Just when you thought it couldn’t get any hotter, Briz Chilli Fest will be taking things to the next level in 2021.
The festival is moving to coincide each year with Halloween and in doing so will create one of Brisbane’s most fun family events!
Hot as Hades! Spicy and Spooky! Ghost Peppers and Ghouls – the fun of combining Halloween with Hotness is something that
Halloween Briz Chilli Fest2
Body and Soul Australia Music and Events is taking on with gusto.
Patrons will of course be encouraged to dress in Halloween costume to be in the running for prizes for different categories. Including a chilli-aspect in the costume will get extra points from judges.
Skulls, flames, grim reapers – they are all images which abundantly adorn the chilli industry marketing landscape – and now they will have found a home at Halloween Briz Chilli Fest!
“We had to move the festival from its usual June date because of Covid uncertainty, and then we decided to place the Gold Coast Cheese Chilli & Chocolate Festival in that time-frame instead, so we had to move Briz Chilli Fest,” said organiser, Scarlett Habanero.
Looking at the calendar, October seemed a good time and then we realised that Halloween was in that month. What a great way to bring families together for an even more fun event in Brisbane,” she said.
The event is currently finalising a new venue to allow for more space to do a broader range of activities for children and adults alike, so stay posted by following the Facebook page.
It may even be a two-day event, given that Halloween is on Sunday 31st October in 2021, so a super-spooky night-time event on Saturday 30th October and an event more suitable for very young children on Halloween Sunday, 31st October, is in the planning.
Be prepared for a super-fun event that will become a much-anticipated date in the Brisbane events calendar.
“We are going to have so much fun planning Halloween Briz Chilli Fest ; just bursting at the seams with ideas and excitement,” said Habanero.
It’s been a tricky year for event organisers and we at Body and Soul Music and Events are no exception.
As we are also involved in the live music industry, gigs are now seem a distant memory and, like many musicians, our incomes from music were decimated.
Briz Chilli Fest 2020 had to eventually be cancelled, despite waiting as long as possible to see how things would “pan” out with the pandemic.
Our two day Chillogan event scheduled for November at the beautiful Logan River Parklands also became a victim of Covid-restrictions and border closures.
But we are excited to bringing you a pared-down version of our planned two day extravaganza. Chillogan Lite will be held at the Beenleigh Town Square on Saturday 5th December, 2020, much to the delight of Logan residents.
The first Chillogan in 2018 was held at the square and received a great reception for a first-time event.
The square is an easy solution for smaller-scale Chillogan thanks to its great infrastructure – large stage, covered area for the Afterburn Bar, some grassed areas for people to enjoy, toilet facilities and ample power on site for our vendors who need it and want to avoid having to pay a levy for a powered site.
All in all, the site is a godsend for cash-strapped event organisers.
Event organisers motivation for creating Chillogan was to provide an opportunity for local businesses to become suppliers, to take ownership of an event which will continue to grow year by year, and to bring to the sparse event landscape in Logan, a family-friendly event that offers entertainment for all ages, based on the love of the chilli.
Chilli-heads in Logan area already champing at the bit to participate in the five chilli challenges, to stock up on some great artisan chilli products, talk to chilli-growers about how to manage their own plants and to chow down on some creative chilli food creations from our vendors.
Body and Soul Music and Events is again supporting Cystic Fibrosis Queensland with this event, hosting raffles and auctions on the day as well as donating a share of event profits.
The Viking Breed Social Motorcycle Club Brisbane Ipswich Chapter will agian be hosting the Viking for a Day Auction where patrons vie for the chance to ride pillion on the back of a range of great bikes, on festival day, en masse – what a super fun and thrilling opportunity for the closet bike enthusiasts among us.
The event’s Covid-Safe measures include:
Sani-Scouts roaming the festival offering hand sanitiser to patrons
Red Chilli Army masks available for purchase at the gates or online with tickets ($1 from each mask goes back to our Covid-devastated Balinese villagers who tailored the masks for us),
Patrons on site at any one time will be capped at 1000, with a total of 2000 tickets available for purchase.
