Annual three-day festival to showcase local talent
What: New Leaves Festival of Arts and Culture
When: March 6 to 8, 2025
Venues: Downtown Kelowna at BNA Burger, the Black Box Theatre, and the Centre culturel francophone de l'Okanagan
The second annual New Leaves Festival is a three-day weekend packed full of events including festival favourite, PONY! Cabaret. Planned for the weekend of March 6 to 8, the festival focuses on local artists and will celebrate Inspired Word Cafe’s (IWC) 15th Season. The three days of music, literature, and performance are situated around Kelowna’s downtown core, with events offered in both English and French.
The festival line-up kicks off at BNA Burger with IWC co-founder Rawle James headlining an open mic, and includes a night of multilingual music and storytelling, a workshop with renowned two-spirit, Oji-Cree poet and novelist Joshua Whitehead, and ends with the ever-popular PONY! Cabaret.
“Taking the idiom ‘turning over a new leaf,’ New Leaves focuses on an annually changing theme important to the Okanagan community,” explains IWC Executive Director Cole Mash.
Last year, responding to a local rise in anti-LGBTQ2SIA+ sentiment in the Okanagan and beyond, the 2024 New Leaves theme was “Queer Art as Resistance,” and featured a number of performances and workshops that celebrated queerness in the arts through drag, hip hop, poetry, punk rock, and more.
“We had such a great festival last year gathering artists from the Okanagan and across Canada to perform and put on workshops, but we are really excited for the local focus of this year’s festival,” says Mash.
In 2025, the theme is “Your Backyard.” While no literal back yards will feature, the festival wants to celebrate the vibrant literary and performance art right here in Kelowna, focussing both on local artists and celebrating Inspired Word Cafe’s 15th Season as a fulcrum of the arts scene.
“I think people don’t always realize how much amazing talent we have in Kelowna. You don’t have to go to Vancouver or Montreal to see a great show,” Mash says. “Things have been tough for the arts since the pandemic, so IWC thought we could use the platform of New Leaves to showcase the incredible community we have right here in our own (figurative) backyards.”
PONY! Cabaret, now in its ninth year, expects to sell out tickets fast, so get yours early.
“We have great guest performers at Pony again this year,” says Michael V. Smith, the cabaret organizer, “from local talent to guests coming all the way from Nelson, Calgary, and Portland, Oregon. Plus, Erin Scott and I are planning some ridiculous costumes for our hosting duties as Mister Sister.”
Events are planned at the BNA Burger, the Black Box Theatre, and the Centre culturel francophone de l'Okanagan. For a full list of events, show times and to purchase ticketes, visit https://www.inspiredwordcafe.com/events.
Inspired Word Cafe and The New Leaves Festival are supported by the City of Kelowna, the Government of Canada, the Province of BC, Espaces Francophones, Valley First (a division of First West Credit Union), the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies and the Okanagan School of Education at UBC Okanagan, and BNA Brewing Co.
Media Contact: Britt MacKenzie-Dale, britt@inspiredwordcafe.com
Ms. Cookie LaWhore and Erin Scott hosting the 2024 PONY! Cabaret. Photography by Kathy Shaw.
Moe Clark and Ahau Marino performing at the 2024 New Leaves Festival. Photography by Kathy Shaw.
About IWC
Inspired Word Café Society (IWC) is a community arts-organization that provides accessible, low-cost literary and performance art programming (including events, education, and mentorship) for local writers, performers, and word lovers from many walks of life, including youth and other equity-deserving groups across the Okanagan.
We believe that participation in the literary and performing arts is not only a right for everyone, both as consumers and to creators, but is also a vital part of the creative and emotional well-being of our local community.
Find out more at www.InspiredWordCafe.com