Live music, vendors and children’s activities drew crowds to Tipperary Park for the second annual On Your Block multicultural festival.
Efe Fruci, who founded the event in 2022, said she’s had great feedback about this year’s event, which was held on Saturday, July 8 in Tipperary Park and in front of New Westminster City Hall.
“It was a really great turnout,” she said. “Folks loved the music; they loved the diversity. They truly enjoyed the fact we were able to gather the community together.”
On the Block included more than 50 vendors and food trucks, a beer garden, and children’s activities such as a dance party, scavenger hunt and face-painting.
“Attendance-wise, it was very, very jam-packed,” Fruci said. “We had people come in at different times throughout the day.”
The festival also included entertainment on two stages – the main stage on Fourth Street in Tipperary Park and a smaller stage at the foot of the step of city hall. Performers came from around the world, including France, the U.S., Nigeria, the U.K. and Canada.
“Every single artist got a glowing review,” Fruci said.
Fruci said a lot of festival-goers loved the performance by New West-based Robert Billard & The Cold Calls.
“There was a huge turnout for him because he’s a huge staple within the New Westminster community,” she said. “That was such a beautiful thing.”
Fruci said this year’s festival was “a great, successful day” but she’s already contemplating a couple of changes she hopes to introduce next year, including working with the city to allow site-wide licensing. Rather than a beer garden, she said some folks told her they’d prefer to be able to walk around the festival site with a beer to enjoy the day’s music and other offerings.
In March, New Westminster city council supported a site-wide liquor licensing program for special events, which allows liquor to be consumed throughout an event site rather than in beer gardens. The city considers site-wide licensing for events that have an established track record of two or more years.
“Hopefully next year we will be able to have that as an option,” Fruci said.
