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A dramatic increase in council charges is threatening the future of Earth Beat, a family friendly music, arts and cultural festival that takes place at Atiu Creek Regional Park, near Tapora.
Festival co-founder and organiser Sadra Saffari told Rodney Local Board members the five-day not-for-profit event was focused on providing safe, inclusive multigenerational experiences, not making money.
“We have a youth zone, a kids zone, youth stage performances and a section dedicated to families. It’s accessible across different age groups, with significant concessions for seniors and youth, and kids under 14 go free,” he said.
“It’s about touching people’s hearts with arts, music, culture, comedy and poetry. There’s a lot of space for people to improvise and be spontaneous, lots of creativity.”
Saffari said as well as international and NZ acts, Earth Beat featured local schools, iwi and environmental groups, such as Tapora Land & Coast Care and Kaipara Moana Remediation.
“The [Auckland Council] regional parks team have been really solid and helpful, but I feel like the message of the festival is falling on deaf ears a little bit [now],” he said at the board’s business meeting last month.
“The relationship has become a little bit transactional in that they’re kind of treating the festival as though it’s a commercial entity.”
He said Earth Beat had originally been invited to Atiu Creek “in a place of partnership”, but that had now changed, with new charges for things that had previously been provided by council, such as water.
“This is what we’re looking for help with. Our resource consent is finished now and we’re needing to go for it [again], but we’re pretty strapped in terms of funds,” he said.
“We just got an invoice for nearly $26,000 for doing the festival and we were expecting it to be about half of that.”
Auckland Council’s northern principal ranger Jason Maguiness confirmed after the meeting that fees had increased and additional support was provided this year “to ensure the event ran smoothly and complied with permit requirements”.
However, he did not comment on whether he felt the relationship between council and Earth Beat had changed over the years.
“Auckland Council’s northern regional parks team has supported organisers of the Earth Beat Festival over the past six years to host this event at the Ātiu Creek Regional Park,” Maguiness said.
“Since 2024, there has been an annual increase in event-related charges, including the application fee, site and facility hire, event monitoring and permit processing.
This has resulted in a $5491 cost increase for this year’s event, from $19,830 last year to $25,321 this year (with $2591 relating to annual increases).
“In addition, the organisers were required to provide fresh drinking water this year due to low reservoir levels, which had previously been provided by the council free of charge.
“Council supported the festival by providing a storage tank and pipe network, and the organisers were charged $2900 to have this set up for the event.”
