5Qs - All in the Families

Tired of paying big bucks to entertain your kids? Check out the inaugural Festival of Families at James Bay’s South Park School this Saturday, which promises one of the more reasonable events in recent memory. A fundraiser to build a new playground, once you pay the admission fee you’ll be surprised how little everything else costs—food prices range from $1 to $5, raffle tickets and other activities are only a buck and there are 18 musical acts playing on two stages, including the all-B.C. likes of Rick Scott and Shari Ulrich (pictured above), Anne Schaefer, Valdy, the Ecclestons and more. We asked festival producer and South Park parent Colleen Corley to spell it all out for us.

Monday Magazine: What’s the motivator for the event?

Colleen Corley: We need $120,000 to build a playground and they’ve been trying to figure out how to raise that for about nine years now; something has to change, there has to be a way to do this. I don’t think we’ll make the money in one year; it’ll probably take two or three years. I mean, if we wanted to make this an expensive festival that wasn’t affordable, we could do it in a year—but that’s not the concept.

MM: Doesn’t the government fund playgrounds?

CC: A lot of that comes from gaming funds and lottery money, which our school has a policy against and won’t accept. We are affiliated with BC 150 and are having a big birthday cake, but we didn’t even apply for the $10,000 grant for the festival—because it’s sourced by gaming funds. When it comes down to it, you cannot imagine how many things in our society are sourced by gaming money. But instead of fighting something, it’s better to just solve the problem. The kids need a playground, so we came up with a way to make it happen.

MM: Considering the average cost of festivals, your prices seem pretty reasonable.

CC: It’s cheaper than taking your family to a movie. You can bring your own food for all I care; we have free water on site, so bring your water bottle and fill it up all day long. I am really tired of not being able to go to a good, high-quality festival and just hang out and experience it all. When it’s really expensive to do something, it’s exclusive—and I don’t believe in exclusivity. I looked at the lack of success of festivals in this town and tried to figure out why that was, so what we’ve got here is a phenomenal venue with two stages, a reasonably priced food court and low admission prices. We also have a community corner with 20 non-profit groups coming, all of which are only allowed on-site if they do a free activity with the kids.

MM: Why now instead of during the summer?

CC: It’s a good way to start the year. I see so much fundraising happening in the school and I just wanted to spend the year playing and not raising money. And it’s the perfect weekend—the kids have started school, everyone’s adjusting, so let’s all get together and celebrate being families.

MM: Rain aside, does success seem certain?

CC: I can’t get over the response so far—at this point, I haven’t talked to anybody who hasn’t heard of it, so I take that as a good sign. The goal is to have this become an annual two-day event; if this turns out to be as good as we’re anticipating, it’ll be bigger and better next year. And the template’s now in place, so it’ll never be as much work again.

Visit festival-of-families.ca for the full schedule of events

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Festival of Families
9 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday, September 20
South Park School, 508 Douglas (at Michigan)
Tickets $10 adults/$5 kids & seniors/$30 family
festival-of-families.ca