Venues welcome live music option
Wimmeravenues have rejoiced at the promise of a return to live music and are already planning their first shows following changes to COVID-19 restrictions that start today.
Live music can resume as part of outdoor hospitality for seated crowds of up to 70 people.
Horsham Sports and Community Club manager Glenn Carroll said the changes would allow his venue to restart live performances for a crowd of up to 65 people.
“We’re allowed to have a musician play outside in our marquee,” he said.
“We already have some plans around Christmas and New Year, but we’ll probably do something before then too.”
During the pandemic, Mr Carroll livestreamed performances from Wimmera musicians to the venue’s Facebook page to capture online crowds.
This will be the first time since March the venue can look at revisiting live music.
“There’s a big part of the community that want to get back to something that’s a little bit normal, so getting back into some live music would be great,” Mr Carroll said.
“Everyone who was a musician was out of a job.
“A lot of people I have spoken to are just keen to get out and do something again, dust off the cobwebs and get the instruments out and get the vocal cords going.”
Horsham Bull and Mouth owner Simon Mitchell said he was excited to
see a return of live music – a key part of his hospitality venue.
“We’ll be looking to put on some live entertainment on Sunday afternoons in the beer garden,” he said.
“We’re limited to 70, on a Sunday afternoon if you got 70, you’d be very happy.
“It will be low key, mainly acoustic and solo artists.”
Mr Mitchell said he looked forward to when he could see people on the dance floor again.
“It will be great when we can get dancing and mingling, but that will come with time and when it does,
we’ll get right into it,” he said. “Hopefully it’s before Christmas.”
Along with live music, indoor gyms and fitness spaces can open for up to 20 people, with a maximum of 10 people per space and a density of one person per eight square metres.
Indoor pools will open to 20, indoor sport will begin for those 18 and under and food courts can open.
Horsham’s Snap Fitness club manager Jacqui Monro said her gym could accommodate the maximum number of people under the new restrictions.
“We are just super excited to bring people back into the club. We will
safely be able to accommodate 20 people,” she said.
“We will be reopening as a 24-7 gym again. We will have a booking system just to ensure people can have a designated spot.”
Ms Monro said the reopening would be a major boost to people’s mental health and wellbeing.
“It’s not just for the physical side, it’s for that mental and emotional space as well,” she said.
Ms Monro said it would be up to the community to follow restrictions to ensure the gym could operate in a ‘COVID-SAFE’ way.
“It is really just up to members to use their common sense and social responsibility around working out,” she said.
“We’ll be in the club to help guide those things because it is a new learning process we have to go through.”
Meanwhile, smaller capacity clubs such as Horsham’s Planet Feel Good can reopen to 10 people.
However, owner Lisa Cosson said she would complement face-to-face gym sessions with online sessions called ‘Zoomroom’, which she started during the pandemic.
“For my club it will be fine because we don’t have big numbers anyway,” she said.
“Ten for us is a good number and our rooms are certainly big enough to do that. We will also have our ZOOMroom at the same time, so we can service double the number of people.”
Ms Cosson said an additional benefit of going online was that people across the state could get involved.
“We have a lot of members who live out of town, some from Melbourne who are in lockdown are now tuning into our online exercise room,” she said.
“We’ve certainly learnt a lot of lessons through this time and there will be a lot that stays when we get back to Covid-normal.”
Horsham Aquatic Centre is hoping to reopen its gym and indoor swimming pool by the end of this week.
The Premier’s announcement on Sunday also means school graduations can go ahead within school communities and 20 people can now gather for indoor religious celebrations with their faith leader – or 50 outdoors.