Thought your summer was going to be perfectly laid out months in advance for 2017? You should know better than to plan that far ahead and not expect something to happen. Without further ado, Motion Notion brings us a major change to the layout of next year’s festival season in BC, and it’s the one that every pre-planner fears most: a date change.
Motion Notion, one of Western Canada’s longest running electronic music festivals, announced the other day that they’ve changed the dates of what is now BC’s flagship festival for breaks and psytrance (and a yacht full of drum & bass if you want to get all nautical about it).
Bustin’ five knots, wind whippin’ out my coat
Formerly taking place in late July, Motion Notion was once perfectly nestled about halfway between Bass Coast and Shambhala, the two other festivals that make up the neon triangle of interior BC’s festival community. But as we all know, things change. And with MoNo moving from late July to late August, the festival is going to witness some change as well.
Now being so close to Burning Man, MoNo is going to lose out of most of the Canadian burners, as this tends to be the weekend most start their trek to the playa. There is also some overlap from the Oregon Eclipse Festival which takes place the week before, not to mention the challenge that everyone faces of doing anything for the month of August after attending Shambhala.
Pictured above: A dinosaur trying to do something during the month of August. (Taken from Shambhala disco nap contest)
But as with most major decisions, they’re usually not made in haste. While some people might take it personally that their future plans might need a little tweaking, we’re willing to bet the organizers of MoNo didn’t just throw darts at a calendar, or do it out of spite. More along the lines of something like sitting down to properly discuss the pros and cons of moving the dates of such a deeply rooted festival.
In fact, we reached out to the director of Motion Notion to hear straight from the source why the festival underwent such a change.
“It came down to an unfortunate scheduling conflict with our location. We were presented with two options: July 14 and August 24. July 14 was our first choice since it was the least impact to our attendees, but we felt that it wasn’t the right thing to have our festival on the exact same weekend as our friends at Astral Harvest’s new dates in July. We had a look at average weather patterns at the end of August and it looked like warm weather and low chances of precipitation, so that made our decision feel even better.”
– Kevin Harper, Director, Motion Notion Music Festival
With Alberta’s Astral Harvest also moving dates, the organizers of Motion Notion had little wiggle room to work with, and felt overlapping with Astral would be the wrong move. It was one of many challenges that factored into the final decision, but a choice was made and it’s one festival organizers stand by.
Although the logistics of moving a festival back an entire month is a massive challenge in itself, we’ve been told it’s actually just a small piece of the puzzle. Unfortunately as with any change that has happened throughout history, there’s going to be some resistance from the people that just want everything to stay exactly how it is for the rest of eternity. But we call those people conservatives, and conservatives are boring to party with.
Someone must have told a joke about liberals.
While there’s a chance the festival could fall back to their previous date in 2018, the opportunity this move will create for people that haven’t be able to attend before will certainly replace any numbers lost by the switch. Indeed, this will throw a wrench into some itinerary’s for 2017, but the ones who love Motion Notion will still be there all the same to show an entire new wave of first timers what MoNo is all about.
Motion Notion takes place August 24 – 28, 2017 in Golden, BC.
How do you feel about Motion Notion changing dates? Does this effect your plans for next summer? Let us know what you think by commenting below or on social media and check back soon after we get a chance to sit down and ask a few more questions about what we can expect for next year!
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