2022 will go down as another year without an Arts Wells festival.
Elyssia Sasaki, the Executive Director of Island Mountain Arts, says a lot has changed since they hosted it two years ago.
“We’re coming back from two years of a pandemic. We’re trying to build back in our community as solidly as we can for bringing a festival back here at this time. And I think us trying to come back in a slower and more tempered way that just focuses on us having smaller events, and trying to put a little bit of magic into the summer and into the spring, is just the pace that we’re going to do our best to return at.”
Sasaki says these events will be part of a performance series.
“The hope is to kind of do smaller, maybe themed events, smaller concerts, trying to bring in different artists and arts practitioners to the region. And just have small groups of people together celebrating in the many awesome venues that we have around the Wells-Barkerville-Bowron area.”
Sasaki says how big these smaller events are will depend.
“It will probably depend on what Provincial Health Guidelines look like at the time, and it’s going to also depend on what the capacity of the staff that we’re able to have out here is.  Some events are going to be dictated by the venues that we hold them in.”
A schedule hasn’t been finalized for these smaller events yet, but she says they hope to hold the first one next month.
Sasaki says the goal is to eventually get back to holding larger events, but she says they have to “walk before they run.”