Summer in Cowtown is the prime “festival season” as it is a “construction season”; the vibrancy is meant to be taken in through participation, not realizing you have missed out on the fun after hearing about it through post-festival media coverage! Here is a set of festival listings that I have found to be useful (and friendly for visitors, volunteers, and all alike!)
Calgary Culture’s Summer Festival Guide
This is a straightforward set of listings for June, July and August with the website link provided. I adore the theme and the neat clip art that has been inserted, but a caveat of this link is that it doesn’t contain festival listings for the rest of the year.
Discover Calgary’s Calgary Festivals Travel Guide
If scroll down the list on this webpage, the list of events has already grown to the point with May staples such as Otafest and the Lilac Festival already making their appearances after ones scheduled for this year. While this list does take longer to scroll and there aren’t any search filters filters, the promient website link button for each festival is a plus.
Visit Calgary’s “Things To Do” festivals section
Visit Calgary’s page has greatly expanded info for every one of the festivals mentioned in their listing, including Google Map directions (you just gotta enter your start point) and photo slideshows. The order of the festivals are organized in a strange manner – it doesn’t look like they are organized by date as the two other listing are.
FestivalSeekers and their Calgary listing
Despite their Calgary listing being a bit more compact in size compared to other listings, FestivalSeekers features festivals from all over BC and Alberta, which means smaller towns such as Hinton, Kelowna, and Salmon Arm receive some love from this site. In addition to their website, they also tweet plenty on @FestivalSeekers and they also promote festivals on their Youtube channel.
What I am really looking forward to from this website particularly is their passport program where we will be able to scan QR codes at the festivals they have listed. There is a lot of potential in having stamp opportunities as they will hopefully encourage more attendance.
And that is my 5! If you have any links you would like me to include or you want me to add on any info you can provide, drop me a comment down below! 🙂 Also, we will be covering lots of festivals under the tag “yycstreetfestivals”, so be sure to check the reviews here!