Canada: 2024 Celtic Colours International Festival returns to Cape Breton starting Oct 11

A unique celebration of Cape Breton Island’s living traditional culture, the Celtic Colours International Festival runs for nine days to showcase hundreds of events and activities taking place in communities all over the Island.

Leanne Birmingham-Beddow, CEO of the festival, said the festival had seen difficulty in recent years first with the pandemic and then a hurricane.

“This year I think everything’s in place and the colours are going to be great too,” Birmingham-Beddow said. “Cape Breton Island is always a wonderful backdrop for all of the wonderful music and cultural experiences.”

Celtic Colours Festival’s enormous impact on the Cape Breton tourism industry according to an audience and visitor survey was conducted last year with the help of Cape Breton University’s World Tourism Institute, said Birmingham-Beddow.

“It’s pretty amazing,” Birmingham-Beddow said, adding: “Last year for instance, about 66 percent of our attendees were from off-island.” She said the data they collected showed $16 million in direct audience spending for 2023.

Birmingham-Beddow added that according to the festival data indications that people who attend the festival enjoy it enough to come back, with 35 to 40 percent of attendees returning five times or more.

“There’s 50 concerts and we’ve got a tremendous number of wonderful musicians,” Birmingham-Beddow said, adding that the festival finale includes two acts by Grammy-Award winner Carlos Núñez and Julie Fowlis who sang as a Disney Princess in the 2012 film, “Brave”.

(Reporting by Asha Bajaj)