A market which celebrates the talented artisans of East Otago is approaching its two-year anniversary.<\/p>\n
The Waikouaiti Artisan Markets (also known as the Otago Artisan Market), held at the East Otago Events Centre, were founded by Lisa Willmott, who moved to Waikouaiti from Canberra, Australia.<\/p>\n
The first market was held on May 9, 2024.<\/p>\n
Miss Willmott said she began the event after noticing there were no markets in the area.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018I couldn\u2019t understand why there wasn\u2019t a market when there are so many talented people here, so I put out a post on the local Facebook pages to see what the community thought and they were very interested to have a market,\u2019\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n
While the original markets were an \u2018\u2018everything\u2019\u2019 market, Miss Willmott said the feedback from stallholders and the public was they wanted \u2018\u2018artisan-only\u2019\u2019 markets.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018There are people that make bags and candles. Last month, we had somebody that was customising putting photos on to magnets.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018There\u2019s jewellery and there are two ladies, one that makes blankets and the other makes handmade jackets for kids, so we have a whole range of things,\u2019\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n
Miss Willmott\u2019s mother, Julie Willmott, also runs a canteen at the market selling soft drinks, lollies, chips, chocolates and toasted sandwiches.<\/p>\n
The markets are generally held on the first Sunday of the month although due to Easter there was no market in April.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018People seem to really like it,\u2019\u2019 Miss Willmott said.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018Crowds were down the first couple of months this year, which I found was the same last year as well post-Christmas, and especially with everything now that is going on in the world, it makes it a bit harder, but we still have the crowd and the stallholders all left the last market in March saying they had a good day and made good sales, so that\u2019s really good, that\u2019s what makes me happy,\u2019\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n
The next Waikouaiti Artisan Markets is on May 3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A market which celebrates the talented artisans of East Otago is approaching its two-year anniversary. The Waikouaiti Artisan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375701,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-375700","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}