Cranking out a new kind of show

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This article was published 25/06/2018 (2970 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The organizers of a new festival are getting wound up to celebrate folk music, art, and education this fall.

Leonard Podolak, the executive director of Home Routes/Chemin Chez Nous and son of Winnipeg Folk Festival founder Mitch Podolak, announced the first annual Winnipeg Crankie Festival on June 19.

The three-day event will take place at Crescent Fort Rouge United Church (525 Wardlaw Ave.) from Sept. 21 to 23  and is billed as an interactive and collaborative festival experience that combines the old-timey storytelling of “crankies” with contemporary folk music.

The festival is also a fundraiser and launch event for Home Routes’ new FolkSchool project, Podolak explained.

“Crankies marry visual art, storytelling and music, and the FolkSchool is all about inclusion and connection,” Podolak said.

“For me the connection is that it’s a way to (be inclusive). We’re going to invite visual artists to collaborate with musicians to make crankies about their songs, and we’re going to invite youth groups and arts organizations to help make the crankies, and it’s a way for audiences to be involved on and off the stage and participating in a way that truly will make the festival what it is.”

A crankie is a simple device with two spools on a frame that are turned to display a series of moving images narrating a story.

For the festival, Podolak has scheduled Smithsonian Folkways recording artists Anna and Elizabeth, who incorporate crankies into their set, to perform and host workshops, along with Sue Truman, an Appalachian musician and veteran crankie maker. Local acts The Small Glories, Del Barber, Scott Nolan, and Red Moon Road, among others, will also perform.

Over the course of the weekend, Crescent Fort Rouge United Church will become a “freak show” with workshops, concerts and collaborative art projects taking over the sanctuary, Andrew Galloway said.

Galloway, the director of the new FolkSchool, said a festival rooted in folk tradition is a fitting way for Home Routes to begin its next phase.

Since 2007, Home Routes has connected musicians with volunteers in communities across Canada to host folk artists in their homes.

“Part of the original mandate for Home Routes was to provide more work and fair pay for musicians and enhance the infrastructure in Canada,” Galloway said. “I think what FolkSchool does is it not only creates more musicians, but also more of an infrastructure for musicians to do workshops in community centres, in seniors’ homes, and if they let us into the correctional facilities, we’ll put on workshops there too.”

Initially, Home Routes has partnered with Seven Oaks School Division and Ralph Brown Community Centre to run equal access summer camps and evening and weekend programming for youth and seniors. The organization is looking for at least five more partners to host the school and build the folk community in Winnipeg.

“Music is a great tool to enhance confidence in young people, and bring out the confidence in young people that may be buried under other life realities,” Podolak said. “Our goal is to make it so that money isn’t the thing that prevents you from coming.”

For more information about the Winnipeg Crankie Festival and Home Routes FolkSchool go to homeroutes.ca