PRESIDENT’S REPORT
2025
This report covers the period from our last AGM in February 2025 to the October AGM during which we launched, delivered, and completed all necessary acquittals for the 2025 StoryFest event.
Before I outline our achievements and future challenges, I’d like to remind people of the landscape we navigated heading into the festival. The phrase of the season was ‘cost of living crisis’ which was of significant concern both from a cost perspective (rising prices delivering the event) and with respect to the impact it might have on sponsorship and ticket sales (would people turn out). In addition, our local council, Shoalhaven City Council, was newly elected and faced with its own massive financial challenges.
I think it's really important to view the overwhelming success of the festival, including the positive financial outcome in light of these two elements. The committee and our community should be incredibly proud of what we delivered, building on the success of the ‘23 festival and those before it.
The success of the festival can be broken down into three core areas:
Community
Quality
Commercial
Community - never before has StoryFest connected, involved and showcased our community like it did in 2025. This included
Our suite of passionate more than 20 sponsors and supporters, plus accommodation partners, suppliers and donors who gave cash and in-kind support and gained valuable exposure to our audience
Ten businesses who got behind our inaugural Story on a Plate, and promoted their offering in a creative and impactful way
Five community organisations (Safe Waters, Soup Kitchen, Ulladulla Mens Shed, Muck Up, Lions Club) who made both The Lunch with Love initiative and the Giving Tree possible (the latter with thanks also to Harbour Books)
The five local authors who appeared in our Live and Local panel session
Milton Follies, and the local Bundawang mob led by Elders Noel and Trish Butler who staged stand out shows at Milton Theatre (not to mention the 17 local performers who performed their Slam Poetry pieces in the Australian Poetry Slam Heat at the same venue).
The entire school community in our region - six schools from Sussex in the north to Ulladulla High - who embraced the magic of storytelling during performances, workshops and creative expression, including five students who read their work on opening night
More than 60 volunteers rolled their sleeves up and helped deliver the events across June (and a big thanks to Donna Loon for coordinating our amazing volleys)
To me, this was always an aim; to make StoryFest so much more than a typical FIFO event, but something owned and delivered across our community, by members of our community.
Quality - StoryFest is without doubt one of the best regional writers festivals in the country and everyone on the outgoing committee should be rightly proud of what we delivered.
Our schools program is delivered at scale, with quality storytellers bringing their magic at no cost to any of the six school communities we reach. I’d like to thank Annie Markey for her fabulous efforts engaging the school community, and building a really fresh and vibrant program that connected so strongly with students and teachers.
Our core StoryFest program this year was a unique blend of talent - from fiction and non-fiction writers, world leading academics and through to self published and first time novelists. Critically, the new food program developed by Anneka Manning gave the festival a delicious local flavour that we know is now the envy of other regional festivals. It included the Cupitts Gala with Stephanie Alexander, and Story on Plate that saw ten local outlets create an offering that told their business’ story (and delivered us a clip on every sale), and of course the unforgettable Lunch with Love, delivered by local restaurant Nomah in conjunction with Hana Assafiri and the Ulladulla Soup kitchen. Massive (chefs) hats off to Anneka and everyone in the community that brought this vision to life.
Given this, it’s no wonder that 96% attendees rated the 2025 festival very good or excellent and 97% of attendees said they were likely or highly likely to return for StoryFest 2027 - a great platform for the future of StoryFest.
Commercial - At the start of this cycle, we aimed to maintain our level of ticket sales (you can get too big for your boots), maintain our positive levels of customer satisfaction (ie brand health and event quality) and improve our financial position. I am proud of the fact that our team grew ticket sales by 6%, while growing ticketing revenue by 31%. This was due to a combination of a carefully thought out pricing strategy and brilliant targeted marketing campaign.
In terms of pricing, we introduced a flat $25 ticket price for every session at Ulladulla Civic Centre which meant down stairs tickets went up from $20 to $25 with no adverse impact. We trialled premium pricing for Gina Chick, Hana Assifiri and the post event soup, and the session was our highest seller. In addition, Our two big shows at Milton Theatre - Motel with Tim Ross and Katie Noonan sold out, but were delivered for significantly less cost than the equivalent 2023 events thanks to key learnings adopted. We also delivered low cost shows featuring local artists that sold strongly but cost little more than venue hire and tech support to stage.
From a marketing perspective, we built on the refreshed brand introduced in 2023, and focused on our most loyal customers - our newsletter subscribers and social media followers. When tickets went on sale, the results were dramatic, with sales in the first week to subscribers almost doubling from the same period in 2023. In addition, our social media strategy continued to drive strong visitation from Sydney and Canberra, boosting our support for local businesses during what once was the off season for tourism.
None of this happens without the hard work of our committee and I want to record my personal thanks to the core committee including:
Anneka Manning leading marketing
Annie Markey leading the schools program
Donna Loon leading the volunteer program and overseeing the Event Management plan
Kasonde Taylor leading artist services
Kim McElhinney Treasurer, leading ticketing (on top of her finance duties)
In addition, numerous others rolled their sleeves up when it counted but three deserve a specific shout out:
Lisa Collins, Community Liaison
Tony Button, Venues Manager
Julie Bozza, Acting Treasurer and Ticketing lead in Kim's absence (through the lead-in to, during and immediately after the Festival!!)
I also want to thank the families of our committee who are a great support to all of us in these demanding voluntary roles, and the professional services we tapped into including Nikki Croft who was our social media guru in the immediate lead up to the Festival.
So what does the future hold for StoryFest? There are always new initiatives that you want to nail that get pushed to one side due to lack of time, resources, energy or funds.
Naturally the new committee will decide what’s important for them, for StoryFest and for our community in the future. But if, during the last minutes in my role as President I could wave a magic StoryFest wand and solve three issues they would be:
Finalise and implement a successful philanthropic program (we have grant funding secured to complete this task)
Deliver the StoryFest Schools program every year (not every two years as currently occurs)
Secure recurrent grant funding from Create NSW that would ensure ongoing financial support to enable better resourcing of the event, reducing the reliance of volunteer hours from the committee.
Since we announced the likely vacancies on the committee and the AGM dates, I have been thrilled by the calibre of people who’ve expressed interest in getting involved. I look forward to seeing how that committee shapes up and can assure them that the outgoing members of the ‘25 team are more than happy to share their knowledge, contacts and thoughts should you ever need.
I wish the incoming committee every success leading into StoryFest 2027, pencilled in for 17-20 June.
Adam Jeffrey
2025 President and Program Director.