Downtown Winnipeg BIZ awards $78K to 15 festivals

People can chow down on ribs, learn to dance the salsa and take in music and art from a variety of different cultures in downtown Winnipeg over the next few months, as part of a plan to bring more people to the city's core.

Fifteen festivals will share almost $78,000 in seed money from the Downtown Winnipeg BIZ through its Host it Downtown program.

The events are expected bring more people to the city's downtown and support almost 80 businesses in the area, the agency said Tuesday.

"This is going to stimulate almost $2 million in direct spending in our city, in our downtown, draw over 60,000 people to our city centre," said Stefano Grande, the BIZ's executive director.

He added that the events are "really celebrating what Winnipeg has to offer: arts, culture, history, music, food."

Grande said the funding aims "to attract innovative and new creative events to our downtown, expand existing ones onto our sidewalks, onto our surface parking lots."

The festivals that received funding include Interstellar Rodeo, which brought roots and alternative music acts to The Forks last weekend, and the Winnipeg BBQ and Blues Festival, which will take over Smith Street near the Burton Cummings Theatre this Friday and Saturday.

The funding will also help support Aboriginal Music Week, which will host four free noon-hour concerts at Air Canada Park this month.

The other events that received funding on Tuesday include:

• RibFest, a barbecue celebration hosted by the Rotary Club of Winnipeg at The Forks on Aug. 29-30.
• National Elevator Project, in which short plays will be performed inside moving elevators in downtown buildings during FemFest in September.
• 2K Dangle, a fun run in which hockey fans will stickhandle a ball for two kilometres from Memorial Park to the Manitoba Legislature.
• Downtown ARTery, which will turn Graham Avenue "into a corridor of light and art" during the Nuit Blanche art festival on Sept. 26.
• Day of the Dead Festival, which will celebrate the traditional Mexican holiday.
• Snowflake, a yoga and urban wellness retreat planned for this winter.
• Spaceland, a one-day block party that will take over an otherwise vacant space.
• Salsa Sundays, which invites people of all ages and backgrounds to dance every week.
• Wall to Wall II, a mural and culture festival in the West Broadway neighbourhood that will expand downtown.
• MEME Winter Electronic Festival, which will be held inside a heated dome on the frozen Red and Assiniboine rivers.
• Peg City St. Patrick's Day Parade, which runs through the downtown area every March.

Another $72,000 in funding, to support another 10 to 20 events, is up for grabs under the Host it Downtown program. Event organizers have until Sept. 30 to submit their applications.