Local festival calls for the renewal of B.C. festival fund
In 2024, over 20 Nanaimo festivals and events received funding including VIEx, the Canada Day celebration, and the InFrinGinG Dance Festival. Photo courtesy of Nanaimo Blues Society
For 20 years, the Nanaimo Blues Festival has been bringing international and local blues music to Nanaimo’s backyard, but right now, they are wondering why provincial funding has not been renewed for an important fund.
Every second weekend in August, the Nanaimo Blues Festival takes over downtown Nanaimo for a four-day-long blues music festival.
For the last two years, the festival has relied on the B.C. Fairs, Festivals and Events Fund to fund headlining artists and keep the festival going.
But as Jacquie Moisan, President of the Nanaimo Blues Society, tells CHLY, she is concerned that the funding has not been renewed for this year.
The B.C. Fairs, Festivals and Events Fund (BCFFE Fund) was first created in 2021 by the B.C. Government to support arts, culture, and sports events during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, the fund supported over 680 events that have grown to support over 1,000 in 2024.
In 2024, over 20 Nanaimo festivals and events received funding, including VIEx, the Canada Day celebration, and the InFrinGinG Dance Festival.
Last year, the Nanaimo Blues Festival received over $18,000. Moisan said that without the funding it would affect how the festival can run in the coming years.
“It makes a difference between a year end of a deficit or a break even to a year end of a little bit of revenue in the account,” Moisan said. “It's so important that when you're running the festival, that I mean, obviously no one wants to run a deficit, because that would make the difference between the festival coming back the following year.”
She explains that the festival is also funded through the City of Nanaimo and the BC Arts Council, but the money they have received from the BCFFE Fund helps keep the budget above water and helps them to get started on the following year.
“We have to start thinking about our next year's festival quite early, because with many of your headliners and touring artists, they're booking tours months and months in advance,” she said. “So you really can't wait till the spring of the festival year to start looking at your headliners. You've got to start doing that in the fall.”
Moisan said if the funding is not renewed, it will not affect this year’s festival, but they will have to look at changing how they set up the festival in 2026. This could include hiring cheaper headliners, having a smaller advertising budget, and looking at lowering the number of dates they run the festival.
Moisan explained that the BCFFE Fund usually opens applications in January, and the deadline to apply is usually the last week of February or the first week of March.
As there hasn’t been a call out for funding yet, the Nanaimo Blues Festival has joined a campaign with the BC Music Festival Collective, signing an open letter to the province seeking the urgent renewal of the BCFFE Fund.
“A lot of festivals, us included, really need that funding to be viable. If that funding is not going to happen this year, I don't know what to say. There's no call out for it, no word on whether that funding is going to occur,” Moisan said. “I'm really hopeful that the advocacy going on across the provinces is going to make a difference.”
Moisan said this comes as the post-COVID-19 cost of living and inflation have hit festivals and events all across the province as the price of goods and services rise.
“We had no live events for two years,” she said. “We did a couple of virtual things, but no income, no revenue sources. So it's been a slow crawl back from post-COVID.”
CHLY reached out to the Ministry of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport about the B.C Fairs, Festivals and Events Fund and were told they will have more information at a later date.
Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.