The inaugural Dubbo Women’s Festival — International Women’s Day, Friday 8 March 2024, Western Plains Cultural Centre. Free, all day, built around the seasons of a woman’s life.

In her own words

Centric Movement Clinic was founded in 2018 by exercise physiologist and Pilates instructor Rose Prout. Centric is located in Riverview Business Park, Dubbo, and boasts a beautiful outlook of greenery. While the business is Rose’s big dream, it has taken a great team to make it a reality. Together as a team, Centric is achieving extraordinary things. Each team member brings their unique skills and experience. From receptionists to Pilates instructors, they are all hand-picked and working towards the common goal of regular movement for everyone.

Movement as celebration, not punishment

Despite knowing exercise is good for us, half of all Aussie adults aren’t moving enough. A lot of the dialogue around exercise turns it into a chore or punishment, creating a negative relationship between our minds and movement. It’s not about weight loss. It’s not a punishment. Exercise is a celebration of your body. We’re designed to move! We want to highlight some of the incredible physical, mental and social benefits of exercise.

Rose Prout, Centric Movement

That paragraph is a small act of rebellion. Almost every message a woman receives about exercise is transactional — earn the food, undo the weekend, get the body back. Rose runs a clinic on the opposite premise, and staffs it accordingly: hand-picked, from the front desk to the reformer, around one goal that has nothing to do with a number.

The first believer

Before the first Dubbo Women’s Festival had any money behind it, it had two sponsors: Rose and Charnie Tuckey. They backed a one-day festival that had never happened, run by a team who had never run one.

What that first sponsorship built was the Moment Lounge — the quiet room upstairs with the plants and the meditation films, for women who spend their entire lives holding space for everyone else and rarely get any held for them. It has been part of the festival ever since.

Read the full story of the first believers →

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The day around it

Free admission. Childcare on site, so women could sit through a full session. Dedicated spaces for mothers and children. Free lunch. Transport arranged for groups who otherwise couldn’t get there. A separate early event for teachers and students. Two panels — the morning one on menstruation, contraception, fertility and the transition to motherhood; the afternoon one on perimenopause and menopause.

Women had a cervical screening on the day. Women made breast screening appointments they’d been putting off. That is what happens when you put the services and the women in the same room and remove every excuse not to turn up.

The event team was Sharon Quill, Joanne Phillips and Lorna Brennan, working with some forty local partners.

How one day became a week →  |  The festival programme →  |  First Believers →