Beating Around the Bush | Update

For those of you who are relatively new to Inspirations or this newsletter, you may have never heard of the term Beating Around the Bush used in connection with an international needlework convention.

Back in 2018 we held the 10th Beating Around the Bush where people from the world over joined us in our hometown of Adelaide in South Australia for what had become one of the largest embroidery conventions on the planet.

The best tutors from all over the world converged with hundreds of people from our global stitching community and together, we would stitch up a storm over 10 days and nights of pure needlework bliss.

So, what ever happened to Beating Around the Bush?

Many of you have been asking that very question, so today we wanted to give you a quick update.

The success of BATB was in part due to the venue we were able to secure. Our requirements to host the event consist of over 24 classrooms, catering and dining facilities for 200+ people morning, noon and night, onsite accommodation for 120+ stitchers plus lecture theatres.

In the past we’ve been able to partner with large private schools complete with boarding accommodation to use their facilities in between school terms, however in a post covid era, despite our best endeavours, sadly this has not been possible.

Essentially, we are an event without a venue!

About now many of you might be thinking, it can’t be that hard to find another venue, and we thought the same thing! We do have to remember, however, that Adelaide is not a massive metropolis like its eastern state counterparts such as Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, and moving the event interstate or using a convention centre, would mean that all the costs would skyrocket.

We do have some other irons in the fire that we’re working on, but it’s important to remember that the majority of human resources in our small team are allocated to our core business of publishing the world’s most beautiful magazine, books and this newsletter, so when it comes to BATB things don’t move as quickly as any of us would like.

In summary, the update for today is that we would have already hosted another Beating Around the Bush by now if our venue partners hadn’t changed their hire policies, so it certainly is not for lack of want or trying.

If we remain unable to find a venue similar to that which we have used in the past, we will look at options to reimagine the event along with trying a different venue configuration.

We love that there are still so many of you that send us emphatic and passionate emails wanting to know when you can plan your next trip to BATB and we wish we had some dates for you… for now it’s a case of even more hurry up and wait we’re afraid!

The only consolation we have in the wings at present is our plan to bring in some guest designers to teach at our retail store The Bobbin Tree. The details for these classes are still being finalised, but in the meantime we’ll let you know as soon as there are any further developments about the next Beating Around the Bush.