Moncton Cultural Festival Will Return This Summer
MONCTON–New Brunswick’s biggest multicultural festival is returning to Greater Moncton late this July.
The 2022 Mosaiq Cultural Festival was announced on May 17, following a two-year forced pandemic hiatus.
Ron Gaudet, the interim executive director of the Multicultural Association of the Greater Moncton Area, the settlement agency behind Mosaiq, said it was “surprisingly easy for us to flip the switch, once we had the sense that things were normalizing.”
“We started putting in efforts from the standpoint of ‘what if,’ planning for it and having the decision that if it was a go, that we’d go for it,” Gaudet added.
Securing the capital for an event that’s going to cost in the ballpark of $100,000 to host was also easier than expected. Gaudet credited pent-up demand for multicultural events and noted that MAGMA amassed a suite of sponsors and the support of the municipal, provincial, and federal governments.
“People are excited to have an event that would be outside, bringing people together and celebrating, but the element that pushed it over the top was the multiculturalism aspect of it, bringing many cultures together to celebrate who we are as a region,” he said.
Mosaiq celebrated its sweet sixteen before being called off in 2020 and 2021. Gaudet told Huddle he expects this year’s festival to be bigger than previous iterations, which drew more than 10,000 people to celebrate.
Moncton mayor Dawn Arnold echoed Gaudet’s thoughts at a May 17 announcement.
“This is a press conference. Imagine what the festival is going to be like,” she said, referring to the wall-to-wall crowd in the atrium at the MAGMA headquarters on Church Street.
“I think the time is right for our community to be the most welcoming, the most embracing community in all of Atlantic Canada – and why not? The festival helps us to do that.”
This year’s Mosaiq festival will take place at venues in Moncton, Riverview, and Dieppe – with a focus on its main stage in downtown Moncton – on July 22 and 23.
The festival will feature regional, local, and national-level performers, including Atlantic Ballet Atlantique, DJ Bones, Cape Breton performer Morgan Toney and his band Barn Bhreagh, as well as Tita Nzebi, a Gabonese-Parisian singer-storyteller.
“I would like to thank all the artists who said yes, very easily. Everyone I approached immediately said they’d love to come and it made my job so easy as a first-timer,” said Alison Fries, MAGMA managing director said during the announcement.
Mosaiq will also feature the talent of headliners Maestro Fresh Wes, a Juno Award-winning hip hop artist from Saint John and international quadrilingual singer-songwriter Cynthia Baroud. Mi’kmaq blues and folk singer-songwriter Quinn Bonnell will also be there with his band, as well as Colombian singer-songwriter Ramon Chicharron and Lance Sampson and the other Haligonian R&B and soul members of Aquakulture.
“The organizing committee is thrilled, the community at large and the business community are really excited about the fact that we were able to bring this number of people here today demonstrates there’s some demand,” said Gaudet.
We want to step up to that, and the event will be a colourful celebration with music and dancing – all celebrating culture.”
Sam Macdonald is a Huddle reporter in Moncton. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].