The Belmont Village Bestival celebrated its 10th year of bringing its “European-style street festival” to Belmont Ave. in Kitchener. This year’s festival took place on Friday, Sept. 11 and Saturday, Sept. 12 and featured a main stage, an artist and maker market and family-friendly music and activities.
The volunteer-led festival was founded by Tim Moher, a retired educator and local musician. Moher was inspired by the neighbourhood’s potential, and said he saw an opportunity to give local musicians a space to perform on a street that attracts locals and visitors.
“I just thought, if this street was in Toronto, there’d be a festival here,” he said.
Moher is a saxophonist and leader of the Clefs of Moher, a Celtic-inspired jazz band, and has played across the region. He said local musical acts often struggled to secure bookings for area festivals, and he wanted to change that.
“If you weren’t in a very small Rolodex, then you didn’t get into a festival. I decided to try to make a change on my own, I just didn’t realize how much work it was,” Moher said.
Today, the festival closes Belmont Ave. from Union Blvd. to Glasgow St. But in the festival’s first year, Moher had not originally planned for any street closures.
“A friend of mine said, ‘Tim, you have to close the street.’ I was just planning on having it on the street corner. But then we were approved for a $15,000 grant from the Waterloo Region Arts Fund. After that, I knew we could afford a stage, and we applied to close the street,” he said.
The festival is volunteer-led and funded with a mix of grants and corporate and local business sponsors. Moher said the sponsorship from Tim Hortons, Swanson’s Home Hardware and others have been critical to the festival’s longevity.
Tammy Lawrence, the festival’s president and artistic director, said even with sponsorship, the festival runs on a zero-based budget and must start fundraising from scratch each year. While sponsorships are important, grant funding also contributes to a large portion of the festival’s operating fund. Lawrence said the challenge is that the funding available from grants is shrinking as the number of applicants is increasing.
“There’s just a lot of people applying, and the pool of money isn’t getting any larger,” Lawrence said.
“The grants are never a sure thing either. We often don’t find out until June, July, or August whether some of that grant money is coming in.”
This year, the Belmont Village Bestival committee has launched a crowdfunding campaign called BESTival FRIENDS. Lawrence said the campaign is asking guests who have attended in the past to make a donation to help fund this year’s festival.
“We had over 23,000 people attend last year, which was the largest traffic we had since it started. We thought that if half the people who came through could donate, it would help get us started earlier in the year,” Lawrence said.
“If, financially, people don’t have the means to do it, they can give the gift of time by volunteering because that’s also a resource that we value.”
Lawrence said the most exciting addition to this year’s festival was the Women in Charge opening night concert. Curated by Lawrence and local blues legend Cheryl Lescom, the concert featured an all-women line-up featuring Elena Kapeleris on sax, Emily Burgess on guitar, Jenie Thai on keys, Vivienne Wilder on bass and Jasmine Jones-Ball on drums.
“For our tenth anniversary, we were excited to have a local icon lead an incredible group of women to celebrate female empowerment and showcase their diverse talents across a variety of genres,” Lawrence said.
“It’s women that are really making their way and creating a strong path in the industry.”
Bringing people together to celebrate music has been the Belmont Village Bestival’s mission since its first year. For Lawrence, its success can be found in responses from attendees and friends.
“We have families that come in from out of town. One neighbour has family that have flown in from England for it. It really has this very European street festival vibe that is very unique in this city,” Lawrence said.
“I think that it would be a huge loss if it couldn’t operate anymore. But we do our best with what we have. We can make a dollar go a long way.”
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