Electronic music festival Motion Notion Festival is moving to Merritt this year, and will no longer be held at Golden’s Beaverfoot Lodge.
“It absolutely breaks my heart to leave the Golden area, and I hope we can return at some point in the future,” said Motion Notion director Kevin Harper.
The Motion Notion team has been searching for a new location, as the festival dates quickly approach, and have settled on hosting at Coldwater Fields in Merritt, B.C.
“We were extremely fortunate to have the support of the festival community on our side, and we received blessings from both Bass Coast and Rockin’ River festivals to allow us use.”
The process of moving the festival to a new location in such short notice was stressful, but Harper said that in this frustrating situation, they would rather look forwards instead of backwards.
Tickets for the festival have been on sale for quite some time already. Harper says Motion Notion will be implementing a new ride share site to help people get to the festival who might not otherwise be able to attend because of the change in location, and vehicle fees for parking on site will be waived. The tickets this year are also being sold through Showpass, which has an easy-to-use system for transferring tickets to a new purchaser if necessary. Tickets remain nonrefundable, but Harper says Motion Notion is trying to make the festival as accessible as possible, and also alleviate some of the complications from the changes.
A majority of ticket purchases that have been bought already come from Golden’s surrounding area.
“We tried every possible way to keep in within Golden and surrounding region,” Harper said. “Unfortunately, nothing panned out for us in such a short timeframe.”
Harper explained that a new property manager at Beaverfoot Lodge, east of Golden, informed organizers that they would not be able to host their event in the location it has been in past years.
“They listed some impossible demands,” Harper said. “A lot of red flags went up for us.”
The new location in Merritt features a river valley, open pastures, and a lot of trees, meaning Motion Notion will be able to stick with their stage plans and move forward with the festival.
“It’s seriously gorgeous,” Harper said.
Organizers looked into hosting the event as close to Golden as they could, but were unable to find accommodation nearby that could accommodate the large-scale event.
“We did the best we could without cancelling the event,” Harper said. “We understand there is going to be some frustration, and rightly so, for us too. We were dealt a bad set of cards.”
As the news rolls out about the location change, Harper said it is going to be only positive attitudes moving forward, with the launch of the lineup, and finalization of details at the new site.
“We’r keeping on the positive. It’s going to be an interesting couple of days,” he said.
Motion Notion will be posting the news on their website and Facebook group and event pages to let people know of the changes. They have been busy updating the website and tickets to reflect the new location.
Beaverfoot Lodge was unavailable for comment at this time, and the website states it is temporarily closed for annual maintenance.
The Motion Notion lineup will be posted tomorrow. Go to their website www.motionnotion.com, or go to their Facebook page Motion Notion Festival (official) to see who will perform at this year’s festival.
