Our Final ACCIONA Community Finalist - Spring Ditch 2026
Our final 2026 ACCIONA Community finalist is Spring Ditch Festival!
For over 140 years, the Stanley New Year's Day Sports drew this tiny township together in the same natural amphitheatre. Spring Ditch picks up that thread.
Now in its fifth year, the family festival run by Rikki Raadsveld and Lex Fletcher fills the Stanley Recreation Reserve with an all-Australian music lineup, the Golden Boot Toss, sack races, arts and makers' stalls, and food from local vendors, alongside an "Avenue of Honour" of photos linking today's crowd to the sports days of the 1980s and earlier. Proceeds from raffles, ticket sales and vendor fees are split between eight local organisations, including the Stanley Athenaeum, Stanley Landcare, and the Stanley and Beechworth Fire Brigades.
What's kept Spring Ditch growing isn't a marketing budget. It's a genuinely personal approach: organisers reach out directly to sponsors and volunteers, and thank them with handwritten letters, crew shirts and an after-party. That effort shows up in the lineup too, all-female headline acts some years, Indigenous and LGBTQI artists, young and emerging musicians alongside established ones.
The X-factor is ownership. Spring Ditch isn't just held in Stanley. It belongs to Stanley, built by locals who decided their tiny town deserved a big day out, and then built one.
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