Fin MacDonald

This time of year I am swamped with preparation work for the Evolve Music and Awareness Festival. Evolve was conceived over 12 years ago by my close friend Joe MacEachern, and the Evolve team is now lead by Jonas Colter. Jonas has transformed the festival into a world class event in recent years, and it has recently been voted the #1 music festival in Canada by the listeners of CBC Radio 3. I have been volunteering with the Evolve Festival for 7 years now, and it has been a very satisfying experience. Evolve has strived since the beginning to be as environmentally friendly as possible. This was not as mainstream 12 years ago as it is today.

My work with the Evolve Festival traditionally involves making sure that all the Artists, VIP, Vendors, Medics, and of course Staff have their passes and security clearance, and working the gate to greet them on Friday. Preparing the backstage passes alone takes over 2 weeks of work in the evenings leading up to the show. I am also always available to help others with whatever they need leading up to the show. This year I plan to take it a step further and use some of my new skills to conduct a full energy assessment of the Evolve Festival. This will be a particularly interesting task for me because it is so different than any other energy audit I have done. Using energy sustainably fits excellently with Evolve’s environmental philosophy.

The festival won’t be all work and no fun of course, and there are over 120 different acts performing this year. For more information on the Evolve Festival vist http://www.evolvefestival.com.