the Better Reasons Festival recap

Kids on TV, on their MySpace blog, have posted a recap of the Better Reasons Festival.

The festival combined the talents of Toronto record labels Blocks Recording Club, Fuzzy Logic, and Out of This Spark for a three day event at the Tranzac and featured such acts as
Prarie Cat, Peter Project, Lilly Frost, Laura Barrett, Forest City Lovers, Nif-D, the Phonemes, Matias Rosenberg. Kids on TV (amoung many others) along with work by Toronto homeless and street involved youth, a BBQ, free bike tune ups from the Bike Pirates and clips from the feature length mutant puppet film Scraps From Boil Street (currently in production). All of this to raise funds for Sketch - an charitable arts organization that works with homeless and street involved youth in Toronto.

According to Kids on TV the whole thing was a resounding success.

Well the festival is over and done now. It was a good opportunity for our record co-op Blocks, and Toronto labels, Fuzzy Logic & Out of This Spark to work together. It was great for us to combine efforts to help out Sketch. An artist studio for homeless and street-involved youth that I teach a dance program out of.

It was awesome to have artists from Sketch perform on the stage alongside artists from Blocks Recording Club. One of them said "I've never performed on a stage this big before". It was good to have those communities come together. See the kids freak out to Nifty's set and fall in love with the Phonemes.

It was particularly rewarding to do this apart from NXNE. Which is a giant music festival / industry schmooze & snooze fest. It is good to be working with people who resist that and instead throw a fundraiser for a rad organization in the city. Thanks to everyone who supported and came out.

The event raised $1000.00. It will be donated to sketch and will go towards a recording compilation. The artists who use sketch have been recording music at the studio located there, and have wanted to put out a compilation of their work. With the money we raised, they can. Thank you!

Congratulations to everyone involved. Hopefully Better Reasons will become an annual tradition. While I can't see it ever being a threat to NXNE, it is a nice addition to that weekend - giving people a chance to hear great music and give something back at the same time.