A tremendous success was achieved with the first staging of the Kootenay Festival last July and organizers are excited about building on that success. Last year with beautiful weather more than 2,000 people turned out for the event on the grounds of the Doukhobor Discovery Centre.
A healthy seed was planted with the debut and it looks more than ready to sprout according to one of the organizers – recreation and culture programmer Audrey Maxwell Polovnikoff."We anticipate that it'll be bigger than last year," said the hard worker who is based at the Castlegar Community Complex.
"We're getting a lot of calls," Polovnikoff added, "being the second year there's a lot of word of mouth about this. People are ready to go and they're talking about it already." On Saturday, July 14 a mass of enthusiastic humanity will gather again on the grounds of the Doukhobor Discovery Centre to take part in the 2nd Annual Kootenay Festival – a day of music, dance, a regional artisan marketplace and delicious food.
As last year there is room and and a big welcome for volunteers in areas including parking, security, vendor support, children’s activities, information/merchandise, admissions and environment. Youth volunteers between the ages of 15 and 18 are encouraged to take part. Set up on Friday and clean up on Saturday night also requires a lot of volunteer effort to accomplish and organizers are hoping for additional volunteer support for these tasks.
Organizers also have a special request – more golf carts and drivers! The festival grounds are quite large and the few carts the Festival had last year made a great difference to seniors and other festival participants with limited mobility in taking part in the event.
Volunteer applications are available on the Kootenay Festival website at www.kootenayfestival.com or via email from Kathleen Hart at wynndel@telus.net. Anyone who might be able to lend a golf cart (and their driving services) should contact Festival Chair, Audrey Maxwell Polovnikoff at APolovnikoff@rdck.bc.ca. For general information about the festival, including the musical line-up, please visit www.kootenayfestival.com.
To close, for now, here's a list of the talented crew that will supply the day full of stage entertainment:
10:30 USCC Vision of Peace Youth Choir
11:00 Flying not Falling – Childrens entertainment
11:45 Classical Guitarist Angello Sammartino
12:00 Jessica Morin and performers
12:30 Pat Henman and Band
1:00 Portuguese Social Centre Assoc
1:15 Boodee and the Boogie Bandits
2:15 Heavy Shetl
3:00 Illuminadis
3:15 Razberry Rockets
4:15 Geordie Camps – Slam Poet
4:45 Wasabi Collective
6:00 Ache Brasil