logo
More festivals in N.L. pull the plug on summer events due to tight margins, planning woes

More festivals in N.L. pull the plug on summer events due to tight margins, planning woes

Yahoo07-07-2025
Festivals across Newfoundland and Labrador are seeing an unexpected demise this year, with organizers saying tight finances and complicated logistics have led to tough decisions to cancel events planned over the summer.
The news comes on the heels of Monday's grim reveal that this year's N.L. Folk Festival concert weekend — a stalwart of St. John's summers for nearly half a century — may be its last.
The organizers of the Séamus Creagh Festival in Ferryland, Food, Fibs & Fiddles in Gunner's Cove and the North West River Beach Festival have all cancelled this year's events.
Rob Brown, one of the Ferryland festival's directors, says a lack of grant funding was behind the decision to spike the Labour Day weekend event.
"This year, I'm not exactly sure what happened. We were recommended to receive funding, but when it came time to provide the funding, I guess we didn't rank high enough on the list," Brown said.
Brown says the small, traditional Irish and Newfoundland music festival relies heavily on arts and culture grants to operate, and without the funding, a festival wouldn't be feasible.
But the volunteers who run the event say it's not over for good.
"This is not goodbye by any means," Brown said. "We're going to take a break for a year and do some fundraising throughout the year and ... try to hone up our grant writing and maybe see if we can get a few sponsors on board."
The Séamus Creagh Festival is a memorial event for Séamus Creagh, founded after his death in 2009. Brown says Creagh was instrumental in bringing together Irish and Newfoundland musicians, and the festival has reflected that legacy by featuring Irish acts every year.
"You can imagine the cost of flying people across the pond is quite high," Brown said.
Danny Pond, a lead organizer of the Food, Fibs & Fiddles festival in Gunner's Cove, says his own struggles lay in the logistics of putting on a large event in a rural community.
"We brought a very big show to ... a very, very remote part of the island," Pond said "Remote parts of the island don't get to enjoy this stuff. So that was the whole purpose for the event."
Blue Rodeo headlined last year's festival, he said — and Gunner's Cove, about 30 kilometres from St. Anthony, is the smallest community the band has ever played in.
"Bringing what we brought to that area was very, very, very difficult," he said.
Both the extent of the planning and the aftermath of the events — resolving issues with the festival's partners, for instance — presented a challenge for the burgeoning festival.
Pond says some of those issues bottlenecked over the last two years, leaving organizers worried this year's event wouldn't run smoothly.
"We found ourselves in a situation that with all of that combined, we weren't going to be able to execute an event that we were able to in [2023]," he said. "We didn't want to run the risk of souring anything. We didn't want to bring the bands in that ... would go away, maybe unhappy, because we didn't have all the key parameters as refined as we should have."
But Pond, too, says he hopes this isn't the end.
"We understand that we're going to hit hiccups. We're not invincible. We don't take it for granted. So our intention is to bring this back in 2026 because again, this was an issue of timing, this was an issue of learning," he said.
The festival was planned for July 19, with Canadian band Glass Tiger headlining. Pond says organizers will be issuing refunds to ticketholders in the coming days.
The North West River Beach Festival, an outdoor Indigenous music festival in Labrador, announced on social media last week that its 2025 event wouldn't go ahead, but called on volunteers to help plan the festival for next July.
CBC requested comment from the organizers of the North West River festival, but did not receive a response.
Download our free CBC News app to sign up for push alerts for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. Sign up for our daily headlines newsletter here.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Watch a Tween Justin Bieber Predict His Pivot to R&B in 2008 Interview
Watch a Tween Justin Bieber Predict His Pivot to R&B in 2008 Interview

