Lucknow - Music in the Fields

Lucknow is a little village with a big heart and an even bigger summer music festival. From Aug. 27-29, Music in the Fields (MitF) will be returning to Lucknow for its 18th year of musical fundraising. This year’s festival will feature the musical stylings of Matthew Good, Finger Eleven, Corb Lund, Elle King and more. 

 

As always, the big event is expected to bring thousands of campers, concertgoers, volunteers and music fans to town for three days of celebration. What began years ago in a local soccer field has grown into a sprawling event held at ‘Graceland,’ a former cow pasture that became the festival’s permanent home in 2016.

 

The festival is organized entirely by volunteers through the Lucknow Kinsmen to raise money for Cystic Fibrosis Canada and various local causes. “It’s been a labour of love for 18 years now,” said Cheryl Johnston, one of the festival’s longtime organizers and marketing leads. “My husband’s a Kinsman, so I’ve been helping here and there from the beginning.” 

 

While the Kinsmen never set out to run a large-scale music festival, the whole team has risen to the occasion. As the festival has expanded over the years, so have the roles of volunteers like Johnston, who has gone from helping hand to head of volunteer scheduling to lead marketer. “Around 2016, when we moved from the soccer fields to Graceland, I took over the volunteer scheduling role. Then in 2019, I shifted into marketing.” 

 

Despite its growth, Johnston says the event has worked hard to maintain that welcoming, small town atmosphere. “We consider ourselves a big festival with a small-town feel,” she explained. “We’re not trying to get 20- or 40,000 people through the gate. Last year we had about 8,500 people there, which was a perfect amount - enough to fill the space, but not feel overwhelming.”

That balance has become one of the festival’s biggest draws. Fans return year after year not just for the music, but for the sense of familiarity and community that surrounds the event.“Now that we’re 18 years in, you’ve got people coming who met their spouse at Music in the Fields, and now they’re bringing their kids,” Johnston said. “People come with the whole family. Generations come year after year after year.”

 

Music, of course, remains at the centre of it all. The booking process for each year’s lineup begins almost immediately after the previous festival wraps up. “We start the artist booking process a year in advance,” Johnston explained. “Our talent booker is really good at keeping a pulse on what’s happening in the industry, who has albums coming out, who’s available. We try to get a unique group of people together that aren’t necessarily playing in the area.”

 

That matters in Huron-Bruce, where major touring acts do not always make regular stops. “Most people have to drive to Toronto or London to see a big show,” Johnston pointed out.

 

Alongside headliners and touring performers, the festival continues to showcase local talent. “We really get a great response from our audience for all the local bands that come,” she said. Past local acts have included big names like Owen Riegling, who famously got his start playing in the MitF campground.

 

For many visitors, the vibrant camping culture has evolved into one of the biggest draws of the MitF weekend. “We have campers come as early as Wednesday and stay through till Sunday,” Johnston pointed out. The grounds now feature more than 1,750 campsites, and they tend to sell out fast. For MitF 2026, each and every campsite was already claimed by mid-February, so mark your calendars for next year!

 

In addition to music and merriment, MitF also boasts all kinds of enjoyable entertainment geared towards keeping festivalgoers engaged throughout the weekend, including food vendors, games, a beer tent and campground decorating competitions. 

 

One of the festival’s newer additions has become especially popular. “We’ve had great success the last couple of years doing these individual and team games throughout the weekend that we call ‘The Sepoy Games’,” Johnston explained. “It’s something for people to do with their friends and family, get them off the campsites, and give them a different experience than just coming to a music festival.”

 

The event’s scale requires an enormous amount of behind-the-scenes co-ordination. Roughly 300 volunteers help throughout festival weekend, handling everything from parking and registration to cleanup and bar service. “We have a lot of volunteers that come year after year after year because they love to participate,” Johnston said. “Depending on how many hours they do, it goes towards the cost of their ticket.”

 

Setup begins roughly a week before opening day. Fencing goes up around the grounds, campsites are marked individually using GPS technology, stages arrive, tents are assembled and crews begin transforming the rolling property into a temporary festival village.

 

And once the final encore wraps up, the process reverses almost immediately, until Graceland has been returned to its pastoral glory. “Usually by Monday or Tuesday, the fencing is down, the stage is being taken down and within a week you would never know anything was there,” Johnston said.

 

Cleanup itself has become part of the festival’s community impact. Local Grade 8 students and their families help sort recycling and tidy the grounds after the event, using the proceeds from returned cans and bottles to support graduation trips. “It’s really full circle,” she said. “It’s good for the kids because it helps them respect the grounds and understand what it takes to clean up after an event.”

 

Since the festival began, the Lucknow Kinsmen have raised more than $2 million for charitable initiatives and community projects throughout the region. “Our motto for MitF is ‘uniting generations for community betterment,’” Johnston explained. “People come and have a great weekend, and then that money goes back into hospitals, schools and other community initiatives.”

 

Funds raised through the festival have supported playgrounds, breakfast programs, hospital equipment and local healthcare

recruitment initiatives. One of the Kinsmen’s newest and most ambitious projects has been the construction of a new daycare facility in Lucknow. “They had a waiting list of almost 100 children that they couldn’t accommodate,” Johnston recalled. “So we joined forces.”

 

The building opened in January and now serves roughly 80 children, both as a daycare and a space for before-and-after-school programming. The only exception is MitF weekend, when the children are given the week off so the daycare can be used as a green room for visiting artists. 

 

For visitors planning their first trip to Lucknow, Johnston recommends doing a little homework beforehand. “We have a Music in the Fields app,” she said. “It has the maps, schedules, GPS campsite information, artist times and all the details people need.”

Festivalgoers are also encouraged to take advantage of one of Music in the Fields’ most unique features - the ability to come and go throughout the weekend. “We like to promote local tourism,” Johnston explained. “People can go downtown, grab coffee, visit local shops, get gas or whatever they need. Free shuttle buses run between the grounds, parking areas and downtown Lucknow throughout the event. 

 

At its heart, Johnston believes the festival’s enduring success comes down to something simple: community. “We’re all volunteers that have regular day jobs,” she said. “But once the crowd’s out there cheering and having a good time, it makes all the effort worthwhile.”

 

For a few days every August, that sense of togetherness transforms a quiet corner of Huron-Kinloss into one of Ontario’s most spirited summer destinations - a place where music, camping, friendship and community all meet in the field to have a good time for a good cause. www.musicinthefields.ca  Graceland, 579 Walter St, Lucknow