One of Wyndham City’s most popular and biggest annual events has taken out a national award.
Wyndham City’s spectacular lighting festival LIT received the Creativity and Culture Award at last night’s National Awards for Local Government, an annual celebration of local government achievements across Australia.
The awards highlight initiatives implemented by local governments that are innovative, make a difference to their local communities, and in the Creative and Culture category, create opportunities to showcase the best of communities through arts and culture and increase local economic opportunity.
Now in its third year, more than 75,000 people visited the 2024 LIT event at Wyndham Park, which was held over 14 glowing evenings in March and included a Sensory Friendly evening with alterations made to accommodate visitors with sensory sensitivities and other needs.
Highlights from this year’s event included Amigo & Amigo’s ChronoHarp, where people could create gentle harp melodies as the illuminated, giant instrument glowed above, and Trumpet Flowers, a spectacular array of giant flowers that lit up and played trumpet tunes at the press of a button.
Wyndham City Mayor Jennie Barrera, who accepted the award at last night’s event, said it was thrilling for LIT to be recognised on the national stage.
“For the past three years LIT has gone above and beyond to present a free program of carefully curated and stunning light installations, and I am incredibly proud to see this fantastic event get the recognition it deserves,” Cr Barrera said.
“It’s wonderful to be able to officially call LIT an award-winning event, and I want to congratulate and thank all of the Council staff, artists and others working tirelessly behind the scenes to bring this spectacular to life each year.”
“It was also excellent to see two other Wyndham City events and activations – Firefly Night Market and Mooroop Yarkeen by Tommy Day / Jirri Jirri – recognised as finalists at these awards.”
“To have three of Wyndham City’s major initiatives noticed at these national awards speaks to the high calibre of events and activations that are attracting visitors from both Wyndham and the wider Melbourne area.”
The award comes almost a year after LIT was recognised as a national finalist in the 2023 Australian Event Awards.