Yahoo

time4 hours ago

  • Yahoo

Watch a Tween Justin Bieber Predict His Pivot to R&B in 2008 Interview

Was Justin Bieber pulling a long con on us this whole time? The singer who surprise dropped his soulful, 21-song Swag album on Friday doubled-down on his seventh album's swerve to a more spare, less pop radio-ready vibe in a throwback video he posted on Tuesday morning (July 15). In the way back clip from a 2008 interview with Canadian broadcaster CTV's eTalk program, Bieber, 31, is asked by the interviewer if he gets nervous when he sings. 'To be honest, no, not really,' says tween JB, who was likely 12 or 13 when the chat was recorded. Looking dwarfed by the red leather chair he's sitting on, Bieber says of his chance to showcase his talents, 'I would never have thought this opportunity would happen, like, it's out of this world.' More from Billboard Fans Choose Justin Bieber's 'Swag' as This Week's Favorite New Music Olivia Rodrigo's Guitarist Cried Upon Learning Robert Smith Would Join Glastonbury Set Parkway Drive Leads Park Waves Australia With The Amity Affliction & More Flashing forward to the day when he might have some success and a recording deal, London, Ontario-born Bieber predicts that when his day comes, 'I see myself doing more, like, R&B.' The video is cued to the sultry Swag between-the-sheets soul ballad 'Too Long,' which features the grown man lyrics, 'Yeah, sometimes I get insecure/ I be trying you know I do/ But I wanna let go/ Keep on stroking my ego while you're stroking my…' In the full version of the conversation, Bieber talks about playing guitar, piano and trumpet after teaching himself to strum when he was 'really little,' and posting videos online of his early efforts that, at that point, were starting to rack up views. 'It's kind of weird, because I'm just like a normal person. I play sports and stuff with my friends… it's kind of different for me,' he says shyly about the widening spotlight. He admitted then had sometimes didn't tell his friends about his cover song videos because he just wanted to be 'a regular kid.' At the time the video was recorded, Bieber said he had just returned from hanging out with one of his musical heroes, Usher. Soon after, he would sign with his longtime, now former, manager Scooter Braun, who discovered those early YouTube videos and signed the singer to a joint venture management contract with Raymond Braun Media Group (RBMG). The pair would team with Island Def Jam to release Bieber's debut EP, My World, in Nov. 2009. While Bieber's career would mostly follow a pop path in the years to come thanks to hits such as breakout 2010 smash 'Baby' and Billboard Hot 100 No. 1's 'Boyfriend,' 'What Do You Mean?,' 'Sorry,' 'Love Yourself' and 'Peaches,' on his first full-length since 2021's Justice he appears to have been fully in charge of the look, feel and sound following his split with Braun in 2023. The result is an album featuring a new cast of contributors including Carter Lang (SZA), Australian singer Eddie Benjamin, indie guitarist-singer and Dijon (Kanye West, Bon Iver), as well as features from rappers Gunna, Sexyy Red, Cash Cobain and Lil B on songs that get back to his early love of Usher-like balladry. On seductive, spare tracks that chronicle his turbulent personal life and struggles in the spotlight, Bieber seems to have achieved his early dream on an effort Variety said in a review, 'lands somewhere in between Bieber's greatness and his proclivity to give in to his artistic impulses, for better or worse, existing in a pocket of R&B that can often feel aimless but is nevertheless intentional.' Check out Bieber's clip below. Best of Billboard Chart Rewind: In 1989, New Kids on the Block Were 'Hangin' Tough' at No. 1 Janet Jackson's Biggest Billboard Hot 100 Hits H.E.R. & Chris Brown 'Come Through' to No. 1 on Adult R&B Airplay Chart Solve the daily Crossword

Apple News+ adds a new game that uses emoji and Genmoji to sovle puzzles
Apple News+ adds a new game that uses emoji and Genmoji to sovle puzzles

Yahoo

time6 hours ago

  • Yahoo

Apple News+ adds a new game that uses emoji and Genmoji to sovle puzzles

Apple is introducing a new reason to upgrade to its subscription news offering, Apple News+: more games. On Thursday, the company announced the addition of the Emoji Game, an original title that will join its other games, including its Crossword puzzle, Crossword Mini, Sudoku, and word game Quartiles, in both the U.S. and Canada in English. Bundling games with other services has proven a successful strategy to attract users and keep them engaged, as The New York Times and even LinkedIn have discovered. Apple won't share its user numbers around Games, but it says that many people subscribe to News+ just for the puzzles. Released to coincide with World Emoji Day, the new Emoji Game is part logic, part word game that's inspired by how we use emojis to communicate with one another. In this daily game, players try to solve phrases using emojis with the goal of completing the puzzle in the least number of moves possible. For instance, if the word 'appear' showed up in the puzzle, you might see the letters 'ap' followed by four blank spaces. Then, you'd drag the emoji for the pear up into the blanks to complete the word. Of course, the phrases in the Emoji Game will be a bit harder to guess. Plus, the emoji you need to solve the puzzle will often be found in emoji combinations or those that involve a bit of abstract thinking to come up with the answer. The word for the emoji may also be used to fill in blank spaces that have other letters in between them. If you're stumped, you can unveil a clue below the phrase, but this will cost you one of your moves. There are multiple phrases to solve each day to complete the full puzzle. Finishing in six moves is considered a perfect score, and leaderboards help you track your streaks and how your scores compare with friends and other users. In the upcoming iOS 26, you'll be able to challenge friends to play with you using the new Games app. To make the game more Apple-specific, it also leverages the recently introduced Genmoji, or the custom emojis that are created using Apple Intelligence, the company's AI. This expands the emojis available beyond the fewer than 2,000 that ship with your emoji keyboard. For instance, you might see a Genmoji of a blender and an emoji of a tomato to make the word 'purée.' The game is built in partnership with a third-party, The Puzzle Society (now GoComics), and is edited by Apple puzzle editors. It's rolling out now to Apple News+ subscribers in the U.S. and Canada on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. (Users on iOS 18.4 and later won't need to update their app to gain access to the game, but those on older versions will.) The News+ subscription also comes with access to over 400 premium publishers, narrated audio, local news, sports, and, most recently, a recipe-saving feature, Apple News+ Food.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store