The Ottawa Grassroots Festival, a branch of the annual Folk Festival, is expanding to a three-day event in April at Montgomery Legion on Kent Street and other downtown venues. Different from any other festival in Ottawa, it is family friendly, culturally diverse and completely free of charge during the day.
Its two main values are inclusion and participation, says the festival’s organizer, Chris White.
The event focuses on “representing the community as much as we can,” he says.
And it’s inclusive, White adds, “in terms of giving opportunities to musicians and other artists at various levels of their career – including everybody and giving people all kinds of opportunities to be actively involved, not just be entertained.”
White is an avid folk musician who worked with the Ottawa Folk Festival for 16 years before starting the Grassroots Festival three years ago. Although the festival has evolved from its original one- day event, White says they have no intention of getting so big that they start to lose the essence of why it exists.
“Once it gets bigger quality will suffer,” says White.
More than 100 artists and performing groups will be at this year’s event. The headline performer will be award-winning Canadian songwriter James Keelaghan.
As a result of the growing popularity of the festival the organization recently incorporated to keep it sustainable, because it requires more financial support from the community to pay the artists more money.
One hundred volunteers will donate their time and energy to plan the event.
Sticking to the tradition of cultivating community, the Grassroots Festival this year is enlisting four volunteers and one performer Argyle Street-based Catholic Centre for Immigrants.
Anneke van Nooten is part of the community connections team at the CCI. She is most looking forward to newcomers discovering Ottawa in a different way. She says she’s confident it’s going to be a positive experience because of the philosophy of the festival.
“We’re going to be encouraging and facilitating newcomers to go with their families to the festival,” says van Nooten.