News / Council
Plan to cut annual street party faces pushback
Councillors to consider proposal to make festival a biennial event
Mark Phillips
Saturday, May 9, 2026
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Brunswick’s biggest annual event, the Sydney Road Street Party, would be held only once every two years under a proposal to be considered next week by Merri-bek Council.
In what is being described as a festivals program “refresh”, council staff say continuing the yearly street party has a number of challenges and resources should instead be spent on community events in other parts of the city.
The proposal would also see the Coburg Night Market, which is held in the lead-up to Christmas each year, become a biennial event.
But the plan faces growing opposition, with at least five councillors saying they will vote against it at their monthly meeting on Wednesday. There is also criticism about a lack of consultation before the plan was included in this week’s meeting agenda.
Two petitions have been launched against the proposal.
Councillor Sue Bolton said community festivals were more important than ever to bring people together “in this day and age of Trump-style politics”.
“I also think that making the Sydney Road Festival every second year is too long for community groups to wait to have a chance to talk with others in the broader community,” she said. All four Green councillors will also seek changes to the proposal.
The Sydney Road Brunswick Association, which represents traders in the shopping precinct, will discuss how to respond to the plan at a meeting on Monday night.
SRBA manager Troy Stuchbree said axing the annual event would be sad.
“It’s an event that really kicks off the year for Sydney Road Brunswick and an event that every year business and traders look forward to not just because it attracts people to come to the area but because it’s such a celebration of the community and the different facets of it,” he said.
“It would be disappointing if it did become every two years.” 
The axing of the popular annual events in Brunswick and Coburg is proposed in a report penned by the council’s Director of Community, Eamonn Fennessy, which recommends reallocating the resources resources into a new, multi-day festival in Glenroy and Fawkner.
The Brunswick Music Festival and Carols by the Lake in Coburg would be retained as annual events.
A version of the Sydney Road Street Party has been held continuously every year since 1991, apart from its cancellation because of the Covid pandemic in 2021.
Usually held on the first Sunday in March, it has attracted up to 50,000 people to the shopping strip which is closed for the day between Brunswick Road and Victoria Street. Community groups and shop owners set up stalls and marquees and dozens of musical performances are held on free stages and in venues in the precinct.
This year’s event drew tens of thousands of visitors before rain arrived in the late afternoon.
The Coburg Night Market is a more recent event, held over three consecutive weekends at Bridges Reserve in December each year.
Among the reasons for reducing the frequency of the Sydney Road Street Party is a concern that too much of the council’s festivals budget is spent south of Bell Street.
“Currently less than 20 per cent of the festivals budget is spent outside of Brunswick and Coburg. Due to budget and staffing limitations, there is currently no scope to increase festivals programming in the north of the municipality without a redesign of the festival program in its entirety,” the council report says.
“The proposed festival program refresh seeks to redistribute some resources to the north of the municipality to enable a significant annual festival and increased opportunities for participation for artists and audiences.”
Fennessy’s report says the Brunswick and Coburg events are both also at risk of extreme weather and provide limited opportunities for artists apart from live music. Council staff are also concerned about the increased compliance costs of a large festival program shoehorned into the period between November and March.
Fennessy said it was expected there would be some community opposition to the plans but this would be mitigated by improvements to the Brunswick Music Festival and an increased festival program in the north of Merri-bek.
“The refreshed festival program will have a significant positive impact on residents in currently under serviced areas of the municipality, creating a festival centred on community participation and accessibility and driving new opportunities for social connection,” he said.
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Bolton said she would be seeking to amend the proposal at this week’s council meeting to ensure the Sydney Road Street Party can continue as an annual event.
The four Greens councillors in the Brunswick wards are also shaping up to oppose the changes and Brunswick MP Tim Read has launched an online petition to “save Sydney Road Street Party”.
Senior Greens councillor Adam Pulford said the street party was a highlight for the Brunswick community each year, providing an opportunity for community groups, artists, performers and small businesses to reach thousands of people from all over Melbourne.
“This is more important than ever at a time when cynical politicians are trying to pit different people against each other,” Pulford said.
“The Greens will not support cutting the Sydney Road Street Party back to every second year. We’ll ask council to come back with other options on how we can keep Sydney Road Street Party as one of our most important annual community events and protect our community festivals.”
Stuchbree said the Sydney Road Brunswick Association was only told about the proposal to end the annual event last Thursday, the same day the council agenda was made public.
He said the change would be a big loss for Brunswick and an SRBA committee meeting on Monday night would consider next steps.
“This is about bringing people to the area and having them discover Sydney Road … and a great opportunity for all of Brunswick to be showcased to the local community and to visitors from all around Melbourne and Victoria who can also sample the really amazing music scene we have here,” Stuchbree said.
