Lennoxville Street Festival marking ten years this Saturday
The tenth annual Lennoxville Street Festival is coming up this Saturday, August 24, between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Riding on the success of last year’s event, which drew close to 10,000 participants, the Queen Street will once again be closed to traffic for the day between College and Academy streets and converted into a massive pedestrian mall filled with kiosks, live performances
and family-friendly activities.
“Over the years there has been a great evolution,” said Eliane Roytouchette, a new member of both the Lennoxville Business Association and the street festival organization committee, recalling that the event started as a way of help make the merchants in town known to the people in the community. “Many years ago people would come, walk around a bit, and then leave shortly after. We have now noticed that many stay all day, or at least a few more hours than they used to.”
Roy-touchette said that as a longtime festival-goer who is now involved in its planning, she has been able to see the growth and development of the event over the last decade.
This year’s festival, by the numbers, is three stages with 16 shows by 45 musicians, as well as roughly 100 kiosks
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with local groups and businesses, 15 street performers, and a variety of other pop-up activities including a bar provided by the Golden Lion Pub. While directing the public to the event’s website, streetfestival.ca, for a full schedule of events, the organizer highlighted the fact that all of this year’s performers have been drawn from the local community.
“It was important for us, as a committee, to choose people who are from here to entertain people from here,” she said.
While organized by a planning committee, Francois Desmarais, Associate General Manager of Commerce Sherbrooke explained that this year’s festival outsourced much of the work to event planning firm Les Evenements MG.
“I think it’s a good formula because (organizing the festival) requires a lot of time and a lot of work, which quickly becomes too much for volunteers,” Desmarais said, adding that doing things in this way keeps the planning committee at the head of everything that is going on, but prevents burnout.
In a similar vein, the Commerce Sherbrooke representative said that the Explore Lennox project is about to shift gears in order to give the Business Association more room to focus on its core mission. Until now, he explained, the work of revitalizing Queen Street has been carried out through the association, but now Explore Lennox is looking to create a committee made up of representatives from the community, local businesses, nonprofit organizations, and other groups with an interest in local development in the hope that it will provide a more balanced view of what the people of Lennoxville want.
“The Business Association will still a part of the mix, but not the only voice at the table,” he said.
Looking to what kind of work this new committee could do, Desmarais offered the example of people’s frustrations over the vacant lot left behind by the korvette fire at the corner of Queen and Speid Streets.
“The committee could go meet with the owner and chat with him about how to revitalize his property,” he said. “it becomes a much more neutral actor than the city.”
Ultimately, he said, the focus would be on working for the betterment of the community as a whole.
Anyone interested in getting involved with the new committee is encouraged to contact Sophie Labbé at Commerce Sherbrooke by calling 819-822-6082 extension 108, or emailing s.labbe@commercesherbrooke.com
“We would like to put it in place between now and the end of the fall,” Desmarais said.