Meet the winners of Warrnambool's 2024 Citizen of the Year Awards

Warrnambool City Council announced the winners of its Citizen of the Year Awards on January 19, 2024, ahead of a ceremony at the Lighthouse Theatre on January 23.

Musician and disability advocate Tom Richardson, who established the Find Your Voice Collective about six years ago, is Warrnambool's Citizen of the Year.

The collective started as an all-abilities choir and has grown to a place where hundreds of people express themselves creatively through music and other mediums.

What started with a single performance at the Port Fairy Folk Festival has taken on a life of its own, Mr Richardson said.

"We first threw it out into the world in late 2017, early 2018, and every single year it's grown in some kind of way," he said.

"The name Find Your Voice Collective is exactly that, because it's a community. There's a 250 piece choir but we also work with 45 different artists every week who identify with a disability and try and make the creative arts as accessible as possible."

Mr Richardson said there were some original choir members who were now playing their own solo spots at the Port Fairy Folk Festival or creating their own clothing labels.

"And that's really where the magic from the big choir is distilled all the way down to legitimate individual career pathways, that's what we're trying to nurture," he said.

He said the award was shared equally with co-founder - Kylie Thulborn - and the entire Find Your Voice family.

"Especially all of the people who are turning up every day to fill themselves up and then subsequently have the energy to be of service to somebody else," he said.

The Young Citizen of the Year is Courtney Mathew, the deputy convener of the Warrnambool Community Garden, founder of Fruit Rescue and volunteer with multiple other groups.

Ms Mathew launched Fruit Rescue in November 2023, with volunteers collecting unused fruit from people's gardens and public spaces that would otherwise go to waste.

She doesn't volunteer for recognition but to give back to the "wonderful community" she loves being part of.

"I love this beautiful place and I'm really proud to be a Warrnamboolian," she said.

Ms Mathew said volunteering could be a lot easier than you think.

"With the next generation of volunteers coming through the ranks who just can't commit to every week for a set period of time, they might be able to do things here and there," she said.

"Even if you could give one hour once, it would be really helpful to a group for them to spread the load."

The spotlight is also on Warrnambool theatre stalwart Ailiche Goddard-Clegg, who will receive the city's local achiever award.

Ms Goddard-Clegg has spent years working to grow and share theatre with her community, is a volunteer board member for Leadership Great South Coast and Beyond the Bell, as well as a former Warrnambool Adult Riding Club committee member.

She said she was honoured and humbled by the award.

"Arts are our creative expression and they're about coming together and expressing ourselves and telling great stories," she said.

"That's why theatre and the performing arts are so important for our community."

Ms Goddard-Clegg is particularly proud of the work achieved with the Warrnambool Theatre Company over the past decade which she said had brought the company back into "a really prosperous and strong position".

A dress celebrating the history of Vogue magazine and a fashionable cape celebrating Warrnambool were among the wearable art pieces at the crowned community event of the year.

The council awarded F Project's Fabric of Life Festival which saw competitors re-use and re-purpose existing items into wearable art.

The event, held in October 2023, had 45 entries.

F Project vice chair and festival team member Helen Bunyon said the group thought they could appeal to artists to create "really interesting and fun wearable" pieces.

"Ann Krause was the one who suggested it and we went with the idea. There were students from schools, people of all abilities that were able to take part in it, there were older people, it was a really inclusive community event that gave people an opportunity to work in a different medium," she said.

Mayor Ben Blain thanked the award recipients on behalf of the city for everything they do to "enrich the lives of so many people ... and the city of Warrnambool itself".

"To hear about the depth and breadth of their contributions, it's really inspirational and hopefully others in the community feel the same way," he said.

"It's through the collective efforts of people like our award winners that the type of community we all enjoy living in is created."