Katherine's Citizen of the Year nominees have been revealed in a celebration of community leaders in the town.
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The winners for Community Event of the Year, Young Citizen of the Year, Senior Citizen of the Year and Citizen of the Year will be announced at a free event held at the Godinymayin Yijard Rivers Arts and Culture Centre tomorrow.
The awards, set to start at 9am, are part of the Katherine Town Council's Australia Day Events.
Rod and Rifle camping and fishing store owner, Trent de With said he was honoured to be named alongside other community projects and leaders in Katherine, which he thinks are just as deserving.
"Obviously it's an honour the be nominated, definitely don't feel like I deserve to be nominated," he said.
Mr de With described his nomination as a surprise, claiming he wasn't sure what earned him the nod but feels it was due to his work with youth diversion programs, including group fishing trips.
Katherine Regional Arts' 2020 Junk Arts Festival is up for Community Event of the Year, now the event has become a fixture in town attracting more than 1000 people annually.
KRA executive officer Jacinta Mooney said the event is about creativity and education on recycling and environmentally friendly lifestyles.
"We're delighted... that the Junk Festival that we host [has been nominated]," she said.
"It's a festival that promotes sustainability, it's about getting people to consider the planet and how much they consume.
"People in very creative and imaginative ways use stuff to make these junk sculptures."
Ms Mooney said 1200 people attended the festival last year to marvel at 90 locally made sculptures, which are often inspired by current events.
"It can be anything, it's usually topical... fracking a couple of years ago... PFAS at the time there was lots of sculptures about that," she said.
"It's a good platform for social commentary, last year it was Covid."
However, Ms Mooney said KRA will not be attending the awards ceremony on January 26 to reflect the centre's stance on celebrating Australia Day on the current date.
"KRA thinks it's very important that community events are being recognised... however we will not be attending, we do not really approve of having Australia Day on the 26th of January," she said.
"A lot of our clients and the KRA community is made up of Indigenous people... it's not really a day to be celebrated and we support an alternative date."
Katherine Isolated Children Service is also a nominee in the Community Event category for its Literacy Festival, held last year.
KICS coordinator Amanda Tootell said she was happy to see a large part of the community get involved.
"It was a fantastic event... it really had the community involved in the organisation as well as the attendance," she said.
"We had 196 children and 109 adults... and it was one of the first public events people were allowed to attend with COVID-19 precautions in place."
Ms Tootell said the festival was about promoting early literacy and local Indigenous authors.
"In each marquee we had activities for children and families, one of those marquees was the reading tent where we launched three books and had five book readings by local authors," she said.
The full list of nominees include:
Community Event of the Year 2021
- Darwin Pride Roadshow Katherine
- Katherine & District Show Society
- Katherine Regional Arts - Junk Arts Festival
- KICS Literacy Festival
Senior Citizen of the Year 2021
- Bev Patterson
- Colleen Wakefield
- Donald Bruce Higgins
- Valerie Smith
Citizen of the Year 2021
- Annette Schefe
- David Reed
- Lauren Chapman
- Trent De With
Young Citizen of the Year 2021
- Leroy Gazey
- Nathaniel MacKinnon
- Skye Smallmon
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