Culture goes crazy at Festifolies 2018
Starting today, the Festifolies begins its fifth edition of fun. All weekend long, Brome-missisquoi’s St-armand will yet again this year turn into a glorious melting pot of cultural events, featuring artists of all disciplines from near and far.
“It’s fun, it’s going super well, and we get more and more people every year,” said François Marcotte, managing director of the event. “People know Festifolies now. It’s a window to the cultural world of the Brome-missisquoi region. It’s like a big, artsy village party!”
According to Marcotte, the star of this year’s festival is Raôul Duguay, a musician, painter and sculptor who has had a career spanning 50 years. He has lived in the Brome area for 40 of those and will show everyone what local talent has to offer, giving a free show where he will perform his classics, featuring in particular his famous ‘Allô’ collective and ‘La Bitt à Tibi.’
“We also had a local digital artist, Laurence Grandbois Bernard, who is very famous in Montreal, make a compilation of all of Raôul’s art,” commented Marcotte. Bernard’s video projection is called Floraison. “We’re going to screen it every night at the festival.”
Festifolies is full to the brim with both music and art, so Raôul is the perfect guest of honor for it. Every night many different music presentations will be going on around town with pop, rockabilly, blues, folk, gospel and much more to suit anyone’s mood. Marcotte revealed that many La Voix contestants will be there as well to delight the ears of all.
Puce 133, which Marcotte called “a veritable visual art laboratory”, will be the ideal place to chat with and watch painters create works on the spot. On Saturday, there will even be a friendly painting competition where the public votes for the best canvas as 10 artists try to complete 3 works of art in 20 minutes each.
“We try to reach everyone,” commented Marcotte. “There are tons of activities for kids.”
In particular, there will be the Big Day for Little Entrepreneurs on Saturday, where children will be able to present their own creative entrepreneurial ideas to the general public, and will be selling goods they made themselves, including pastries, refreshments, jewels, drawings, and even a dog walking service.
“We try to feature a bit of our local heritage each year too,” added Marcotte. “We will be unveiling three wayside signs that talk about the life of Loyalist pioneers of our region. There will be a bilingual conference about the history
of the area to go with it.”
All of the events of the Festifolies going on over the weekend are completely free.
“There’s no risk of boredom,” laughed Marcotte. “There’s going to be a firework show over the Champlain Lake, food trucks, bars. It’s the perfect place to gather and have some fun.”
For the complete list of events, visit www.festifolies.org.