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Vibrant festivals, vibrant communities

Local festivals share about $150,000 in Celebrate Ontario 2017 funding

Arts and culture festivals have community building, economy boosting, and tourist attracting powers. The Government of Ontario recognizes that and has recently rewarded 304 of those festivals in the province with about $19 million in funding.

On Friday, Guelph MPP and President of the Treasury Board Liz Sandals had an office full of representatives from three local festivals. Together, the Hillside Festival, Guelph Jazz Festival, and Guelph and District Multicultural Festival, received nearly $150,000 from the province’s Celebrate Ontario 2017 program.

The program is geared to showcasing Ontario during this, its 150th anniversary.

“Festivals are obviously important to the community,” Sandals told the guests at her constituency office on Woolwich Street. “They have an economic value, but also in attracting tourism.”

The Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport grants assist festivals to enhance their offerings for the benefit of the entire community, she indicated.

This year, the government placed an added emphasis on supporting festivals in northern and rural Ontario, seeing a need to ensure that funding is more evenly distributed across the entire province, Sandals added.  

Hillside Festival will get just over $76,600, while the Guelph Jazz Festival will benefit from Celebrate Ontario in the amount of $50,450. The Multicultural Festival gets just under $22,700.

Julie Hastings, director of operations for the jazz festival, said the grant will help attract a strong lineup of headliners for the September festival, and ensure they have the infrastructure they need to be at their musical best.  

Marie Zimmerman, executive director of Hillside, said the festival has noticed it is attracting a number of attendees each year from Quebec. This year there is a plan to attract more francophone music lovers both from Quebec and northern Ontario.

Those plans include having more French-language artists on the roster for this year’s edition. The festival has a partnership with Pop Montreal to help make that happen.   

Delfino Callegari, president of the Multicultural Festival, said the event organizers are working to enhance attendance this year. The provincial money, he said, is a big help in that effort.


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Rob O'Flanagan

About the Author: Rob O'Flanagan

Rob O’Flanagan has been a newspaper reporter, photojournalist and columnist for over twenty years. He has won numerous Ontario Newspaper Awards and a National Newspaper Award.
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