EP/09: FESTIVALS VS. COVID

Festivals VS COVID: How One of the Largest Festivals in North America Adapted. Backstage with BLUESFEST’s Mark Monahan.

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In this episode we discuss the future of concerts and festivals with Mark Monahan. Mark is the CEO of Bluesfest, one of Canada’s largest festivals drawing over 300,000 concertgoers each year. 

When COVID struck, Mark’s organization needed to make the hard decision to cancel their summer event. They moved quickly to pivot their events to online. We chat with Mark about how the online experiment went down, their results and whether online concerts are a temporary workaround or permanent part of our concert experiences moving forward.

Check out Bluesfest at https://ottawabluesfest.ca/ and on Twitter: @ottawabluesfest

ABOUT MARK

Mark Monahan is the Executive and Artistic Director of RBC Ottawa Bluesfest, CityFolk and the Festival of Small Halls. In addition to overseeing three of the largest festivals in Ontario, Mark has recently coordinated the creation of Festival House, a historic church transformed into a modern, open-concept central artistic hub for many of Ottawa's smaller festivals to grow and thrive. In partnership with a local community center, Mark established the Bluesfest School of Music and Art (BSOMA), a creative education space offering music and art classes to people of all ages and abilities.

Mark is President of the Ottawa Music Industry Coalition (OMIC), a not-for-profit group advocating on behalf of Ottawa's music industry, Co-founder of the Ottawa Festivals Network, representing over 100 festivals in the Ottawa region and Co-founder and Chair of the Major International Festivals and Events Network (MIFEN), a collection of the twelve largest festivals in the province of Ontario. Mark was awarded Ottawa Tourism's Person of the Year Award in 2013.

Photo credit: Ottawa Sun