Grants available for Nelson Virtual Heritage Festival works

Nelson City Council has introduced $500 grants to help our creative community transform their heritage festival works into digital masterpieces.

This year’s Heritage Festival, due to take place over the month of April, had to be cancelled due to the risk posed by COVID-19. Instead, Council is bringing some of the elements of the original festival online with the Nelson Virtual Heritage Festival.

The grants are for works that are ready to be screened by 20 May 2020, fit with the Heritage Festival theme, and are produced in line with the Government’s COVID-19 alert level restrictions.

Council has also enlisted the talents of actor Dan Allan, who will be lending his character Lord Nelson to the Virtual Heritage Festival, providing introductions and continuity on some of the films.

Already on the line-up for the festival are a virtual tour of the Broadgreen House’s  costume collection, a Voice Collective concert and virtual historic pub crawl, an ANZAC Day commemoration from Ngāti Koata and a film on New Zealand’s oldest municipal water supply in The Brook/Waimārama Sancturary.

Links to events and further information about the grants will be on Council’s Heritage Festival webpage, and recorded events will go up on the Nelson Virtual Heritage Festival YouTube channel