The Hunter Joint Organisation successfully secured $860k funding through the Bushfire Local Economic Recovery Fund (BLER) in late 2021. This fund was granted for our Accelerating Event Economies (A2E) project to build economic resilience and recovery by stimulating regional event capability.
The Hunter Region already has fantastic event capability; however, there is potential for 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. The A2E project is focused on unlocking that potential.
A2E will aim to strengthen the region’s collective voice as a visitor and event destination, increase the capacity of Councils through shared resources, and enable councils to collaboratively pitch for major events. Our shared vision is to be recognised as a destination for hosting world class events that align with our unique offering.
The A2E project will deliver outcomes through establishing a regional partner task group, undertaking an events and opportunities audit, and creating destination and event management resources required at a regional scale.
This Local Economic Recovery project is jointly funded by the Commonwealth and the New South Wales Government under the Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements.

The A2E project includes:
- Hunter Event Facilities Audit
- Hunter Event Economic Opportunities Analysis
- Event Tourism Prospectus
- Collaborative Event Licencing
- Digital UX and Web Development
Benefits of A2E:
- Understand the economic benefits of events in our region.
- Identify the gaps in infrastructure to support event attraction.
- Provide data to develop business cases to encourage infrastructure investment in the region and have evidence-based conversations with stakeholders.
- Position our region as a destination of choice for events.
- Make it easier for event managers to find, select and host events in our region.
All of our Member Councils are involved in this project.
Project Activity:
Hunter Event Facilities Audit
A project to undertake an event facilities audit for the Hunter region to identify the facilities and complementary services that support attraction of events, and to provide recommendations for infrastructure investment to support a regional approach to event attraction.
Hunter Event Economic Opportunities Analysis
A project to audit the Hunter regions events economy over the past 10 years to develop a benchmark for the key indicators of success for a dedicated event attraction program, and to determine the economic benefits of the events industry in the Hunter.
Event Tourism Prospectus
A project to identify and collate tourism information that will assist event managers in identifying and selecting the Hunter Region to host their event, and to help market their events. The project also includes the development of itineraries for the Hunter region to complement marketing of events and encourage visitors to stay in the region for longer.
Collaborative Event Licencing
A project to explore the potential for and development of streamline local government event licencing and look at potential options to develop a collaborative arrangement where a central entity manages event licences that cross several local government areas in the Hunter region.
Digital UX and Web Development
A project to undertake digital user experience research from both event managers and event attendees’ perspective, to understand how to develop a user friendly digital platform to share information for event managers, and market what’s on for events across the region, making it easy for event managers to only list their event once.
About the Bushfire Local Recovery Package (BLER)
BLER is a $4.5 billion bushfire support program that is co-funded by the Australian and NSW Governments for bushfire recovery, and response and preparedness for natural disasters in NSW. This program supports job retention and creation in bushfire impacted regions, strengthening affected communities and community resilience, and reducing the impact of future natural disasters. The funding is driven by specific recovery needs of communities and based on submitted applications.
For more information about the A2E project, contact Kim Carland, Regional Project Coordinator on kimc@hunterjo.com.au or 0408 051 705