For the love of Yarmouth
Event planner boosting events, town pride with Mile East Productions
Candice Phibbs is bringing it — all of it — to Yarmouth.
She started her not-so-secret event planning side hustle in 2015 after moving to Yarmouth a decade ago. Now, she uses it to bring big-ticket events to the Yarmouth area.
The answer to why she devotes so much of her time bringing these events to the area is simple. She does it for her love of Yarmouth and so others fall back in love with their town.
“I love seeing people come to events we put on and seeing them love the fact that they’re attending this quality event in the community they live in,” she says.
FILLING A GAP
Phibbs moved to Yarmouth from a small town in Ontario, starting her work with the Yarmouth Regional Hospital and more recently transferring to Nova Scotia Health.
It was in 2015 that she began noticing a general lack of events happening in Yarmouth.
“I had fallen in love with Yarmouth — something about the ocean and the friendliness of people. The longer I stayed, the more I realized there was a niche that wasn’t being filled,” she says.
Her husband, Rick Allwright, had bid on a few events slated to run in Yarmouth and found himself taking on the organizing roles as there was no one else to do it. Phibbs started planning events part time alongside him, which led to their founding of Mile East Productions company.
Its kick-off event was a
New Year’s Eve party, closely followed by the big-ticket Yarmouth Spring Living Show at the Yarmouth Mariners Centre. Phibbs says they decided to take on these large projects early to ensure each had a local feel and was locally organized.
The company grew from there, hosting events like craft beer festivals, outdoor and indoor concerts and organizing local group events for like the Communities in Bloom symposium, which drew delegates to Yarmouth from around the world.
Phibbs says these events bring community together and have given Yarmouth residents pride as the town becomes a destination rather than a setting-off point for other destinations.
“We’re the largest urban centre south of Halifax, so we should have these largescale events. We have the population to support these — people shouldn’t have to go to Halifax,” she says.
MAKING IT HAPPEN
Phibbs says these events are also giving Yarmouth’s younger population a reason to stay and start their own families.
“People can have the same experiences here that they’d otherwise have to travel for, which means more will stay in the place they grew up in,” she says.
While planning events and working in health care might sound like an impossible schedule to manage, Phibbs has found a way to make it work. She says her answer for anyone who asks her how she does it is always the same: a lot of planning and legwork ahead of events.
In addition, Phibbs has realized her broadcast dream and is now hosting the Y95.5 Saturday morning show.
“Prioritization and planning are a big part of it. I’m always looking ahead so that when the month of each event gets here, the legwork has been done. I don’t have to work eight hours per day at this because I’ve worked on it over seven months,” she says.
Phibbs’ favourite part of it is the people — seeing them at events, hearing their feedback and putting those together to plan and prepare events that are even bigger and better.
“It’s seeing people have such a great time at our events. At the end, when they’re leaving and passing by, hearing them say, ‘I can’t wait for the next one,’” she says.
GO ONLINE
Learn more about Mile East Productions at mileeast.com.