The organisers of a rural music and arts festival are fuming over what they believe is a copycat festival happening a few towns over. As the Warwick Daily News reports, the organisers of the town’s Jumpers and Jazz festival want the organisers of Gympie’s Winter Trees on Mary to find their own festival.

While it may seem like a case of quaint small town concerns, Jumpers and Jazz are seriously pissed at what they believe is a copycat event blatantly ripping off their own. Organiser Tracy Vellacott says the Gympie event, which also features music and ‘yarn-bombing trees’, could threaten their own.

“So many Warwick people have voiced their disgust at it,” she told the Daily News. “What if they have more money to put behind it? What happens to our festival then? Yarn bombing isn’t a unique idea but the tree jumpers – that’s an idea unique to this community.”

According to the Daily News, the Winter Trees on Mary festival came about after a Gympie businessman approached his local council about holding a festival to “put the heart back into Mary St”. Organisers even sought advice from the Warwick community about organising their event.

“I expressed my disappointment that Gympie was planning on doing something similar,” Warwick Art Gallery director Karina Devine said. “I went on to explain we’ve been working on this festival for 12 years – that it’s a major community project and signature tourism event.”

“I heard nothing back from them,” she added. As far as Ms Devine is concerned, the Gympie festival is a “copycat” and she’s “frightened” every time she sees yarn-bombed trees somewhere else, while acknowledging, of course, that “yarn bombing is a big thing internationally”.

Jumpers and Jazz co-founder Lynn Bryson told the Daily News yesterday she was “sad” about the situation and suggested the Gympie festival organisers come up with an original idea of their own. “I’m sure if they thought hard enough they could come up with an original idea,” she said. Whoa, shots fired.

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“People are looking for other things, they want to do different things – they could do something different. They have the Gympie muster – why don’t they carry that into Mary St?” she said. “They could do something then – dress their trees if they have to and play country music in the main street.”

While we reckon this whole thing could be sorted out with a yarn-bombing contest to the death, Ms Vellacott suggests the situation could merit a letter from “our mayor to the mayor of Gympie”, while Ms Devine hopes Warwick’s chamber of commerce will come on board.

“We’re hoping to get our chamber of commerce on board,” she said. “Coming from the chamber of commerce is the best idea. We want them to ask the business community of Gympie to re-think the idea – it doesn’t sound to me like it will be just a one-off event.”

Still, y’know, yarn-bombing contest to the death… ?

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