Almost Live episode #156
Accessing the Vancouver Folk Music Festival + Indian Summer Festival 2024
The Vancouver Folk Fest is offering special ticket prices for blind and partially sighted visitors on Sunday, July 21. Find out who’s on stage, how to get your tickets and more about the festival with special guests Anne Blaine, VFMF Vice President and Tal Jarus, the festival’s Volunteer Coordinator.
This year’s Indian Summer Festival runs from July 4 to 14th at various venues around the city. This year’s theme is “Paradox”. Find out what events are most accessible to blind and partially sighted audiences.
Almost Live online Zoom events are designed for people who are blind and partially sighted, but everyone is welcome! Check your time zone with this handy Time Zone Converter
Registration is required for first-time attendees. You can sign up for one event or the whole season free of charge.
Vancouver Folk Music Festival
The Vancouver Folk Music Festival is a Canadian cultural institution. It is a unique community-based celebration internationally renowned for presenting the finest traditional and contemporary folk and roots music from around the world. Now in its 47th year, the Festival continues to be one of the city’s most beloved, enjoyed, and respected events. Through the years, the Festival has won “Best Local Music Festival” by readers of the Georgia Straight and the Westender. Each year, the Festival draws tens of thousands of enthusiastic attendees to beautiful Jericho Beach Park. Two and even three generations of families join friends and fellow community members to experience the music and culture of more than 40 international, national, and local acts. They come together to dance and to enjoy food and children’s activities – and the magical ambience of the Festival.
The Festival was founded in 1978 and held in Stanley Park. It relocated to Jericho Beach Park in its second year. Following initial sponsorship from the city, the Festival came under the control of the newly established non-profit Vancouver Folk Music Festival Society in late 1979. In the Festival’s early years, it established and ran its own record label and distribution company, Festival Records.
Over the years, the Vancouver Folk Music Festival has played a key role in the development of artists and audiences on a regional, national, and international level. The society continues to honour the same traditions with an emphasis on emerging and diverse artists.
Indian Summer Festival
Indian Summer Arts Society was founded to address a gap in Vancouver’s cultural landscape and to break stereotypical perceptions of South Asian art as ossified, traditional, and nostalgic. The festival has since grown to serve as a meeting place for many more cultures and has seen a programmatic evolution from an expression of diasporic South Asian identity in British Columbia to its current shape as a festival that takes a decidedly pluralistic approach, welcoming and exploring issues that lie at the intersections of multiple communities, through a South Asian lens.
Widely acknowledged as the pre-eminent presenter of South Asian arts and ideas in Canada, the festival believes in the transformative power of the arts to build bridges and foster dialogue. Each year, the festival presents provocative arts events that feature some of the finest artists and visionaries from Canada, South Asia, and beyond. From novelists to performance artists, social changemakers to movie stars, Indian Summer Festival has presented emerging artists as well as Nobel, Booker, Grammy, Juno, and Oscar prize winners on its stages. ISF 2024 will be our 14th Annual Festival Edition.
Arts events like these have multiple critical roles in creating a robust societal fabric, and in combating prejudice and racism. Our festival always has a strong discursive line running alongside the conceptual, by way of panels, ideas series, and artist talks, supported by a distinct curatorial theme each year. We act as a vital contributor to Vancouver, positioning the city as a dynamic harbour of international ideas and global perspectives.
Sunday People, hands in the air in front of an outdoor stage at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival 2023. Photo by Yohei Shimomae, courtesy of VFMF
