Summer Fest In February

An annual summer concert in Guelph, Ontario, will beat the heat next year when organizers stage a new version of the festival – in February.

But summer festivals and snow don’t really go together. While the Hillside Festival, now in its 24th year, takes place near a local lake in July, the first-ever winter installment, dubbed Hillside Inside, will be held in the city’s Guelph Sports and Entertainment Centre February 2nd.

Artistic director Sam Baijal wants the event to keep a similar feeling to that of the summer series, so people can interact with the space and "shake off the winter blahs."

"An arena is like a blank slate," Baijal told the Daily Mercury. "You can go in there and transform the venue. We want to do it Hillside-style. We want it to be something where people don’t just sit around and watch, but they move, and move a lot."

The facility will reportedly be transformed with arts and crafts displays and international food booths, and be visually and musically similar to the summer concert.

While the initial winter festival will be a one-day event, Baijal said it could expand to two or three days like its summer counterpart if the winter fest proves successful, the paper reported.

A shot of funding from the local government could make that goal more obtainable.

Local officials recently offered Hillside’s organizers $62,000 to help program and market the festival as part of a tourism initiative to boost jobs and growth in the province.

"Festivals and events increase tourism, bringing new visitors to communities across Ontario, contributing to a strong and prosperous economy," Minister of Tourism Jim Bradley said in a statement.