Chinook Blast 2023 is one for the books!
February 22, 2023 | WHAT'S HAPPENING, EVENTS, CALGARYBird Creatives was once again proud to produce Chinook Blast in partnership with our civic partners.
Chinook Blast – RISE UP Calgary Outdoor Stage
Photo by: Neil Zeller
For its third year, Chinook Blast, Calgary’s premier winter festival returned to liven up our downtown! After two years of pandemic-related restrictions, this year was the first year we could deliver a festival that was originally ideated by Calgary’s civic partners back in 2020! As part of Calgary’s Downtown Strategy, Chinook Blast’s goal is to promote our city centre as an exciting winter tourism destination for visitors and locals alike!
For three weeks, we had the pleasure of working with our previous festival partners High Performance Rodeo, BIG Winter Classic, Block Heater, and Ethnik Festivals. We were also excited to welcome two new and unique experiences to Chinook Blast, Snow Rodeo and Nitro Rallycross. Chinook Blast 2023 was the year we had the most diverse collaborations to date. Our new collaboration with the Four Winds Indigenous Showcase and Market allowed us to platform dozens of incredible Indigenous vendors, artists, musicians, and performers from multiple cultures. Further, our partnership with 10 at 10 saw black musicians from a variety of genres perform at our Artists Pavilion in honour of Black History Month.
This year, we enlivened not just Chinook Blast’s main hub of Olympic Plaza, Stephen Avenue, and East Village, but also Stampede Park, Winsport, and beyond!
Here are just a few notable highlights of Chinook Blast 2023!
Olympic Plaza – Installations
Olympic Plaza saw the most number of installations this year! We partnered with eight incredibly talented local artists to design and install vibrant and interactive works of art to brighten up the plaza! They delivered and Chinook Blast’s social media was tagged over a hundred times with festival-goers engaging with all the installations.
All Photos by Neil Zeller
Olympic Plaza – Live Music
We also had the opportunity to team up with our festival partners, BIG Winter Classic, Block Heater, and Ethnik Festivals to program three awesome musicians to perform for the RISE UP outdoor stage. Despite the frosty weather during the first weekend, like true Calgarians, people braved the cold and came out to enjoy K-Riz, Sunglaciers, and Rondel Roberts Band.
Arts Commons took over the outdoor stage during our second weekend in partnership with YYC Music Awards for ArtsXpeditions and the YYC Music Awards Spotlight Festival. Here, some of Calgary’s best musicians performed their greatest hits. We were also treated to an Indigenous cultural showcase from Four Winds Indigenous Showcase and Market.
For the last weekend, Block Heater threw a block party, featuring ZENON, Deicha & The VuDudes, and Sinzere. The warm Chinook weather saw a packed stage for the final live music acts!
We also had a fantastic set of DJs and other performers curated internally including Paloma Negra, DJ BLKFT, DJ Spice, Aaron the DJ, and DJ Fatrok. Olympic Plaza was bursting with energy and excitement!
All Photos by Neil Zeller
Stephen Avenue – An Art and Light Walk
Teaming up with Calgary Downtown Association, we brought Chinook Blast to Stephen Ave! The Chinook Blast Art and Light walk (new this year!) saw a massive laser-projection show by Studio Luma, balloon installations by Calgary Party 50, roaming performers, and live DJs lighting up the Stephen Ave walk! Featuring an interactive installation from the Calgary Winter Design Competition, “Illumine,” festival-goers could write down messages on small wooden blocks affixed to an illuminated frame. nLITEn Tech’s Illuminated selfie walls also made an appearance giving the best Instagrammable moments!
All Photos by Neil Zeller
Night Markets
Chinook Blast saw not one, not two, but three markets all hosted in the Calgary City Hall Atrium. Over the first weekend, we had the Four Winds Indigenous Showcase and Market, featuring Alberta-based vendors, cultural and musical performances spanning multiple tribes, a fashion showcase, and more!
For the second weekend, the Asian Heritage Foundation hosted the Chinook Blast Asian Market. Packed with interactive activities such as lantern making, live drawing, and games, as well as cultural dances and a lantern parade where participants could join in, the market was so much more than a place for vendors.
Closing off Chinook Blast for the last weekend, Market Collective, a Calgary staple, came out with some fan-favourite vendors. A Valentines-themed market, Market Collective’s Broken Hearts, Friends + Lovers was the perfect place to purchase local unique artisanal goods. Featuring a variety of local DJs, the Atrium was the place to be!
Beakerhead joined in on the fun with their interactive speaker booth “Speakerhead.” Here festival-goers could share their thoughts on Chinook Blast and what they would like to see next year!
The Four Winds Indigenous Showcase and Market
The Chinook Blast Asian Market
Market Collective: Broken Hearts, Friends + Lovers
Sports
This year, Sport Calgary came out to deliver fun interactive winter sports demonstrations to get people on the ice! In addition to watching synchronized skating, figure skating, and speed skating demos, participants enjoyed curling, speedskating, and para-ice hockey tryouts! Scary Bunny was also present to get festival-goers out for some Nordic Walking.
Winter Sports at Chinook Blast
New This Year
Nitro Rallycross
Chinook Blast was thrilled to welcome Nitro Rallycross! Created by action sports icon Travis Pastrana and Nitro Circus, Nitro RX is an intense combination of rallycross and big air excitement – where cars fly and tracks thrill! Taking place over two days at the Stampede grounds, rally cars raced each other on a slippery, snow-covered track.
Snow Rodeo
A rodeo? In winter? It is Calgary after all! Canada Snowboard’s premiere event offering, the Annual Snow Rodeo FIS Snowboard World Cup, joined Chinook Blast! The world’s top slopestyle and halfpipe snowboard stars descended on Calgary’s Canada Olympic Park for a week of high-flying action. DJ C-Sik also made an appearance for the Snow Rodeo Patio Party and the halfpipe and slopestyle finals.
Nitro Rallycross – Photo by Neil Zeller
Snow Rodeo – Photo by Neil Zeller
It’s Not Over Yet!
For the last weekend of Chinook Blast, in the consideration of public and performer safety around public protests, we made the collaborative decision to postpone a few performances, including Drag on Ice and DJ Gaysnakes. Stay tuned for more information on new dates for these postponed events.
We’re also looking forward to the Ethnik Festival of Arts & Culture. A two-day festival celebrating Afro-Canadian/Caribbean culture. The festival will feature a “food war” where Culinary experts compete to make an entrée and main course in only 1.5 hours (February 24). On the main festival day, local and international acts will perform at the Telus Convention Centre including Alison Hinds, Donald Ray Johnson, Samini, Roger Mooking – and more (February 25)!
Chinook Blast truly warmed up our winter. We’re grateful to Tourism Calgary, the City of Calgary, Calgary Arts Development and Calgary Economic Development for allowing Bird Creatives to bring the vision of Chinook Blast to life! It’s truly inspiring to see how this festival has grown in just three years and we’re already ideating on how 2024’s festival will look.
As we look forward to collaboratively developing Calgary’s creative economy, our festival has shown the importance of a diversity of voices and perspectives. Platforming Indigenous, Black, Asian, and other racialized groups enrich not just our festival but our city as a whole. We’re thrilled that Chinook Blast has become a celebration of Calgary’s winter sport, art and culture!
Onto the next one!
Bird Creatives had a blast during Chinook Blast 2023! Check out all of our favourite shots of the festival!
