Lunch options at Festival of Open Minds. Feed your mind and body!

Audience feedback from the Festival of Open Minds last year revolved around food. “You have fed my mind but what about my tummy?” was the sentiment expressed by many of the 350 people who attended.

Bega was unprepared for that many people at lunchtime. Not this year! Side by side with building a fantastic program of speakers, we have been working on some easy quick lunch options for festival patrons.

Your ticket to the festival includes the Bega Civic Centre’s increasingly famous morning and afternoon tea, this year you can also add a lunch hamper to your day.

Prepared in the Civic Centre kitchen, your hamper includes a tasty filled baguette, including vegetarian and gluten-free options, plus fruit, a sweet treat and some award-winning cheese from Tilba Real Dairy.

You can order and pay for your lunch hamper now via the Festival of Open Minds website. Lunch is an extra $18 on top of your ticket. A limited number of hampers will also be for sale on the day.

We also want the Festival of Open Minds to be cash injection into the broader local economy, especially coming out of the long cold winter, with that in mind we’ve been working with an number of local food businesses.

The Faraway Farm Food Truck will be at the festival offering their own healthy Kombucha on tap plus Nourish Bowls, Pulled Pork Tortillas and their raw sweet treats – nothing over $15.

There will also be a coffee van on site all day, complimenting and spreading the coffee load with surrounding cafes.

A short stroll from the Civic Centre is Issi and Co who are offering a quick and delicious selection of wraps, salads, and soup for festival-goers.

And straight across the park, The Nook will be open serving their famous toasted sandwiches.

The other option is to bring your own lunch, something many instinctively did last year. It’s cheap and tailored to your taste buds – and you can make the most of a springtime Littleton Gardens across the road.

Volunteer gardener Geoffrey Grigg has promised dry, luscious grass for a picnic lunch, whether you bring your own or order a lunch hamper from the Civic Centre.

Outside chairs and tables will also be available.

Around the edges, you will also notice the work of our regional food partners – Tilba Real Dairy, Eden Preserves, Honorbread, Verona Olive Grove, and the Figtree Food Company.

And as a special treat during the lunch break, the award-winning North of Eden Gin will have their stunning copper still in action and will be serving G&T with an Open Minds twist.

The Festival of Open Minds – feeding your brain and belly in 2019!

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Running with the theme ‘People with Oomph’ on Saturday’s program includes:

• Tim Costello, Chief Advocate, World Vision;
• Nas Campanella, blind Triple J newsreader;
• Pastor Christie Buckingham, spiritual counselor to executed Bali 9 drug smuggler Myuran Sukumaran;
• Aly Khalifa, entrepreneur focused on harvesting plastic waste from our oceans;
• Emma Booth, para-equestrian competitor, represented Australia at the 2016 Rio Paralympics;
• Alasdair Tremblay-Birchall, comedian, joke writer, grew up in Tathra;
• Sassi Nuyum, aka Meaghan Holt, rising Aboriginal writer, performer;
• Corrine Gibbons, songstress and choir director;
• Jonathan Kenna, Australia’s Ambassador to Sweden;
• Captain Phil Holliday, Sydney, Port Kembla and Eden Harbour Master;
• Damon Davis, long singer-songwriter and the original man of oopmh;
• A local panel of leaders including Erica Dibden – Tilba Milk, Louise Brand – road safety campaigner, Kate Toyer – Moruya vet and transgender advocate, Warren Foster Jr – Aboriginal artist and leader, Darren Jones – Band Together, and Hannah Doole – climate change activist.

Thank you to our Festival partners –