Dunedin Midwinter Carnival

Who we are

The Dunedin Midwinter Carnival has been creating magical events in the heart of Dunedin for more than 20 years. Our mission is to celebrate the seasons by bringing light, joy, positivity and togetherness through community participation. 

This year’s two-day event on 23-24 June will be hosted in the historic grounds of Dunedin’s First Church which will include live performances, a night market of food trucks, large-scale projections, children’s parades, and installations of our iconic handmade giant lanterns. 

Dunedin Midwinter Carnival is brought together by the community, for the community – by our volunteers, local artists, children, students, local businesses, families and other keen participants in the city. Our community makes this festival unique to Dunedin.

What we want to do 

The theme for the Midwinter Carnival is ‘The Enchanted Forest’ with a focus on stories both old and new. We want to build a magnificent giant lantern installation about Alice in Wonderland inside First Church (and our generous partners in the church community are letting us do it!). 

We need your support to raise enough funds to pay the lantern-makers and buy the materials to bring this to life. The $5,000 raised will be used to pay to remunerate the artists and purchase materials.

About our iconic giant lanterns

Our giant lanterns are key to creating a magical experience for our community. The artists put their heart and soul into making them. Not many people know that each of these lanterns can take up to 120 hours to make (during long & cold winter nights). And every year, we have to repatch them to a usable and safe state. 

Currently, we are striving to become more sustainable. We are making our lanterns more resilient by introducing durable materials and endeavouring to provide fair pay to our talented artists. Consequentially, our expenses have gone up, and so has the cost of living. We are grateful for our longstanding funders, but unfortunately, funding overall has been reduced, so we need to explore new ways of raising funds. 

We introduced a modest $5 entry fee for last year’s event, and that has helped a lot. However, not enough. Even with a $5 entry fee, we are compelled to explore new ways of funding the creation of our giant lanterns.

How you can help

Donate generously! 

And if you can’t, please share this campaign through your networks and encourage friends and family to support us. With your help, we can pay our dedicated lantern artists a fair return for their talent and hard work and buy all the materials we need to make this installation a Dunner Stunner.

Find out more about the event or Dunedin Midwinter Carnival on our website.

Website: https://www.midwintercarnival.co.nz/ 

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