MondoKarnaval to skip 2024 edition
Ruby Pratka, Local Journalism Initiative reporter
editor@qctonline.com
MondoKarnaval, the annual summer cel- ebration of cultural diversity in Lower Town, will skip a year this year to plan a bigger and more widespread celebration in 2025, organizers announced last week.
“This year, we are organizing ourselves to diversify and improve our programming, which is already very eclectic. This will allow us to offer you the most intense party in Quebec, next year, in 2025! We firmly believe that this break will strengthen MondoKarnaval … for a memorable and festive experience for all participants,” organizers wrote on social media. “It’s important to keep working together in the same spirit of our first decade. We can already promise marvellous and atypical artists and innovations next year, for the greater pleasure of our faithful spectators.”
In the statement, organizers thanked the federal, provincial and city governments, ExpoCité, the Grand Marché, Desjardins, Decathlon, Trudel Alliance and several local media outlets for their support over the years.
MondoKarnaval traces its roots to Afrique en Fête, a festival which held its first edition in summer 2010 at the Baie de Beauport. The first edition under the MondoKarnaval name was held at the Cartier-Brébeuf National Historic Site in Limoilou in 2014. In 2020, the festival organized a series of online concerts under the name MondoNuméris; a hybrid edition was held at Place Fleur de Lys the following year. In 2022 and 2023, the event was held at Place Jean-Béliveau. The free event usually features concerts by local and international artists, a colourful parade, a soccer tournament and artistic and culinary booths staffed by representatives of various cultural groups and festivals, including groups involved with the English- speaking community.
“It’s never an easy decision [to skip a year]. We’ve had a nice 10 years, and we’re not the first festival saying we’ll take a break to better prepare for next year,” festival founder Doina Balzer told the QCT. “We’re taking a well-deserved rest. I know it can be disappointing for some people who were going to block that weekend off.” Balzer said it was a “constant battle” for the festival’s all-volunteer team to organize the event, secure funding and partnerships and weather the impacts of inflation. “The cultural environment is really difficult – we find that culture is being deprioritized everywhere. Prices went way up last year … everyone is running after the money and the money is not necessarily there.”
Balzer said that although it wasn’t unheard of for festivals to pivot to a once-every-two- years format, she believed the 2024 break would be a one- off and that the event would remain annual in future. “We just want to take the time to give everyone a good show next year,” she said.