Solstice festival to shine on Franklin
Music and vendors to give people a reason to congregate downtown on longest day of year
Robin Grant
Northern News Services
Friday, June 17, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Shops will be open late, music will be jamming, people will be eating from food trucks and children will be playing along Franklin Avenue on Tuesday when the city closes the street for the first ever Festival on Franklin.
Young and old alike congregate downtown for Raven Mad Daze in 2002. The new Festival on Franklin will close the street to cars on Tuesday evening, making way for people to again gather downtown. The event is scheduled to feature live music, food vendors and a children's play area. Stores will also stay open under the midnight sun. - NNSL file photo |
Running from 5 p.m. to midnight, the festival aims to celebrate the summer solstice and aboriginal culture but it's also an initiative to rekindle interest in downtown.
When festival creator Wayne Guy moved to the city 20 years ago, he said downtown was vibrant with thriving shops and restaurants that attracted visitors after their work day.
"We would spend our day off downtown. People smiled and said, 'Hello,'" Guy recalled.
"It was a different downtown."
Over the years, attitudes toward the downtown changed, he says, as retail shops and restaurants gave way to office space. Businesses no longer inhabited much of Franklin and homelessness became a growing issue.
"We're turning into a bedroom community where most of the things to do aren't about the downtown," he said. "And I think that is a very dangerous thing, because I think a community is as strong as its centre. The centre is always the heart and to have a community flourish and have people meet on a common ground - that's what a downtown does."
So the Festival on Franklin is an effort to change the negative perception of the city centre. Some see the new initiative as the continuation of a similar event, Raven Mad Daze, which petered out in 2010 because of a lack of public interest.
"Bringing back a downtown summer festival is a great step in trying to bring back the Yellowknife of old," said Coun. Steve Payne. "By reviving a festival, it gives us hope that the downtown core can be brought back to its former glory."
Jill Groenewegen, who sits on the festival board of directors and owns Bijou Boutique, said the event is an opportunity to celebrate characteristics that are quintessentially Northern.
"It's important for us to celebrate the solstice," she said. "When I'm personally travelling that's one of the things that is recognized about where I live. The fact that we get that 24-hour sunlight and the long winters. They know about that all across the world."
She adds that Festival on Franklin will introduce the retailers on the street to people who aren't familiar with them.
"I still get people at least once a week who have lived here for a long time saying, 'I've never been in your store before.' So it's good for the retailers downtown as well just to get some exposure."
