The Castlemaine State Festival has ended for another year, but not before celebrating the closing day with over 3,000 people gathering in the Castlemaine Botanical Gardens to share a packed program of music, outdoor theatre and the region’s infamous artist and farmers markets.

Reflecting on the 10 days of the festival, Martin Paten, Festival Director said, “I wanted to provide the broadest audiences with the widest spectrum of artistic and cultural experiences. For this festival is was important to give audiences choice and a local voice, and the balance ended up being right given the huge response to the events. This inclusive approach confirmed that this festival is highly valued and it is inspiring to think about its future.”

The numbers are indeed encouraging with over 48,000 attendances across all Festival events. Over 30,000 people attended the Visual Art Biennial, wandering through the Market Building, the Continuing Ed building and many other sites across the town and surrounds. Over 8,000 people took part in the free entertainment on offer across the Festival and 4,000 children and young people attended workshops and performances. Of the 46 ticketed events, 17 sold out in advance and many others were near capacity. Overall, 75% of tickets were sold, with nearly half sold before the festival started. Sold out shows included Meow Meow's Beyond Glamour, 2 performances of Sue Ingleton's First Step on a Tram is Hell, Fiona Scott Norman's Needle and the Damage Done, Dan Sultan, LABJACD, Turning Sudanese, Kavisha Mazzella and Irine Vella's Mediterraneo, Punctum's Dinner in a Dry Dam, Italian pianist Roberto Cominati's salon performance, and many children’s and youth events, including 23 of the 27 children’s weekend workshops.

The three major Visual Arts Biennial awards announced during the Festival were bestowed on the following exceptionally talented recipients:

The Dominique Segan Castlemaine Visual Arts Biennial Award - Noah Grosz, Blockie, 2009
Castlemaine Market Building, 44 Mostyn St, Castlemaine
Noah's Blockie is a reproduction of a 1934 Ford Coupe, inspired by Castlemaine's hot rodding car culture. Blockie was made over a period of 4 months with Phragmites Australis, a locally sourced reed that was once used by the indigenous community for aesthetic and practical purposes. Blockie was selected on the criteria of recognising excellence on the theme of the Visual Arts Biennial, the Art of Making: invention and artisanship. It was selected by the esteemed curators of the Visual Arts Biennial, Dr Chris McAuliffe, the Director of the Ian Potter Museum of Modern Art; Kevin Murray, the former Director of Craft Victoria and an Independent Curator and Project Manager; and Julie Millowick, a respected Photographer, Curator and Castlemaine State Festival Board member and initiator of the Julie Millowick Photographic Prize for under 25s. The Castlemaine State Festival's founding patron Berek Segan AM OBE and Marysia Segan are very proud to see $5,000 dedicated to the newly created Dominique Segan Castlemaine Visual Arts Biennial Award.

The Rusden House Acquisitive Award - Kynan Sutherland, Red Knob Gold Mine, 2008
Castlemaine and District Continuing Education, 30 Templeton St, Castlemaine
Kynan's pencil drawing reflects the landscape of Central Victoria, with its rich heritage of granite and gold mining, providing a unique landscape to inspire his delicate light-filled work. Kynan has invented his own method of surface preparation which creates a textured surface to draw on by coating and sanding canvas, until a plaster-like surface remains on which to draw. In Red Knob Gold Mine, Kynan has drawn a series of fine pencil markings of sticks that create an overall sense of a complex landscape. The Rusden House has awarded Kynan their $2000 Acquisitive Award. The prize-winning work will be housed in the Monash University Collection and will be placed in the Clayton Campus.

The Melbourne Art Rooms (MARS) Exhibition Award - James Kenyon, Extremely quiet and incredibly far away, 2009
Castlemaine and District Continuing Education, 30 Templeton St, Castlemaine
Extremely quiet and incredibly far away is taken from James' current project, The Lost City of Adelaide, exploring the proposition that there was once a wonderful and vast utopian civilisation called 'Adelaide' that happened to exist, coincidently, a thousand years ago on the exact same site as the present Adelaide. James plays the archaeologist/historian and has dedicated himself to recovering and preserving artefacts from the lost city of Adelaide. Melbourne Art Rooms (MARS) in Port Melbourne has awarded James the opportunity to exhibit at MARS in 2009.

The Julie Millowick Castlemaine State Festival Young Photographers Prize competition invited all young people under 25 to submit their photographs of any aspect of their experience of the Festival, be that of a performer or a performance, an audience, exhibitions, workshops, your friends,  or the town of Castlemaine.