A one-way service system at the AfterBurn Bar
Spacing between stalls to prevent crowding
We are excited to be able to bring a festival to Logan in 2020, and hope to see all the dedicated chilli-heads and their families from 2pm to 9pm on festival day.
Ms Beynon’s festivals donate 10% of nett profits to Cystic Fibrosis Queensland as well as hosting fund-raising activities during the course of the festival.
Waterfront Park Newstead is hotting up for this chilli festival!Viking Breed Social Motorcycle ClubChillogan Chilli Festival
“It’s a great day and we love getting amongst the people and showing our rides, and seeing the absolute delight on the faces of the people who win the charity auction to hop on the selected bikes and have a ride with all of us mob,” said Mark Pritchard, spokesperson for the club.
“I’m so lucky to have the support of the boys from Viking Breed. They are well-known for their charitable pursuits and when I approached them through a friend, they were right there with me for my very first festival in 2018 at the Bulimba Golf Club,” said Ms Beynon
Earlier this month, Ms Beynon had to take the touch decision to cancel Briz Chilli Fest and Chillogan Festival for 2020 due to Covid-19 making it impossible to predict a successful outcome.
“I really feel for charities at the moment with all their annual fund-raisers not going ahead, and things just being so hard for them to get much-needed funds to continue their valuable work,” she said.
I am really hoping that 2021 will be a better, more predictable year for festival organisers so that I can continue to support Cystic Fibrosis Queensland.
As an asthmatic, the cause touched me because I can imagine what it’s like to suffer every day of one’s life with a disease as debilitating and insidious as Cystic Fibrosis. When I heard some of the speakers at one of their charity balls a few years ago, it spurred me on to try and help where I could.
I feel so sad that I am not able to donate much this year, but just last week I held a very small Ekka at Home event at my house and some neighbours and friends popped by and ate home-cooked Dagwood Dogs, Strawberry Sundaes, played some fun home-spun games in Side-show Alley, drank some Ekkapolitan cocktails at my bar – all via donation. We raised $250.00. Not a lot, but it’s something. And if more people could do small things, it would all add up to enough to help fill the void in fund-raising that is currently being experienced by charities like Cystic Fibrosis Queensland.
I am hopeful that my last festival Gold Coast Cheese Chilli and Chocolate Festival will go ahead in early December 2020, but even if it too has to be cancelled, I will have laid the foundation for a fabulous event in 2021.
It was very sad to read that the Beenleigh Show had been cancelled in 2020. We all know how much people look forward to their regional agricultural show.
But there’s still Chillogan – Logan’s own chilli festival – to look forward to this November 14 and 15, 2020.
Yes, we’re bucking the trend and GROWING, because we believe everyone wants to celebrate what’s still worth celebrating. Freedom, space to move, families and fun.
Yes, we have a Covid-Safe plan in line with State Government guidelines for events between 500-10000 patrons!
The Logan River Parklands at Beenleigh is our venue for 2020, and we love this place so much, we hope we have found the permanent home for Chillogan.
Lots of room for the kids to run around, different areas to enjoy a variety of activities and our “Sani-Elves” will be roaming the festival offering sani-gel to help keep your hands nice and clean.
Prices:
Adults $10 Concessions $8 Kids Free (14 and under). Online ticket purchasing reduces contact points on the day and means you swish past the gates with ease. No cash will be accepted at the gate.
Visit the Facebook event page and stay in the loop as we plan in the months ahead.
Chillogan chilli eating challenges
If competing in chilli challenges is your thing, then head on over to our Challenge page, or straight to the ticketing site to get one of the few challenge spots! Due to social-distancing requirements, we now have only 5 places per challenge instead of 10.
Who doesn’t love a cute mascot? And they don’t come much cuter than ChiChi our golden mouse. He’s a serious foodie as you can see. Spicy, creamy or chocolatey – he’s into it.
And that’s just what our patrons can expect on Saturday 5th December 2020 at our soon-to-be-announced venue at Nerang. Rest assured it’s a destination venue with grass, giant trees, lots of room for the kids to run around and just the perfect location for this new festival.
