'Huge lineups': Mosaic festival's return a massive success in Regina

Mosaic - a Festival of Cultures returned for the first time since 2019 this past weekend and all-in-all was a massive success, according to the festival’s chair Nish Prasad.

Prasad said while official numbers won’t be known until later in the week, all things indicate they may have sold more passports to the festival than ever before.

“I was trying to get feedback from pavilions and by Friday evening the feedback that I was receiving was that numbers in two days are what [pavilions] would see after three days. So that was great to hear,” Prasad said.

Prasad said some of the guests who attended the festival in 2023 included a city councillor from Barrie, Ont. who plans to present the festival’s concept to the city at a future meeting, as well as families from North Dakota and parts of Alberta.

“People were really excited to see Mosaic back,” Prasad said. “You could really see on Regina’s streets with the amount of traffic, there was quite a bit for those three days.”

Prasad was also happy to report that despite the large number of festival-goers, the whole event went incident free with no calls to Regina police for assistance at any of the 17 pavilions.

“Mosaic is a family event where we have offerings for all ages and it was great to see that it was incident free. That is very important to us,” Prasad said.

Prasad said support was also tremendous sponsorship wise with TD Bank Group joining as a presenting sponsor.

“I was chatting with the sponsors and they were very excited to be a part of this event, they really saw the benefit of being a part of this festival and we are already having discussions about how we can set up partnerships for next year,” Prasad said.

CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC

With four years passing since the last Mosaic, Prasad admitted it was hard to know how successful this year would be.

“There was definitely some nervousness among some of the pavilion members and they were not very sure how it would go or what to expect,” Prasad said.

“But I think the way it went beat everyone’s expectations.”

Prasad said some of the pavilions were so busy they even ran out of food.

“It was a great problem to have,” Prasad said with a chuckle.

The Hellenic Pavilion at Mosaic had lots of great entertainment and Greek food. (GarethDillistone/CTVNews)

Prasad said pavilions were constantly coming to the Regina Multicultural Council’s (RMC) head office to get more passports to sell because they were continuously running out.

“They were blown away by the number of passports they were going through at their pavilions.”

After its successful return in 2023, Prasad said they are very excited to begin planning for next year’s festival.

“We are very excited to start preparations for next year and I think next time we will see more pavilions join Mosaic,” Prasad said.

FINANCIAL GAINS

Prasad said they are also taking comfort in the fact that the festival was able to help out RMC members who had lost a lot of momentum finically while the festival was on hiatus.

“We acknowledge and respect that some of the organizations were struggling financially. Not being able to host Mosaic for three years, as much as it is an opportunity for organizations to proudly showcase their culture it also supports organizations financially and they generate revenue to run their organizations,” Prasad said.

Prasad is confident the success of this year’s festival will help many organizations become financially sustainable once again.

Mosaic was first established in 1967, the festival ran annually until 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic forced its cancellation for that year as well as 2021 and 2022.