Our proposed project would see an expansion of, and building upon the current African Descent Live Music expansion in BC and other parts as part of Vancouver Music Ecosystem study. Entitled “African Music Concert Series & BC Tour”, our proposed expansion presentation project will include:

• The presentation of live music events, beginning prior to the Festival at a variety of BC locations annually Vancouver at all venues in Vancouver and locations in BC and other parts to help amply BC Live Music to respond to city challenges in Vancouver Music Ecosystem study and Sound diplomacy report.
• The addition of a new African Music conference evening music event for the Festival weekend in Vancouver and other parts of Canada to celebrate the music of Africa and African Descent Canadian to the development of Canadian Music Industry in Canada.
• The addition of Vancouver African Descent Live Music concert  ‘closing’ evening live music concert event after the Festival weekend in Vancouver.
• A significant expansion of the number and variety of music artists presented during the main Festival event days (July @ Thornton Park, Vancouver);
• African Descent Live Music workshops, music workshops, instruments and presentations
• Celebrate Canada Live Concert: An annual Live Music concert celebrate Canada diversity and multiculturalism through Live Music through a variety of multicultural performing artists sharing same state through honouring diversity and multiculturalism in Canada.
• The celebrated live music event events series will significantly increase and amplify the number of BC (as well as Canadian & international) music artists performing in Canada and increase the exposure of BC African Descent Music in BC.

There is a strong need for Canadian audience to be exposed to, and able to enjoy and appreciate music genres of other cultural traditions and practices. In addition, we are working towards developing and supporting the African descent music community/industry which includes: adequate concert venues/opportunities; establishing a network of talent agencies/managers to facilitate the import/export of performing artists; increasing the number and visibility of African Descent artist (dance and music); and building  new audience in a variety of BC communities. The recent music study by Sound Diplomacy and the City of Vancouver mentioned noted the African Descent Festival as one of key drivers for African music industry locally. There is a strong need of this genre across Canada – Sound Diplomacy statistics stated that Black musicians contribute at least 1.9 to 2.01 of BC music industry.

The history of the African Descent Festival (and other live events) has demonstrated a steady growth and audience demand since our founding in 2014 – there is clearly a love of this music genre in Vancouver and BC. This is reflected the  significant increase in audiences attendance for past African descent festivals.  We anticipate that our proposed programming expansion will work to meet this ongoing demand, and help to build the profile and professional profile of our organization. We hope to continue to offer the majority of our events as free to the public – to that end, we have been working to build our public and private funding support over the past few years (for example, last year we began working with Little Dog Creative Consulting who have helped us secure a number of new government grants for our work; which we plan to continue building on in future years).

The African Descent Festival provides significant economic impact in a variety of ways including: job creation; local revenues generation through audiences spending in the area; a platform for selling local businesses products from African descent producers; employment and contracts (ranging from $500 to $20,000) and more artists, event planners, youth workers, security companies, local rental and production companies, etc; as well tax revenues to the City each year. This is particularly significant when one considers that the Festival takes place in Vancouver’s Downtown East side community, an area with rampant poverty and significant economic challenges. For the 2018 festival, we raised over $145,000, added to an additional  $170,000 in kind contribution —  95% of which was spent locally to Vancouver and BC-based musicians, venues, managers, record labels, sound engineers, music teachers, managers and marketing and travel agencies, etc. According to Music Canada’s report (2018), the live music sector contributed 6,950 FTEs, $619.3 million in labour income and $815.8 million in GDP to the BC economy in 2017. BC festivals attracted over 7.4 million attendees in 2017, and 78% are predicting increases in attendance in the future. The African Descent Festival was noted in the r Sound Diplomacy study as among the festivals contributing to economic music ecosystem in British Columbia and Vancouver in particular.  Of the 7.4 million festival attendees in 2017, ADF’s audiences numbered over 15,000 – a huge representation for the African Descent community in Vancouver. In that year, Vancouver’s Mayor Robertson stated in his proclamation that the “African Descent Festival is one of Vancouver’s leading arts and cultural festivals and brings together communities from across the city” (. The City and Park Board both agreed unanimously to the economic impact the African descent festival to local artists, as well as its impact to transform Downtown East side neighbourhood.

