Richmond鈥檚 15th annual Maritime Festival will feature a suite of hip and local music, with indie soul ban The Boom Booms being the featured performer on the main stage at Britannia Heritage Shipyards.
This summer鈥檚 festival runs two days, Saturday, July 28 and Sunday, July 29, each from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Maritime exhibits will be on display and arts and crafts 鈥� including miniature wooden boat building and nautical nametag making 鈥� will be available for children.
Notably, there will be a row of interesting, historic ships along the docks. The River Queen will operate tours of Steveston Channel and the Shady Isle Pirate Society will be bringing their miniature canon ships to the river.
As always, the festival will feature a variety of local performing artists. The award-winning Boom Booms consists of brothers Aaron Ross (lead vocals) and Sean Ross (keys), Tom Van Deursen (guitar), Gordie Hart (bass), and Theo Vincent (drums). The Boom Booms will perform at 2:15 p.m. on July 28.
Their bio notes: 鈥淪ome of the tightest, smoothest, sexiest soul and funk produced in the city right now comes courtesy of six guys who all grew up within a few blocks of each other on Vancouver鈥檚 East Side.鈥�
Each year, the festival invites local visual artists to submit proposals to design the event poster. Richmond-based artist Ashley Rose Goentoro has been commissioned to design this year鈥檚 festival poster.
鈥淕oentoro brings whimsical charm to her watercolour paintings that tie in perfectly with the Richmond Maritime Festival鈥檚 focus on arts, culture and history. She will be documenting her creative process on social media (Instagram:聽 Ashley Rose Illustration). The final artwork will be used throughout this year鈥檚 festival site and marketing materials,鈥� noted City of Richmond spokesperson Ted Townsend.
This year鈥檚 festival will be a scaled back version of last year鈥檚 special event, which was double its $200,000 budget thanks to Canada150 sponsorship dollars. As such it will not extend to Imperial Landing.
The Richmond Maritime Festival is produced by the City of Richmond and presented by 鈥淵our local RE/MAX Agents of the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley鈥�. The festival is made possible thanks to the support of Canadian Heritage. The main stage of the event is sponsored by Canadian Western Bank. Event partners are the Richmond Arts Coalition and Britannia Heritage Shipyard Society. Media partners are 103.5 QM-FM, Richmond News, Georgia Straight and 102.7 The PEAK.
