Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival sprouts creative competition in downtown Fredericton

Storefronts are looking extra colourful and creative in downtown Fredericton this week for the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival.

"It came about as a partnership between the music festival and Downtown Fredericton [Inc.],’ said Krista Rae, Downtown Fredericton Inc. “In order to engage our businesses and to show some support for the festival.”

Businesses are showing off their murals and window displays depicting musical themes all while showing their love for the festival next door.

"It's been really fun, this is our first year in business,” said Jess Allison, general manager of The Squeeze.

“As a new business, we really wanted to go all out with the Harvest window. It's been amazing, we've had a lot of people just love it.”

The windows were entered into a contest online, where votes were tallied by likes on Downtown Fredericton's social media page.

The contest had just 24 hours to accumulate votes.

"It's really interesting every year, we tell the businesses they can do whatever they want. There is no particular theme,” Rae said. “We just love to see the creativity and the ideas that come from each individual business.”

Some businesses collaborated with local artists, while others tackled their designs in-house.

"Myself and five other staff members painted it,” said Tasha Trefry with Victory Meat Market. “Everybody was really excited when I came to them and asked everybody was on board, anybody with any artistic ability wanted in on it.”

"I was collaborating with one of our prep guys and he used to be a tattoo artist,” said Shelise Kennedy, a pastry sous chef at Chess Piece Patisserie. “I got him to help me draw up a mural for our cronuts because that's what we're known for in Fridays and Saturdays we do cronuts and cruffins. So I decided to do a drum kit made out of cronuts.”

The contest is also about bringing the downtown community together.

"It's very welcoming, it's a sense of community between us, the residents, visitors and the festival,” Rae said.

"I took a walk yesterday and I think I seen all of them, pretty well. They're great, everybody did an amazing job,” Trefry said.

The Squeeze took home the wining votes when the contest closed Wednesday afternoon.