About Us
OFF / Jake Morrison
Board of Directors
- Lynn Haggarty
President - Penny Bertrand
Vice-President & Resource Development Committee Chair - Gautam Subra
Finance Committee Chair & Treasurer - Suzanne Lessard-Wynes
Secretary (Officer) - Lynn Chiarelli
Past-President - Adam Brown
Director - Ian Brown
Director - Nubia Cermeño
Director - Bob LeDrew
Director - Daniel Spence
Director - David Yazbeck
Director - Peter Zanette
Director
The Ottawa Folk Festival is a non-profit, volunteer-based community organization formed in 1994. We celebrate the creativity of musicians, dancers, artisans, and storytellers through our summer festival at Britannia Park and a series of year-round concerts at venues throughout Ottawa.
Our Mandate
- Provide performers with a space in which creativity, imagination, and exploration are celebrated as fundamental to personal expression.
- Recognize dance as a means to both connect the body with the spirit and the music to ourselves.
- Embrace the participation of visual artists and craftspeople as an integral component of the artistic community at the festival.
- Present the greater community with the opportunity to enhance their experience of the festival by listening to, sharing in, and creating music, dance and stories.
- Treat our volunteers and staff, who are the heart of our organization, with respect and care, and provide them with opportunities for personal and professional growth.
- Consider our sponsors and friends as valuable members of our organization, whose presence, ideas, and feedback are essential to the ongoing vitality of the festival.
- Enhance the cultural life and contribute to the economic activity of the local community, the city, and the region; and encourage a sense of community in all who participate in shaping the festival, while challenging ourselves to uphold the values the festival promotes.
History of the Ottawa Folk Festival
A History of the Ottawa Folk Festival was compiled and written by longtime Festival volunteer Joyce MacPhee, who was a member of the original organizing committee. The history recounts the Festival's beginnings and provides a synopsis of each year from 1994 onwards. It includes milestones, lists of musicians and other performers, Festival activities, cultural and social events, and links to photos. Get a taste of the Festival's flavour and relive some of its most wonderful moments. Links to photos are included.
A History of the Ottawa Folk Festival 1994-2009 (pdf)
OFF / Cari Haurany
