The inaugural Call of the Running Tide Arts Festival will draw to a close on Sunday and event organisers are encouraging everyone to check it out over the weekend.

The festival has showcased environmental art across Rex Smeal Park and The Port Douglas Community Hall from local and regional artists.

One of the event organisers and featured artists, Rosey Cummings, said the feedback from the community has been fabulous.

“We have had an amazing response,” she said.

“We anticipate about 5,000 people will have seen it all by the conclusion, we’ve been collecting data every day both at Rex Smeal and the Community Hall.”

There are 55 artworks on display across the two locations produced by 28 artists from across the region.

All the art has an environmental focus but the common thread between the works is our awe-inspiring tropical home. 

“It all started through Port Douglas artists and Jill Chism, who curated the festival, she is a public and environmental artist to who lives at Oak Beach and she asked two years ago if we wanted to run an environmental art event,” Ms Cummings said.

“I stuck my hand up then so Jill and I have been working on this for about two years with other people involved. Tim Ellis, who is the arts officer at Douglas Shire Council, has been fantastic.”

“We managed to get some RADF (Regional Arts Development Fund) funding through Council and we held a workshop and engaged with local artist and talked to them about environmental art, and then helped them to develop their practice as well.”

From those beginnings, the Call of the Running Tide art festival was born and has been on display in Port Douglas for the last seven days.

The tropical environment and the threats that are impacting on our natural surroundings inspire all the artworks.

“It’s about appreciating the beauty an uniqueness of the area, the rainforest, the reef, the mangroves, the vegetation, and the plants and animals,” Ms Cummings said.

“But it is also looking at the environmental threats to the area and things like coral bleaching, climate change, destroying habitat, and so on.”

Ms Cummings said the festival wouldn’t have been possible without the support from Douglas Shire Council and the sponsors of the event.

“We’ve had amazing support from Council in lots of ways including an enormous amount of in-kind support in terms of the hall hire and the venue hire and equipment,” she said.

“With this year being the inaugural one, we will take it away and think about it and develop it more and then what we want to do is run it every two years.

“We would love everyone to come and have a look, the feedback has been that it’s a really great thing for Douglas Shire and Port Douglas.

“The quality of the art is amazing, the Community Hall is open each day until 5.00 pm, everything is free there is and music and singing from 4.00 pm to 7.00 pm for the last three nights of the event at Rex Smeal.

“We would love people to experience it, to get out and enjoy it and spread the word.”

The Call of the Running Tide Festival will wrap up at 5.00 pm on Sunday, 29 September.