Welcome to the Melbourne Festival.  This is our fourth year and the Melbourne Festival is now well established as an innovative celebration of the arts.  The 2008 Festival will, as in previous years, start with the Concert Programme on 29 August and finish with the Trail Weekend on the 13th and 14th of September.  

For those who have been before, the Concert Programme will be the same mix of music for all, with pub blues, folk, rock, choirs, operatic, and classical.  Likewise, the Trail Weekend, will have 80+ professional artists in private houses and public halls around the historic centre of Melbourne, with amateur groups of artists, an Open Exhibition, heritage sites and trails, buskers and food.  The difference is that in celebration of the National Year of Reading, we wish to make Literature a running theme, spoken, written, bound, drawn, sung; as poetry, stories and comedy.  If you have never been, it is a great weekend out, (you will never get round in just one day).  For regulars, there is enough the same and plenty that is different.  Festival 2008 will be as fresh as ever.

There is no better opportunity to buy quality art and crafts direct from the makers at the best possible prices.  As a policy, we take no commission from the artists, only a modest subscription fee.  We want them to make money, (or they won't come back), and for you to pay a fair price for original art.  Nothing is imported, nothing is mass produced. The artists stand alongside their work and it is all for sale. Any money the Festival makes is ploughed back into Festival.  We are a volunteer organisation; we do it for fun.

The painting of Melbourne Market Place is by Neil Clarke , who will be exhibiting at Festival 2008.