For the participating artists, the project will provide an important and unique opportunity to publicly showcase their professional talents and artistic work/expression, to a large and enthusiastic crowd. In addition, participating artists will be paid professional level fees for their participation. African Descent Festival plans various music workshops, Africa got talents shows, music cover miming, lipsyncng, song writing, Vancouver music studio tours and talks – all of which create opportunities for younger/emerging artists to work directly with the established and renowned artists (BC, national and international) as mentors. Next July we are also planning for an inaugural all-African music conference to bring music industry professionals, promoters, presenters and artists to a full day conference about career development and mentoring BC artists. In Addition, African Descent Festival gives opportunities to local artists to open up international superstars, bringing producers to speak to emerging artist on song composition, rehearsing and proposes sound recording and rehearsing venues.  The festival has also played a strong role in helping artist to form and recruited band members.

The work of the ADSBC has evolved from a recognized lack of representation of African descent culture on stage, in public and within community and cultural spaces in Vancouver. Even with this absence of visible represented African culture in Vancouver (and many parts of North America) our history goes back to before the birth of Canada (1620’s); in BC and Vancouver, people of African Descent people are recorded back to the mid 1800s — yet none of this history is well-represented in Canadian society, making it a largely unknown part of Canada’s cultural landscape. Our proposed events aspire to bridge this gap – creating a platform for participating cultural groups to share history and heritage, as well as inspire community engagement and understanding of contemporary Afro-Canadian arts. The diversity of the African Descent Festival is reflected in the number and wide variety of artists presented and range of cultural groups participating annually, that collectively work to promote better cultural understanding an awareness.

In January 2018, the Prime Minister of Canada announced the federal government’s new capacity building and community support program, in recognition of the International Decade for People of African Descent. The PM officially recognized the African Descent festival as a community incubator, and MP Joyce Murray attended the 2018 ADF event to present this official recognition as a tribute to people of African descent in Vancouver. In the 21st century, diversity, openness, and tolerance are vital national assets. They strengthen our societies and expand our capacity to meet our shared challenges and to seize the new opportunities before us. As we mark this International Decade for People of African Descent, the festival is an important showcase of the cultural strength and contribution of the Vancouver African descent Diaspora and creates an unparalleled education and exposure to African Descent arts, culture and heritage.

Our proposed expanded tour and festival project is an innovative way of promoting live music concerts, in multiple new locations, representing and promoting BC artists, creating and building collaboration between local and national/international artists – that all stimulate a competitive music industry and increase creativity among artists as well as exchange ideas on recording, production, performance, collaboration. These kinds of high profile events can be an effective strategy for stimulating a competitive creativity forum for cross-border discussion within the music business community. Part of the innovative nature of our event is using the high profile of key international artists, to attract more tourists attention and participation in the festival itself (with accompanying spin-off benefits to  local hotels and businesses). In addition, these collaborations also bring international into new creative connections with BC artists – one is recent example is a Ugandan international BET winner Eddy Kenzo, collaborated with Vancouver artist Ezra Kwizera to establish a dance style called “Ogwo Ogwo nga muka.” The song  and dance style was invented here in Vancouver.

Since the festival’s creation in 2015, we have developed a strong community network and infrastructure, upon which to build a this kind of large scale  event. The 2018, ADF was a massive success with close to 20,000 attendees and over 200 local and international artists, which has increased steadily since the event was introduced in 2014 with only 3000 people in attendance. It is clear that there is a growing public appetite and desire for the unique musical offering that BC (and national/international) African & Caribbean artists can provide.

For both the festival and the new concert & tour events, we expect a wide range of participants from African, Caribbean African and Afro Pacific states, as well those of African Descent in Canada; various community and cultural organizations, creating an unparalleled education and exposure to African Descent arts, culture and heritage. There are quite very high demand concert organizers and audiences, both in Vancouver and throughout BC  for more African Canadian music and touring artists, however, many individual artists cannot adequately access funding support to tour and meet this demand.  Over the past 4 years, the African Descent Festival has presented hundreds of local, national and international artists who have performed live to over 150,000 Canadians. According to 2017-2018 post festival survey, 150 out of 200 respondents asked us to bring more shows and live music events featuring African descent artists (many send multiple inquiries). We see this as proof that the community is wanting more of the kinds of events we offer — people simply want to see more African music thriving in Vancouver and British Columbia music industry.