Cover Image: Festival‑goers dance through a tunnel of ribbons — a signature burst of Funtavia colour and chaos. Image Supplied.

Earlier this month, and after a six-year hiatus, Funtavia Festival returned to Geraldton’s West End precinct – a part of the city’s CBD whose story is itself a source of inspiration. 

Previously, it was almost derelict, with vacant shopfronts, buildings in disrepair and a central desolate block, virtually abandoned after a fire over 16 years ago destroyed the pub that had stood there. 

Since then, the West End and a revitalised Blue Heelers Square have formed a vibrant cultural and community hub and home to art studios and niche businesses. The return of Funtavia is a fitting celebration and recognition of its role in transforming this precinct. 

Debuting in 2016, Funtavia was inspired by a group of passionate locals and stakeholders with a desire to activate under-used urban spaces by injecting them with vibrancy and community connection through art and events. 

Envisioned as a regional fringe arts event – and linked with Perth’s Fringe World, one of the world’s largest fringe festivals – Funtavia showcased a number of diverse performances embracing comedy, cabaret and experimental acts from local, national, and international talent over three days of creative pseudo-havoc and celebration. It employed more than 100 different people and artists, hosted 15 ticketed shows, and ran multiple supplemental activities and engagements.

Over the next four years, Funtavia grew into a fun, eclectic, event with shades of grunge, embracing adventurous, creative performances, local and imported talent and community participation. Its combination of placemaking mayhem, arts activations and community fun became embedded in the cultural identity of Geraldton. Its success encouraged confidence and helped spawn additional independent programs and initiatives. 

These in turn contributed to changing the characterisation of the West End as unwelcoming and disused into a flourishing ecosystem of creative experimentation and community ownership. The future and momentum for cultural festivals and creative activations at Blue Heelers Square and the broader West End space was looking bright…

Then, in 2020, Covid hit. Midway through organising that year’s festival, the Funtavia board were forced to bunker down with the rest of the world and wait it out – another unwilling casualty in the story no one wanted to be part of.

While Funtavia was shelved indefinitely due to uncertainty, the appetite it had created in the community – bolstered by the famine of live entertainment experiences – and the revitalisation of the West End continued. Funtavia had shown the community what was possible, and as lockdown restrictions lifted, smaller, low-stakes activations began to emerge. Independent art studios opened, along with a slew of smaller-scale events and activations, largely driven by individual artists and groups, including Euphorium, one of the festival’s co-organisers.

The dream was always to bring back Funtavia, and towards the end of 2025, organisers decided the time was right. The return was intentionally designed as a reawakening rather than a full-scale relaunch, with a smaller, two-day program that celebrated the event’s grassroots origins while allowing space to grow in step with the community’s enthusiasm.   

This year’s compact program proved a big success, with solid attendance across the four ticketed shows. There were also DJs and a live musician, a silent disco, and several unique experiences that included the Chapel of Love and a reimagined Side Show Alley. 

The less than conventional fairground attraction included a version of backyard cricket – played with champagne bottles and corks – diving flippers ping-pong, a diabolical toy car challenge, a facepainting station and a mystery bell-and-curtain for the daring and curious.

Audience reactions to the ticketed shows – all comedy – were loud and enthusiastic, the laughter frequent and unconstrained. The line-up featured Perth-based The Funny Guys, Xavier Susai and David Hughes, Luke Bollard’s Not The Bachelor, and the devastatingly and hilariously relatable Janelle Koenig in her show, Mother Plucker.

As one audience member discovered, you took on Koenig at your peril. But the encounter had everyone, challenger included, roaring with laughter and questioning our moral compasses.

One of the event organisers who had been part of the story from the beginning, Euphorium’s Julian Canny, was reflective about the festival’s return, and impact.

“Funtavia was never just a festival, it was a signal,” he says. “It showed the community what was possible when you give people permission to play, experiment and show up together. Bringing it back into a West End that has since grown into its own creative ecosystem feels like coming full circle. This reawakening wasn’t about recreating the past; it was about honouring it while making space for whatever wants to emerge next.”

Funtavia has always placed the desires of its community front and centre, with a continued focus on fostering connection through creativity. This commitment will carry though into future iterations, with a 2027 event already confirmed. Who knows what next year’s event will look like. The community and organisers are still imagining it.