We are very excited to announce Kim Carland as our Regional Projects Coordinator (Accelerating Events Economies)! Kim started at the Hunter JO in January and has 15 years’ experience in event and project management, strategic communications, and marketing and stakeholder engagement. Kim has previously worked for the City of Newcastle, the University of Newcastle and Melbourne Water.

Last year, the Hunter Joint Organisation successfully secured $860k funding through the Bushfire Local Economic Recovery Fund (BLER). This fund was granted for our Accelerating Event Economies (A2E) project to build economic resilience and recovery by stimulating regional event capability.

A2E will focus on driving economic recovery through identifying systems and processes that will make regional collaboration simple and more effective; unlocking the potential to attract bigger and better events at a regional scale.

This program will implement a series of actions that will provide the foundation for events attraction across the region. This event attraction will deliver enduring public benefit while accelerating job and income creation, and shared assets, that power local social and economic resilience and diversification.

As part of the project, the Hunter JO hosted a networking breakfast to introduce stakeholders from the region to the A2E project, and to discuss how we can work together to achieve great outcomes for the Hunter.

There was immense enthusiasm and energy for the project during this event, with 40 stakeholders in the room and 17 stakeholders joining us virtually. We received a lot of great feedback from those who attended, identifying seven themes where we should be focusing our efforts for the delivery of a dedicated events program for the Hunter. These include:

• Collaboration
• Facilities/infrastructure upgrades
• Promoting the region collectively to attract events
• Transport improvements
• Funding
• Skills/capabilities or available resources
• Land zoning

It was great to see the collaborative nature of the region come through strongly with lots of engagement from all in the room.

This Local Economic Recovery project is jointly funded by the Commonwealth and the New South Wales Government under the Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements.

Click HERE to view the presentations from this event.

For more information please contact Kim Carland, Regional Project Coordinator on kimc@hunterjo.com.au or 0408 051 705