Festival preps for big return
Hay Days gets reboot after missing last year
Paul Bickford
Northern News Services
Saturday, June 10, 2017
HAY RIVER
Planning is well underway to see the return of the Hay Days Festival, after it missed last year due to a lack of volunteers.
Hay Days Festival director Ken Latour, left, and co-ordinator April Glaicar are getting all set for the event in July. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo
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Organizers expect the festival will now be on much more solid ground with the biggest change this year - the previously-announced involvement of the Rotary Club of Hay River Sunrise.
"It's been really good for the festival to have Rotary on board because we have an organization," said festival director Ken Latour, who will be working on his third festival. "It's not just a society that's about the festival. It's now an organization that has a big, wider mandate."
The festival is now being organized by a seven-member committee - all Rotarians, except for Latour.
"Basically, Rotary is the organization that is hosting the event," he explained. "So everything is going through Rotary."
The festival co-ordinator is April Glaicar.
"I became a Rotarian to become involved with Hay Days," she said. "I've been in Hay Days as an artist, but I wasn't on an organizing committee. And when the decision was made to move Hay Days under the Rotary banner then I became a Rotarian to help."
Glaicar said she didn't want to see Hay Days go by the wayside.
"It really benefits the community in being able to share culture, music and art," she said.
And while the addition of Rotary will be the biggest organizational change, there will also be some changes in the event schedule, although some things will remain the same.
This year's festival will be a five-day event from July 4 to 8.
Latour noted the festival used to host workshops and they will be returning for the first few days this year until July 6.
"They'll mostly have an arts and crafts theme this year," he said. "The whole vision of the festival is not just an entertaining weekend, which is certainly a big part of it, but it's to help promote and grow arts and culture and music in the North."
Glaicar said the workshops will be geared towards children, youth and adults.
"So there'll be different age-appropriate workshops and we've got a lot of talented traditional artists that will be joining us," she said.
On July 6, a Thursday, the music starts at various locations throughout the community, including at The Back Eddy, the Dog House Pub, the Legion and the Hay River Heritage Centre.
There will also be an expansion of the festival's presence at the Hay River Beach to include an event on the Friday.
"The Friday night is really geared toward being inclusive to anyone in the community," said Glaicar. "So we're calling it a community beach party."
She said there will be vendors, activities geared towards families, and family-friendly performers earlier in the night.
"It's a quieter evening," she said. "Really an inclusive evening."
The Saturday night at the beach will feature the popular Shaker, a licensed evening of music for adults only.
"That's going to be the same as it's ever been, except it will be bigger and better," said Latour.
Something completely new this year will be Art Attack on the Friday afternoon of the festival.
Glaicar explained that six corporate or organizational teams of four people will each be given a box - containing identical items - and will create pieces of art on stage in front of the public.
"They won't know what they're getting for materials until they get there, and they will open the box and see what they have," she said. "They'll have a timed period to create as a team and after that their pieces that are finished will be moved to the Friday night event and on display so the public can vote on their favourite piece."
The festival recently launch a new website - haydaysfestival.com - on which people can find a host of information, including on the festival's history, workshops, the music line-up, the schedule of events and more.
Over the weeks leading up the festival, organizers will also be recruiting the 75 to 100 volunteers needed to stage the event.
Hay Days Festival stated in 2010, and taking into account last year without the event, this year will be its seventh version.
