Double success for Council at LG Excellence awards

Bland Shire Council has picked up two major accolades at the New South Wales Local Government Excellence Awards in Sydney.

Bland Shire won the major award for Special Project Initiative (population under 60,000) for the Bring Flavour to Bland campaign and a highly commended in the Community Partnerships and Collaboration (population under 60,000 category) for its role in the Big Football project in Ungarie.

The awards were presented at the Local Government Awards dinner hosted by LG Professionals NSW at the glitzy Westin Hotel at Martin Place.

It is the second year in a row Council has collected a major gong at the prestigious awards dinner after collecting the open category award for Creative Communities in 2018 for the Weethalle Silo Art Project.

The Special Project Initiative award recognised Bland Shire’s partnership with Chicago based brewery Goose Island on the Bring Flavour to Bland campaign in 2018.

The campaign kicked off with the release of a tongue in cheek video from Bland Shire General Manager, Ray Smith, calling on the people of Melbourne and Sydney to Bring More Flavour to Bland.

The humble video and campaign went viral and reached a staggering audience of 44.8 million people with a total value of over $2.7 million - at no cost to ratepayers.

The inaugural Bland Flavour festival was held in November last year and Council has allocated funding in its 2019-2020 budget to support a second Flavour festival later this year.

The Community Partnerships and Collaboration highly commended award recognised the success of the Big Football project where Bland Shire Council partnered with Triple M and the Ungarie Advancement Group to construct the world’s largest Sherrin football as a tribute to the Daniher family.

Ungarie born and bred Terry, Anthony, Neale and Chris Daniher are Australian football legends who to this day remain as the only set of four brothers to play together in a VFL/AFL premiership match and a 800 kilogram fibreglass football was unveiled in their honour at Ungarie’s Bing Walder Park in March last year.

The unveiling and subsequent Legends match attracted more than 2000 people to Ungarie and was broadcast live on social media and across two Triple M regional radio networks. Coverage of the Big Football reached more than 1.34 million people bringing unprecedented exposure and publicity to Ungarie and the Bland Shire.

Bland Shire Council General Manager, Ray Smith, congratulated everyone at Council on the success of both award winning projects.

“It was with a great deal of pleasure and pride that I could accept these awards on behalf of everyone at Council in recognition of their vision, hard work and dedication,” Mr Smith said.