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Photo Credit: Bear Creek Folk Festival Facebook page
By Shane Clausing
Bear creek folk festival

2021 Bear Creek Folk Festival postponed to 2022

Mar 16, 2021 | 12:39 PM

For the second consecutive year, the Bear Creek Folk Festival has been postponed due to concerns around the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bear Creek Folk Festival producer Sarah Card says while many things regarding COVID-19 are looking better for this summer, organizers were left with more questions than answers in order to host such a large-scale event.

“We couldn’t have a guarantee that the event would be 100 per cent safe and we made the decision if it’s not 100 per cent safe, then it’s not safe,” said Card. “We couldn’t in good conscious proceed with even a slight risk of introducing a variant to Grande Prairie or creating a super-spreader event.”

Card says calling off the full festival for a second consecutive year was a painful decision to make, as many people in the Peace Region and Alberta look forward to this event every year.

Organizers say it normally takes a year to plan to organize an event of this magnitude and given that fact, there were no straight answers about what the summer will look like,leaving them with minimal options.

While the festival has been postponed, Card mentioned she and organizers are planning on having an event in lieu of the festival.

“We are planning on bringing something to Grande Prairie this summer, something a lot more local and scalable. The community I think is ready for some sense of a return to normalcy and some great music,” said Card. “In a perfect world, we’d love to have a live component and an online component. We’ll be announcing hopefully in late June what that’ll look like.

“This will have a real high focus on showcasing the great local talent we have in the region. Hopefully, we’ll be bringing together something special.”

Card mentioned if they are able to get an event this summer off the ground, it would be branded as something else and not under the Bear Creek Folk Festival name.

Any updates on any summer events the festival puts on will be made on their Facebook page.

The 2022 Bear Creek Folk Festival is still scheduled to take place from August 12-14.

Anyone with tickets still from the 2020 festival will be able to redeem them for the 2022 festival.

by Shane Clausing