Beautiful weather for the Children’s Festival

Where would you find balloon animals, a bouncy castle, face painting, a petting zoo, and wandering performers including a crystal ball contact juggler? The 2017 Whitecourt Children’s Festival, of course!

Held from May 25 to 27, the event proved to once again be popular for area families. On both Thursday and Friday, school students from around the area descended onto the festival grounds and took over as groups made their way through the different stations and performances.

Whitecourt students were joined by students from Fox Creek, Valleyview, Barrhead, Mayerthorpe, and Wildwood who came in to enjoy a field trip at the festival. “Everyone seemed to have a wonderful time. It was great. The facilitators were fantastic and the performances were wonderful. It was a really, really great time,” said Co-ordinator Emma Harper.

One of the new and very popular stations was by Astrodome. The gigantic blow-up circular room played one of two short films by projecting it on the ceiling giving viewers a 3D-like experience. The movies were roughly 25 minutes long and proved both fascinating and exciting as families laid down on their backs to gaze up at the show above them.

As the day went on, performers took to the stage in the curling rink. Flying Bob, who describes himself as “the balancer, juggler, professional idiot, and highly-skilled goofball,” put on a fantastic show which came complete with a six-foot-high unicycle and a giant stack of chairs.

Other performers included Parker Doodlebug, Will Stroet (co-creator and star of the musical TV series Will’s Jams on Kid’s CBC), and Peterpot, who brought his beatboxing skills to the crowd.

This year’s feature performance was none other than BAM Percussion.  Having played around the world in 28 countries and for countless audiences, the group brought their energetic and hilarious show to the Children’s Festival. Speaking their own silly language, called BAM speech, the trio got the audience clapping along and making some really weird and funny noises.

Jean-Sebastien Dallaire, one third of BAM, said getting to bring their unique show to the world is awesome “especially when you have a great audience and you’re making people laugh and making them forget about the day-by-day responsibilities, and just being a kid again. That’s what we try to do.”

The festival continues to grow and change each year, adding new pieces and new performers. “We want to create a balance between bringing people here and then offering city-level opportunity for people in Whitecourt,” said Emma. One thing for certain is that the committee putting on the festival did a phenomenal job and it will only continue to get better and better.