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# The Vancouver Folk Music Festival looks at dissolving
- URL: https://www.rhythmchanges.ca/vancouver-folk-fest-dissolving/
- Published: 2023-01-20T14:00:28.000Z
- Updated: 2025-12-10T22:52:18.000Z
- Description: The 2023 festival is canceled, and the non-profit is thinking to dissolve for good.
- Author: Will Chernoff
- Tags: Subscriber Fridays

This year marks 45 years since the Vancouver Folk Music Festival's founding. My connections to the festival go back to 1987, almost a decade before I was born, when Spirit of the West – featuring [my friend and former bandmate Jay](https://www.rhythmchanges.ca/j-knutson-early-spirit-reopens-ep-13/) – played there. Now, a chapter closes: the 2023 festival is canceled, and the non-profit society plans to dissolve for good.

(Coastal Jazz [is on](https://www.rhythmchanges.ca/townhall-future-festival-board/) a better but still too-interesting trajectory.)

The media outlets had their stories out on Tuesday when the news dropped, so you might not be hearing it here first. It's sad news. When we took a look at some [2022 VFMF artists in this Update from last year](https://www.rhythmchanges.ca/folk-fest-jazz-2022/), I didn't see any trouble on the horizon...

Neither did they!

From the festival's Annual General Meeting minutes of last year, March 15, 2022: 

> **"How is the Festival’s overall financial health?** The society is financially strong as we received strong support from grant funding. We not only paid off our debt from the 2019 festival, we have a healthy surplus towards putting on the 2022 festival with significant unknowns."

They also have a Financial Report document available on their website next to those last-year minutes. In the document, they claim that they almost broke even on their 2022 budget, but then they get to the heart of the issue:

> "The Festival does not have the cash reserves to pay the upfront costs of suppliers. The current estimated budget for the 2023 year shows a projected loss of -$460,600\. The loss is primarily due to a loss in grant revenue from one time Covid support grants received in 2021, that won’t be renewed; adding back an essential 3rd full time staff position; and inflation costs\[...\]"

That's the festival's story: everything's too expensive now. From their FAQs and answers webpage, emphasis theirs:

> "We would require an additional $500k (approx) in funding EVERY YEAR moving forward to produce the festival with today's pricing."

In other words, last year's festival *also* should have been $500k underwater, but it wasn't, because of a couple things including "one time Covid support grants".

And yet they felt "financially strong" going into it! Did they have too much tunnel vision in trying to get a 2022 festival done, or what happened here?

Why don't they cancel only 2023 and then come back?Well, this is the probable logic behind dissolving the society:

- if there is no 2023 festival, we won't have any revenue
- sure we'd slash production costs by doing no festival, but then we wouldn't have any new revenue to pay our staff, overhead *etc*.
- then we're in a downward spiral

Again, it feels like tunnel vision. I worked for a non-profit less than 10% of the size of this one, and even we had enough contingency funds to pay staff through a few tough spots.

I don't have enough access to keep digging into this story right now, and I have my economic views and biases, but here's my takeaway: if this non-profit dissolves and a business or an informal group fills its space, that *could* be great.

The community around this festival will go on even if the non-profit doesn't. I reject the urge for doom and gloom around any possible wave of established organizations dropping like flies. The festival space is all about the audience – the performers know this – and we're still here. 

Maybe we're due for a fresh initiative, like what the current society's founding was in the late 70s. Things wouldn't be quite the same today, but as any folkie will tell you, they never are.