We are looking for vendors to populate Hellfire Alley, the Cheese and Chocolate Gallery, and some market stalls just for people to have a bit of shopping time.
Like many musicians and artists, my livelihood was annihilated once venues were closed. About $7000 worth of bookings just gone up in smoke. And we all know how hard it is to secure bookings in the first place – just sheer determination, terrier-like commitment to following-up inquiries, negotiating fees etc. So, it’s just heartbreaking to have this happen to an already struggling industry and its cohort of gig-hungry musicians in a venue-starved environment
So few good gigs, so few well-paying gigs, so many great musicians not playing as much as they should be, and then there’s the young musicians just struggling to make a start, with stars in their eyes, and nobody willing to pay them more than a bowl of nachos in some cases.
We are an industry already on the brink of extinction. So will post-COVID19 be better, or worse? Will it be a nice ride, or a heavy incline back up to where we were before.
The website I Lost My Gig has collated the massive cost of lost gigs during COVID19 – it’s already gone past a staggering $340 million!
i believe that unscrupulous venues will use COVID19 as an excuse to pay musicians even less than the paltry fees they were already earning. ‘We lost so much money, we can’t afford to pay musicians much until we get back on our feet,” that’s the kind of discussion I fear may happen once venues open up again.
Reputable, large and gambling-based venues will hopefully maintain their high standards when it comes to paying musicians – venues like Twin Towns Resorts, Kedron-Wavell Services Club and the likes. Great clubs, great supporters of live music and giving back to the community. Great clubs where Body and Soul Duo, Trio and Missy Vader and the Dark Force have enjoyed being on stage, treated professionally and paid properly.
Queensland’s premier duo specialising In functions and anything else that needs great music!
Brisbane-based 4 piece band kicking arse with 70s and 80s classic rock.
It’s the smaller, less financial and/or less reputable and more exploitative venues that I worry about. The venues that already host nights where 5 bands play for $5 entry and young, vulnerable and naive musicians get paid in drinks and, maybe, the said bowl of nachos. Will it devolve to “pay to play”, openly and without any pretence of wages of any kind?
We all know that these venues will need live music to bring back the “zing” after the desolation we have encountered with lockdown. But just how much will they be prepared to pay for that “zing”. Will they have any budget for the zing? Or will the musicians again become the whipping-boy/girl for an ailing hospitality industry?
Am I being too hopeful to believe that the arts will be more appreciated after the extended closure of venues; will people more keenly appreciate music and what it brought to their lives, or will venues continue with the solo artist playing in the back corner of the back bar, being dwarfed by screens and relegated to “background noise” in a crowded bar?
As someone who cut their musical teeth in a 7 piece band in the 80s, I’d dearly like to see that same opportunity extended to the young, emerging artists and bands today. And that they be paid! Can we switch off the big screens and focus on the artists? Can we pay them a decent hourly rate and appreciate how much joy they (usually) bring to an audience?
My hope and prayer for our troubled industry is that each musician stand their ground and refuse to swallow the “we can’t afford to pay you” line if it comes their way. For in doing so, we stand together and can hopefully improve the music industry from the struggling thing that it has been, to a new, freshly-blossomed industry that has learned to appreciate its water before the well runs dry.
I wish all venues the best of luck in picking up the pieces after the enforced closures, and that they can grow from the experience.
I wish all musicians good luck in re-establishing themselves in the industry, and in holding their ground when it comes to pay and conditions.
Now is a time for a fresh start. Let’s not waste it.
Who said the end of the year was about being worn out and jaded after slogging it out for the boss?
On Saturday 30th November, popular club musicians Body and Soul Trio featuring Sandra Beynon (vocals) Sean Mullen (guitar) and Phil J (percussion) will be pumping out the dance grooves in the Bravo Bar once again. This band has the best cross-genre and intergenerational repertoire of any band in SEQ, and you won’t be disappointed by what you hear.
Come on! Dust off your glad rags and welcome in the silly season at Diggers.
