Renfrew Ravine Moon Festival celebrates community and creativity
Still Moon Arts Society artistic director Carmen Rosen realized her vision of a lantern procession through the park
Renfrew Ravine Moon Festival.
Carmen Rosen.
Still Moon Arts Society presents Renfrew Ravine Moon Festival to September 21
CARMEN ROSEN MOVED into the Renfrew-Collingwood neighbourhood in 2000 and quickly became enamoured with the area’s ravine. She remembers how there was a ravine committee, a group of volunteers who would gather twice a year to pick up litter that was tossed in the park—and how they would fill up big dumpsters full of junk every time.
“I was quite horrified to see how much garbage was being thrown in the ravine,” Rosen says in a phone interview with Stir. “I wondered if maybe there was something I could do as an artist so people didn’t throw so much stuff into it. I wanted to do something to help people appreciate it.”
She had a vision of people gathering for a lantern procession along Still Creek, which runs through the ravine. And so the Renfrew Ravine Moon Festival was born. Rosen is the founding artistic director of the Still Moon Arts Society, which produces the festival. It turns 22 this year.
The fest consists of several community events leading up to the main day of celebration, which takes place on the weekend closest to the fall equinox. This year, it’s on September 21.
Registration is open now for workshops in advance of the main festival day. There are activities that entail making salmon lanterns and moon cakes, in the spirit of Mid-Autumn Festival, as well as guided tours that explore the history and wildlife of Renfrew Ravine. On September 14, there’s Tea, Tunes and Verse in the Garden, with spoken word, music, and dance performances. Walks along the area’s outdoor labyrinth will take place on September 17 accompanied by live music.
The September 21 event is a moving festival, Rosen explains, with events starting at 4 pm at Slocan Park, which is next to the 29th Avenue SkyTrain station. There will be live music and booths making up a harvest fair, along with competitions for things like largest tomato or biggest squash, complete with prizes.
From there, as the sun starts to set, a giant moon lantern is transported across the field and a band starts playing as people walk along the eastern edge of Renfrew Ravine. As nighttime falls, people descend into the ravine with hand-made lanterns—hundreds if not thousands of them, Rosen says—with different musical acts playing along the way. Plus, 55 artists have made lantern installations that will be put up streamside.
To bring the festivities to a close, there’s a performance from 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm called the Consciousness of Streams, which is the final segment of a three-year series contemplating the lost streams buried beneath the Renfrew-Collingwood neighbourhood. It features community performers aged five to 65 who have been working with choreographer Isabelle Kirouac; there will also be shadow puppetry by Mind of a Snail and stilt dancing. In all, the fest features more than 100 local artists and performers.
“It’s so beautiful; it’s just so, so beautiful,” Rosen says. “It started as a way to get neighbours together to walk next to the ravine at night and discover a place of beauty. It’s very inspiring and very moving how much it means to the community. We’ve lost a lot of our funding—we’ve lost 30 percent of our funding, so the community is really coming together and there are a lot of people volunteering. We rely on volunteers. It celebrates the community and the environment and our local creativity in a way that honours Renfrew Ravine and Still Creek.
“We do a lot of outdoor projects so we were able to keep running during COVID,” Rosen adds. “People have so much gratitude because it [the festival] got them outside and it was a lifesaver in terms of connection with their neighbours. They felt like they belonged on the land and had a relationship with nature and said how beneficial it was to their mental health. It’s beautiful as art but it’s also saving them from the trauma we’ve been going through with climate change, the pandemic, and the alienation of modern society. We hear over and over how important our work is.” 
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