Edmonton is known as Canada’s Festival City but producers say it’s been a struggle lately to hold onto that identity.
According to some organizers, the rising costs of operating events have put the arts in jeopardy.
One festival has announced they won’t be returning next summer.
The Edmonton Blues Festival said it will be taking a pause in 2025 due to high operating costs. The group says since they’ve had to relocate to another venue, production costs have risen by 40 to 60 per cent.
The festival usually operates at Hawrelek Park, but the park is in the middle of a three-year planned closure to undergo refurbishment work.
“Combined with decreasing sponsorship and lagging ticket sales as blues fans deal with these same economic pressures, we are in a position where raising ticket prices to the level required to make our festival sustainable would also make it unavailable to many Blues Hounds,” Edmonton Blues Festival producer Cam Hayden said in a statement posted on their website.
The statement noted that economic pressures are affecting other festivals in Edmonton as well.
“Many more festivals are facing this economic reality and closing their doors or scaling back significantly,” the statement added.
Christy Morin, executive director of Arts on the Ave., said she’s disappointed to hear the blues festival will not be returning next summer.
Morin says she understands the struggles of running a festival in our current economic climate; she produces the Kaleido Family Arts Festival and the Deep Freeze Byzantine Winter Festival in the Alberta Avenue District.
The annual events bring artists, performers, food and more to the district. Morin says they’ve been struggling too.
“We are trying our best. We are looking for different sponsors, asking and trying to recreate and reshape and lean out a bit to still do the festival,” she explained.
There’s no admission, and that’s important to organizers. They want to bring people who live on Alberta Avenue together and help revitalize the area.
“We want to make it completely accessible to our community. It’s really important about the vibrancy of this area of Edmonton because it’s been often a neglected area and we’re trying to find a way to bring it back,” she explained.
Morin says inflation has really hit the arts community. The Kaleido Family Arts Festival has experienced a $30,000 deficit for the past two years.
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“How many years can you handle deficits before you have to start thinking ‘Is it going to continue’?” she asked.
“Knowing that we are a cultural city – we are a festival city – we need the city to find new partners for us too and to step up and give more money to the Edmonton Arts Council,” she explained.
Earlier this year, organizers of the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival said the event is struggling financially and that without immediate help, the future of the festival will be very different.
The organization had launched a fundraiser and put out a call to the community to donate to or sponsor the festival, or for people to volunteer their time to help keep the popular summer festival afloat. Otherwise, the scale of the event would have been cut down by one-third.
Edmonton City Councillor Andrew Knack says he’s disappointed to hear of annual festivals at risk. He believes the events have become an institution in the city.
He says it’s something that people become accustomed to and expect.
“In a way, we take a lot of these festivals for granted. When you hear news like this, it is that sort of reminder that unfortunately, it’s hard to make these happen,” Knack explained.
Knack is encouraging residents who are able to do so to donate and support local events.
He says the city should look at increasing funds in the next four-year budget outlook, however, those funds can’t be raised anytime soon due to budget shortfalls.
The councillor is calling for changes to the Alberta Traffic Safety Act, explaining that one of the biggest costs for festivals is policing for things like traffic management.
Changes to the Traffic Safety Act, he explained, could see festivals use security or other volunteers to fulfil the roles currently provided by police.
“We know it’s something that is impactful to a lot of festivals that are trying to run each and every year in our city,” Knack explained.
“We’ve been bringing this up with the provincial government time and time around a possible red tape reduction that they could do on their end to allow more festivals to take advantage of lower cost ways to cover what is important. It’s important for the safety of folks, and that’s just something that we continue to push on,” he added.
Others point to the location issue, saying it is just as important for an event’s success.
“They lost a venue for three years at Hawrelek Park. The amphitheatre was perfect. It’s really hard to go from a really great venue to other venues that are not so good,” Edmonton Folk Music Festival Producer Terry Wickham said.
Wickham said Folk Fest is lucky in that while expenses are going up, so too are its revenues, because it’s able to increase ticket prices and still have fan support. He says the festival has seen record sales since they’ve returned from COVID-19 pandemic cancellations.
He said other festivals are dealing with increasing expenses and decreasing revenues.
“It’s been a struggle. It really is a labour of love in most cases,” he explained.
“I think the festivals that are struggling more than any others are the ones that don’t have a box office because government funding is not going to keep pace with inflation,” he added.
The Edmonton Blues Festival says they hope to be back in 2026 when Hawrelak Park is planned to reopen.
—with files from Caley Gibson, Global News
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