The Vancouver Folk Music Festival looks at dissolving

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 – 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 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, 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.