The History of Lakeside Carols

This event has blossomed as a celebration of our wonderful community and is only made possible because a dedicated team of passionate local volunteers have brought it to life.

Lakeside Carols is the the brainchild of two local mums, Liv Downing and Jo Bertrand. 

Sadly, Liv’s mum, Jenny Downing passed away a few days before Christmas in 2014. Jenny loved Christmas and everything that went along with it - the giving, the gratitude (her favourite saying was “how lucky are we?!"), the love and the connection. As it became more obvious she would not make it to December 25th, Liv organised carol singers to come and sing by her bedside. Sadly, Jenny passed away on the 22nd of December, the morning the choir was supposed to come. A few weeks after her passing and while walking through a local park, Liv had the vision of bringing Christmas carols to her local community in memory of her beautiful mum. A year later, she shared this dream with Jo and together, they set about making it happen.

Liv and Jo sought a local charity partner that was aligned with their values of celebrating women and mothers, and St Kilda Mums was an obvious choice.

In 2018, they recruited a team of qualified and dedicated women and worked tirelessly generating funds via a Pozible campaign where they raised $20K to provide the seed funding for the event. They were thrilled to discover other locals wanted a Christmas event just as much as they did! 

Then, in December 2018 the very first Lakeside Carols happened and it was a smash. Around 4000 people attended and significant funds and brand awareness were raised for St Kilda Mums. We continue to work with local charities. 
 

Liv knows that her mum would have loved Lakeside Carols and would have been smiling down on the night and saying “how lucky are we?!”. 

We ARE super lucky. Lucky to be part of this amazing community and lucky to have each other.

We can’t wait to share Lakeside Carols with you in 2023.