The vision of this festival is to connect our community with the beating heart here - our 2 beautiful rivers. We proudly showcase local organizations doing such great work in our community in imagining an offering to bring their supporters to engage more with these local rivers.

Our Theory of Change? - We protect what we love, and this festival is designed to help us fall in love with our rivers over and over again. Thereby inspiring our community members to engage in the protection of the waters that nourish us.

The theme of the 11th 2Rivers Festival is “Reaching the River’s Edge”, and this theme arose from us asking ourselves these questions:

Whose stories are not being told? How can we centre and highlight the experiences of those on the margins, reach past our usual audience and create spaces that are welcoming and engaging to folks that our festival hasn’t intentionally catered to or made space for?

In deciding on this theme, we also wanted to highlight the urgency of the climate crisis that we are living in. We are at the edge, at the precipice and deep in the fire of the climate crisis. We need action. The planet needs nourishing, the waters need nourishing. The waters need us and we need the waters more than ever before.

We are inviting you to be creative and consider hosting an event to help us celebrate our 11 years of the 2Rivers Festival. Our theme this year is "Reaching the River’s Edge". What does this inspire from you or your organization?

We are open to events in a variety of categories and invite you to be as imaginative as possible in whatever interpretation of the theme feels best for you and suits your organization’s offerings.

Please read through this document for more info about hosting an event.

SUBMIT YOUR EVENT HERE.

Guelph’s river system is its most important ecological, cultural and recreational feature. The annual 2Rivers Festival is a forum to showcase and celebrate our two beautiful rivers and to engage our whole community in imagining how each one of us can become a vital participant in the regeneration of our river ecosystems.

We are pleased to partner each year with a variety of community organizations throughout May and June to celebrate our cherished rivers, the Speed and the Eramosa. With many public events including music, indigenous river knowledge, hidden streams, art, rowing, yoga, river creatures, hikes, bikes and trees, you are sure to find a variety of experiences that you and your family will enjoy. All of our events are FREE!

Our hope is that your participation in the Festival will encourage you to advocate for the protection and conservation of our water and our rivers. Your help will ensure that future generations will have the same opportunities to enjoy clean water and our healthy rivers all year long.

The Festival is a project of the Wellington Water Watchers, a non-profit organization dedicated to the protection, restoration and conservation of source water in Guelph-Wellington. 

Our goal of the 2Rivers Festival is to celebrate the waters while aiming to spark an interest in furthering the protection of the waters that nourish us.