Photo Credit: Bear Creek Folk Festival Facebook page

By Shane Clausing

bear creek un-festival

Bear Creek Folk Festival announces “Un-Festival” celebration for 2021

Jun 29, 2021 | 5:00 AM

The Bear Creek Folk Festival has announced it’ll be holding a downsized festival this year to celebrate their usual folk fest week in Grande Prairie.

The 2021 Un-Festival will take place at the Muskoseepi Park Amphitheatre on August 14 and 15 and will feature four different sessions.

Sarah Card the Producer of the Bear Creek Un-Festival says while it was difficult to cancel the regular folk festival this year, she’s happy they were able to put something together.

“We really wanted to celebrate what would usually have been our festival weekend with some form of live music event,” said Card.

“We’ve put together a line-up of primarily Alberta based artists, which is really exciting for us. It gives us a chance to celebrate some of the great talent in Alberta and in particular Grande Prairie. We have a lot of Grande Prairie based artists on the line-up this time.”

The Un-Festival announced their lineup on June 28:

The Bear Creek Un-Festival lineup (photo from the Bear Creek Folk Festival website)

While all COVID-19 restrictions will be lifted by the time the festival rolls around, Card says capacity will still be limited to around 100 people per session.

“It’s our aim to expand that by another 50 spots and we’ll be doing that before the event,” explained Card. “We just really wanted to be careful because things have been quite unpredictable in the past year.”

Getting tickets for the festival this year will also be different.

Those interested in attending are asked to pay for a tarp of six, which will be given out to people based on donations they pay to the festival.

The festival is asking people to pay a minimum donation of $150 – $200 per 6’ x 8’ tarp space, for the Evening Concerts and $100 per space for the Family (Afternoon) Concerts.

If each tarp holds six people, this represents around $25-$33 per person in the evenings and $16 per person in the afternoons.

Card says the goal is to make the festival affordable for as many people as possible.

Tickets can be purchased in person at the Grande Prairie Live Theatre Box Office or over the phone at 780-538-1661 and cannot be purchased online.

Tickets for the 2020 Bear Creek Folk Fest will be automatically valid for the 2022 festival but are not valid for a tarp space at the 2021 Un-Festival.

The festival will also feature food vendors, liquor service and a merch tent.

More information on the festival can be found at the Bear Creek Folk Festival website.