“For business there’s always economic drivers behind everything but it’s also about being part of a celebration of community activity and it’s easily the biggest thing to happen in the precinct every year.”
Mel Yuan from Brunswick Communities for Nature said the festival was crucial for small community groups like hers to reach a large local audience.
But she said the community and trader presence at the festival had been reduced since Covid.
“This festival was a showcase of the community, by the community, for the community,” Yuan has written in a letter to councillors urging them not to allow the Sydney Road Street Party to be cut to a biennial event.
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Brunswick Communities for Nature lodged a question and statement for tonight’s council meeting and we were denied the opportunity to give our statement. This is our response as an active community group.
———
I am writing to urge you to save the annual Sydney Road Street Party.
Brunswick Communities for Nature (BC4N) is a volunteer-run community group founded in 2013. We have participated in the Sydney Road Street Party since around 2015, growing, sourcing, and distributing indigenous grasses, ground covers, and wildflowers of the Western Volcanic Plains. These plants are used in nature strips, private gardens, and public green spaces such as the Upfield Corridor, as well as in community street planting projects.
BC4N is entirely self‑sufficient. Our only support from Council is permission to use part of Holbrook Reserve as a small “seed orchard”. All proceeds from plant sales are reinvested directly into seeds, potting mix, and other propagation materials.
In 2025, we sold 9,961 plants, the vast majority being $$1 or $$2 tube stock. In 2026, we are on track to match this figure. Each year at the Sydney Road Street Party alone, we sell approximately 850 plants across more than 90 transactions. These sales are almost entirely to new customers.
While we maintain a directory of around 500 customers, the Street Party is critical for reaching a new local audience—particularly younger renters. Some attendees actively seek out indigenous plants and are delighted to find us; others are completely new to the environmental and habitat benefits of planting locally indigenous species. Without the Sydney Road Street Party, we simply cannot reach this audience. In the past we advertised via Facebook, but since the pandemic we have chosen not to use social media advertising for ethical reasons.
The Sydney Road Street Party is Brunswick’s only large, truly community-wide festival. In recent years, however, the community and trader presence has been steadily reduced. I have written to councillors previously to express serious concern that the local community has been sidelined.
Before the COVID interruption, the festival was a genuine celebration of Brunswick, and you could expect to see:
A children’s precinct at St Ambrose, including a bouncy castle
LaManna selling watermelon slices and fresh‑squeezed juice
Festival‑only dishes from local restaurants promoting their businesses
Kids’ activities run by Bunnings and Treetops Toys
Stalls from local Lions and Scouts groups
Performances and activities by local sporting clubs and dance studios (e.g. Brunswick Dragons)
A parade of performers and local groups marching along Sydney Road (2019)
Local schools, the Brunswick City Band, and community street buskers (including my son performing with his high school jazz combo)
A memorable Neapolitan musical act near Victoria Street that brought out the older Italian community
The tram pull
A rich mix of grassroots community groups including the Public Housing Tenant Association, the Brunswick History Society, the Tool Library, neighbourhood houses, craft collectives, the Bicycle Users Group, Climate Action Moreland, Toy Libraries, BC4N, Islamic Womens Association, and many more
Local shops spilling out onto the street with demonstrations and displays, including (before it closed) the belly dancing studio
And, quite simply, running into every family you knew in Brunswick
This festival was a showcase of the community, by the community, for the community.
Under the current model, where the event is organised by the Brunswick Music Festival’s outsourced organisers, the Street Party is clearly a low priority. To the music festival, Brunswick is merely a venue. As a result, the community heart of the event has suffered greatly.
Please save Brunswick’s premier community event. Give the Sydney Road Street Party back to the community it was created for.
Cheers,
Mel
on behalf of all the volunteer growers, weeders, and planters at Brunswick Communities for Nature
The festival attracts so many people and so much economic benefit flows into local businesses over those two days. A bar owner of told me he makes a quarters earnings in one day during the festival. It’s a lifeline. Surely the council is using the wrong economic modelling to work out the cost benefit here.
It’s a good idea to cut it back in my opinion. The Sydney Road Festival is so crowded and loud, you can barely access any of the stalls, and it’s not really a pleasant environment any more. It would be better if they could spread that budget over smaller festivals in multiple suburbs.
I don’t understand why the Greens and Socialist councillors are pushing to preserve the festival in Brunswick (where all the rich people live) and opposing the growth of festivals in the less affluent northern suburbs. Sometimes it feels like the Greens’ idea of leftism is just to spend government money on everything and pretend there is no such thing as a budget.