Although it may be hard to believe when looking out your window, festival season is coming around the corner again. New Brunswick is home to more music and art festivals than you can shake your booty at, one of the more popular ones being the award-winning Future Forest. Now take off your snowsuits and get your boogie on with Pineo & Loeb while we watch a recap of last year’s event.
Set in the middle of—you guessed it—the forest, the annual festival acts as a gathering for anyone looking to let go for a weekend and celebrate the people and the nature surrounding them. Largely focused on electronic music, the festival also showcases the artwork and craft of many talented, local artists and vendors, and offers a variety of workshops where festival goers can learn a number of skills and practices.
With only six years under its belt, Future Forest is undoubtedly one of the area’s fastest growing music festivals.
The 2017 event was the festival’s first year at its new location, moving from Wark’s Point to Sheffield, New Brunswick (half an hour North of Fredericton), allowing for a more ticket sales and a higher attendance rate, not to mention a little peace and quiet for the neighbours.
“Last year was amazing. It was such a time constraint to get the stages done and to try and match our new environment with what future foresters have come to expect of us. We had over 140 Volunteers and staff to help make that happen!
Our new teams included a roaming medical group that really helped to ensure grounds safety and last year we were 100% incident free so we were glad our focus on harm reduction and safety was so well received last year,” says Danielle Oleshko, the festival’s volunteer coordinator.
Last year’s headliners included Far Too Loud, Ill Phil, Truth, Abstrakt Sonance, Chuurch, DJ Madd, Klassik, PartyWave, Pigeon Hole, Pineo & Loeb, Soohan, Wet Paint, and Whitebear among dozens more.
Future Forest organizers have yet to announce their festival line-up for 2018, but suggest that they’ll have some very exciting news in the coming weeks.
“We are still waiting to hear back from some of the international artists we reached out too, but we’re hoping to have everything finalized for release within the next few weeks,” she adds.
“I’ve heard rumours of some west-coast talent and UK artists…I’m keeping my fingers crossed it goes through and we can expose our audience to some amazing new sounds and art, which Future Forest has become so well known for. We really love exploring the diversity of EDM; being able to showcase world-class talent, mixed in with our own local acts, within a forest of artistic vision has always been a great representation of that artistic diversity. The forest is essentially a collaboration of art for all of your senses!”