ABOUT - Flinders Fringe

About Flinders Fringe Festival Incorporated

The Flinders Fringe Festival in 2024 was a howling success!

Supporting the arts and our community is at the heart of this festival. And we’re proud to have paid or supported over 70 talented artists and performers who brought their creativity to life on stage, in the street, on fences and buildings. We sold a 2500 tickets to more than 37 amazing events happening at 16 different venues and locations.

Five new works were created through the MP Shire Performing Arts Development Grant Program. This program is dedicated to nurturing and empowering emerging artists. None of this would have been possible without the generous support of our major sponsor, the Mornington Peninsula Shire.

We are also forever grateful for the generosity of our Festival Partners, Festival Supporters, Community Partners, Festival Patrons and the Friends of Flinders Fringe. We could not have scaled up our program or offered so many free events without them.

Flinders Fringe 2025 will also utilise local venues, involve local businesses and community groups and will boost the local economy and community wellbeing. Them festival program will include a new line up of performers, artists and entertainers to deliver cabaret, jazz, singalongs, exhibitions, literary lunches, First Nations workshops, sculpture, nature walks, ocean dancing, a festival picnic with a community sing-a-long and much more.

Flinders Fringe Festival Inc. is a not-for-profit enterprise overseen by the Flinders Fringe Coordination Committee established in July 2022.

Committee membership: Members must live, work, study or have connections to the Mornington Peninsula.

Melissa Jackson, Artistic Director

Melissa Jackson brings 30 years of creative output and collaboration to her role as the inaugural Artistic Director of the Flinders Fringe Festival. A highly motivated and exceptionally creative individual with an innate passion for both visual and performing arts, Jackson’s rich professional career has encompassed many facets – as textile artist, knitwear designer, and opera singer. Today, however, she is renowned for her sculptural millinery creations, her prowess in fashion education, her theatrical twist, sense of fun and generous spirit!

Stemming from a family of creative talent, Jackson has always been an imaginative individual. As Artistic Director she brings a wealth of arts and theatre knowledge gleaned from her own experience as a performer and as eclectic consumer of art, craft and textiles during her extensive travels in Europe and the United Kingdom.

With a solid arts educational backing of 3 bachelor degrees – Textile Design (RMIT), Music (Melbourne University), Fashion Design with Knitwear (Hons) (Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design) – and a lifetime’s enjoyment of ballet, opera, theatre and visual arts, Jackson plans to establish the Flinders Fringe Festival as a significant thread in the rich tapestry of local arts festivals dotted throughout Victoria.

Jackson is inspired by the resilience of the diverse creative community on the Mornington Peninsula and has set a primary aim for the festival “to is seek out and encourage the performance of original works across a variety of genres by emerging and established local talent in the area”. With the assistance of digital technology the new works in the region will be shared locally and globally beyond the live performances of the festival.

Jackson’s family connections to the Peninsula span multiple generations, and it is here where she feels most at home. Memorable times were spent at the family’s Barkers Road house at Main Ridge before a move to Shoreham in the mid 1970’s, where her father (renowned architect Daryl Jackson) designed and built their much loved ‘tree house’.

Community participation has always been part of Jackson’s arts practice from early involvement with the Red Hill Market and Main Ridge Pony Club, and later not-for-profit charities including Private Men’s Business, Women of the Alfred, Essendon Women’s Network and the annual Essendon Football Club fashion parade fundraiser. Jackson is also a founding member of FASHLAB – an association of like-minded, independent, fashion industry professionals who came together in lockdown to work towards a stronger future for their industry.

Photograph: Noa Smith Fletcher

melissajacksonmillinery