The Downtown North Battleford organization says its first International Street Performer Festival in the downtown core has been well-received and well-attended.
According to downtown BID executive director Lisa McEachern, an audience count of approximately 3,000 people were in attendance for the three-day event on the weekend.
"That's sort of what we were hoping for. We didn't know what to expect," said McEachern.
The event was free to the public, with the only cost being to tip the performers on their performances downtown. Parts of 101st Street and 12th Avenue had been closed to traffic downtown while the event went on.
The performances and food were good, said McEachern, and the weather held up. There had been a threat of rain prevalent throughout the weekend but it held off long enough for the performances and the displays to go off without a hitch in the downtown area.
The Agrivilla had been available as an alternate location had the weather gotten worse. Fortunately, that was not necessary.
"Everything went over as good as it possibly could have," said McEachern.
The festivities during the week also included a preview event involving the performers during Live@Lunch in Central Park on Tuesday, as well as a dinner and more performances at the Dekker Centre on Thursday night.
The street performers, who came from all over the world, had arrived straight from the festival in Grande Prairie where they were the previous weekend.
McEachern said all of them had an excellent experience at the North Battleford festival.
"The performers were incredibly impressed with North Battleford," said McEachern. "They loved the crowds, they said North Battleford were very generous in tipping the hats, that kind of thing. They all asked to come back next year - every single artist loved it here."
Now that the first event is out of the way, the hope is to expand on it next year "and make it bigger and better, and have more performers," said McEachern.
