjacent to the new Hop Temple at the west end of George Lane. In connection there'll be a seamless array of roaming performance artists.
This is not an isolated event but part of a bigger celebration, Ballarat's Winterlude which was launched by the City of Ballarat and Ballarat Regional Tourism. It's almost fair to say pack your bags, take some holidays and head over to Ballarat for a few weeks to participate and enjoy all that is Winterlude. Subscribe to the Winterlude newsletter to keep abreast of updates and events.
There'll be fun activities for young and old that includes a pop up ice skating rink in the CBD where you can either skate or go for a toboggan ride. Wow! If food carts, musicians, feasting at local farms, cooking classes, cultural wanderings, warming winter menus and gourmet winter pies by the region's chefs featuring the region's best produce and much much more grabs your attention, well, you know where to go. Winterlude!
Why not consider a Ballarat Pass that enables you to enjoy 3 or 4 of Ballarat's biggest attractions. You can buy this pass from the Ballarat Visitor Information Centre at 43 Lydiard St Nth in Ballarat. Make sure you take advantage of all that Ballarat offers during this winter festival to create an unforgettable experience for you and your family and friends.
Listed below are some of the events in chronological order, which you'll find on the Visit Ballarat website. Start getting that diary out and marking out events you don't want to miss.
1 Jul to 31 Jul - Ballarat's Best Pie Competition (eat your way around Ballarat in the month of July and sample the range of gourmet pies from participating venues. Overall winning pie crowned on 31 Jul 2015 at the Mining Exchange).
17 July to 2 Aug - Ballarat Laneway, Local & Live (light installations, live music performances and street performance art - as per this article above).
31 Jul to 31 Jul - Coopers Pie and Pale Gala (Ballarat Pie and Beer Judging Spectacular) one day only.
