The headliners are signed and details on workshop tents with the musicians are being worked out by organizers of the 22nd annual Kispiox Valley Music Festival.
New this year will also be an expanded kids area.
“We are having a new and improved kids area. There are a couple people working on that,” said Mark Larson, who is helping coordinate the event.
“We’ve had a good reputation for having a good kids area, too, so that’s part of the family friendly thing — having something for people of all ages to do.”
The festival usually attracts about 2,000 people. Those music lovers will have an added reason to attend with the workshop tents.
“Most of the headliners asked to do something,” said Larson, who added that the details were still being fine tuned.
“There are workshops available to people on a variety of things. They have been almost all musical but sometimes there have been other things going on. We had belly dancers; we’ve had different art things going on.”
The festival also avoids having big sponsors to avoid controversies for people who are for or against things like pipelines planned for the region. But an outlet for expression made sense to organizers of a music festival.
“We don’t allow political banners or things around that would distract us from the music. At one point we had posters around like pipelines and no pipelines coming in and we decided no, we don’t want to be a political event,” said Larson.
“But at the same time, we don’t want to stifle freedom of expression or free speech in any way, so we have the speaker’s rock where people can get up and do their rant if they want to — if the spirit moves them.”
Anyone looking to volunteer for the event — which had a close call last year after a lack of people to help coordinate the festival almost led to its cancellation — can sign up or get more information by visiting kvmf.ca, where headliners are also listed.