6 minute read
Squamish’s Wind Festival keeps going with gusto
PAT JOHNSON
PHOTO BY JODIJA COBSON GETTYIMAGES.CA
A global pandemic upended everything. But a local arts festival took the opportunity to go with the flow and reinvent itself for unprecedented times. This year, Squamish Wind Festival is taking what they learned last year and adapting again for a summer event that, like last year’s, demands flexibility and innovation.
Squamish Wind Festival is a major community arts event produced by the Squamish Arts Council, intended to cultivate community spirit and accessibility to everyone.
Amy Liebenberg, the arts council’s executive director, said planning for the annual July event usually begins in earnest around February and March — the precise time last year that the world was coming to terms with the magnitude of COVID-19.
“We made the decision to go ahead with the festival and everything else would sort of have to fall in line and we would have to figure out how to do that,” she said. “We realized that there was going to be a lot of personal and community challenges, mentally, emotionally, financially. We started receiving government grants for the Wind Festival, and we realized that we had an opportunity to utilize the money to fund our local creative industry, if only we could figure out how.”
They did.
A “hybrid” festival was created – one where virtual events occurred online while micro-events took place around town so that artists could perform, audiences could enjoy and everyone could remain physically distanced.
For one thing, the usual three-day festival was stretched into a month of activities. By spreading events out, they could allow large numbers of people to participate, but in smaller groups. While other British Columbians were banging pots and pans at 7 p.m. to thank frontline workers, Squamish musicians were doing short, “pop-up” concerts around town for small, appreciative audiences. They called this “Amped in your Neighbourhood,” a pandemic version of the festival’s Amped in the Park program, where young, emerging artists perform concerts in Junction Park.
Other in-person events proceeded, such as drive-in movies and a Squamish language learning course, as well as two
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SMALL EVENTS WENT OFF WITHOUT A HITCH AT WINDFEST 2020 // PHOTO COURTESY SQUAMISH WIND FESTIVAL
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projects that involved both community engagement and lasting legacies for the community.
“We did some live mural painting, which was super cool. That way there would be a long-lasting legacy of the 2020 Wind Festival,” she said. A “Welcome to Squamish” mural, designed to integrate First Nations representation, was created, and a second “street mural” in Brackendale, allowed the public to watch the artwork proceed while, ultimately, leaving a lasting reminder of this unforgettable year.
Purely online programs included a virtual marketplace and some artists delivered workshops. Candace Campo, owner of Talaysay Tours, led a virtual forest walk through an Indigenous lens.
One example of a hybrid live/virtual event was a fundraising concert at the top of the gondola.
“We raised over $10,000 for the food bank and Helping Hands,” said Liebenberg. Live tickets were auctioned off, attendees adhered to protocols the festival developed with Vancouver Coastal Health, and the whole thing was livestreamed.
Throughout the process, she said, the approach was to strengthen a mutually supportive artistic community.
“Let’s all lean on each other,” she said. “Let’s have conversations about who is doing what, who needs what and let’s turn our festival into a major opportunity to collaborate.”
Organizers checked in with a vast array of people about how they could be supported.
“We did co-fundraisers with a lot of different groups and so, in many ways, we strengthened our community ties through the pandemic.”
Among the silver linings was the opportunity to reimagine the entire concept of the festival.
“I think we have a bigger idea now of what a festival could look like. A festival doesn’t necessarily mean thousands of people crammed into one small space,” said Liebenberg. “The festival has been totally reimagined now.”
An event that had been largely limited to locals, maybe some visitors from Vancouver and a some scattered tourists took on a global reach. People from 10 countries participated.
“The fact that we’re an international festival really, I think, put Squamish on the map in a bit of a different way, which was really cool,” she said.
While they have that experience under their belt, the team is still being flexible on how this year’s iteration will unfold. The plan for 2021 is to meet in the middle and have a festival that is longer than the traditional three days, but not a full month.
“We are going to do a hybrid of our hybrid,” Liebenberg said. “We’re not exactly sure what it’s going to look like yet but were thinking of a week’s worth of activities.”
Find out more at squamishwindfestival.com.
Located on the Sea-to-Sky Highway at the entrance to Garibaldi Highlands Located on the Sea-to-Sky Highway at the entrance to Garibaldi Highlands Located on the Sea-to-Sky Highway at the entrance to Garibaldi Highlands
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