3-day music festival planned for Vancouver's Stanley Park

The producers of the Squamish Valley Music Festival and the Celebration of Light fireworks show are planning on launching a new music event in Vancouver for the summer of 2018.

The festival, called Skookum, is being planned for Sept. 7 for three days at Stanley Park's Brockton Field complex, with room for up to 20,000 people per day, say event organizers.

Paul Runnals, the festival's director, says it took several months to obtain a permit from the park board.

"I started talking with the park board in April of 2016. So, it was about 16 or 17 months of working through various approvals and engagement with a wide range of folks including, of course, people like the aquarium and the marina."

Runnals who is a partner at Brandlive, the production agency for the event, says the relationship the agency has created is also what made this size event possible.

"We've worked very closely with both the city and the park board for a number of years on some of the other major projects we do.

"So, for instance, we produced the Celebration of Light Fireworks. We've been doing it now for seven years. We do the Canada Day celebrations down to Canada Place. We produced the Sarah Mclachlan Voices in the Park in Stanley Park at Brockton, the same site we are using. "

Runnals adds that there has been a shift in the festival landscape which can explain the disappearance of events like Squamish and a new emerging trend of city-based festivals where people can come and go and still sleep in their beds.

"I think the timing was right and I think that there is an appetite from the park board and from the city to see a marquee signature event like this land in Vancouver."

The Vancouver Park Board confirms the permit was granted July 15.