Alice Springs Beanie Festival


The Alice Springs Beanie Festival is an annual, community based, four-day festival celebrating beanies in all their forms.
The festival is held in June each year at the Araluen Cultural Precinct in Alice Springs.

Overview

Parts of the festival include:
The Beanie Festival attracts thousands of tourists to Alice Springs each year.

History

The Beanie Festival was started in 1997, on a much smaller scale, with a 'beanie party' designed to create a unique social-enterprise and it was the idea of Adi Dunlop. The festival was inspired by the cold desert winters and existing popularity of beanies with Central Australian Aboriginal people who were already creating colourful and individual hand made creations. Beanies were often decorated with seeds, various fibres and other embellishments.
Beanies were also picked as a perfect social-enterprise as they are ideal for the tourist market, being light and inexpensive.