Montana WOW Awards moving to Wellington in order to grow
After 16 years in Nelson, the Montana World of WearableArt™ Awards is to move to Wellington in 2005 in order to ensure its long-term sustainability and to grow and develop the show creatively.
WOW® Chief Executive Gabrielle Hervey says: “The move will take WOW on its next step towards our long-term vision of making it an international event on the world-stage.”
“We will work with the Wellington City Council, Montana Wines and other major sponsors such as Tourism New Zealand to stage the Awards Show at the Queens Wharf Events Centre in 2005. A better venue, much greater marketing support, a larger population base; potential sponsorship opportunities; and technical and artistic support available in the ‘creative’ capital will greatly enhance the show” she says.
“Since its beginnings, WOW® has managed to effectively break even in Nelson or make a very small profit, but it has never made enough to take any big new steps. It costs over $1 million to stage the show and without backing from our current sponsors, the event would run at a significant loss,” Ms Hervey says.
She said directors and management had wanted to expand the show and put it on a more sound commercial footing for many years. They realised last year when the show moved to a six night format over two weekends that it was probably as large as it could get in Nelson and that there was little room for further growth here.
In 2003 WOW commissioned Wellington consultants McDermott Miller to undertake an analysis of the business and following that report, they conducted a feasibility study into moving WOW® to a major metropolitan market, an idea that had been discussed many times over the past decade. The study found WOW should move to a major city to achieve its goals of commercial and creative growth.
McDermott Miller’s market and economic analysis of the 2003 Montana WOW Awards found that strong unfulfilled demand could not be satisfied within the venue and production constraints of Nelson, and therefore WOW needed to consider other options.
Ms Hervey said McDermott Miller evaluated various options and found Wellington offered the most compatible creative climate for developing the show.
“The Wellington City Council has warmly embraced the concept of working with WOW® to expand the Awards, and has offered a supportive five-year contract consisting of venue and marketing support, and a commitment from the event development fund to bring WOW to the capital.”
Ms Hervey said the Wellington Council had positioned itself as the creative capital of the country. It actively promotes culture and the arts and acknowledge the enormous contribution events such as WOW make to the local economy.
“Wellington’s infrastructure, including a better venue, an international airport, greater transport and accommodation options will also provide opportunities for the event to grow in a way not possible in a provincial area.”
“The show will be staged at the Queen’s Wharf Events Centre which is a fantastic purpose-built venue and it is hoped within a short timeframe to run the event over an even longer period, in line with other professional productions.”
Wellington Mayor, Kerry Prendergast said today: “We welcome WOW to Wellington knowing that this is just the first step for this event on its journey to become an international event and we will work with WOW to achieve this vision. We are conscious of the enormous role the people of Nelson have taken in nurturing WOW to the exceptional and, dynamic event that it is today. They can be very proud of growing the show to such an extent that this move was inevitable to ensure WOW reaches its even greater potential.”
Ms Hervey says the tremendous support the shows have received from the Nelson community has helped the event grow to its current level and the decision to move the shows away from Nelson had been very carefully considered.
“WOW is very grateful to Nelson for supporting the show so much over the past 16 years and we trust Nelson people will acknowledge we are moving in order to develop this Nelson creation further. WOW is considered one of New Zealand’s flagship tourism icons and is an event that Nelson can always be proud of.”
Ms Hervey said WOW currently involves around 400 people per show. The organisation’s five full-time staff would remain in Nelson at WOW’s Nelson base. Future shows would be planned and preliminary judged from Nelson, and some of our loyal local short term contractors who had worked on shows in the past would be offered the opportunity to work on the Wellington based events. She said there were about 250-300 unpaid participants such as ushers, amateur performers crew and others who received benefits such as free tickets, cv certificates, post-show crew party, gifts and professional training which is a valuable tool for these amateur participants’ CV’s. In future these people would be recruited from some of the national performing arts and dance schools WOW has links with and any other vacancies would be advertised just as they had in the past.
WOW creator Suzie Moncrieff said today she had long wanted to expand the show and try new creative approaches, but the budget just wasn’t big enough.
“We’ve grown over the 16 years, sure, but I really want to extend WOW’s creativity.” She said moving had been discussed for more than a decade, and although it had been a very emotional decision, it was time for WOW to leave home and take on a new challenge. Ms Moncrieff said she was excited about the new venue, which had fantastic facilities and would allow her to stretch the Shows creative boundaries.
“We’re extremely grateful to the Nelson community for all their support, but from a creative point of view I’m just so excited about the opportunity to develop the show and perhaps one day achieve my goal of going international.”
