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After two years of significant growth in attendance and a concerted effort to draw people from outside the Sea to Sky corridor to the Whistler Writers Festival, the local group that organizes the event has decided to call it quits.
After eight years, the festival will not return in September 2010 — and the future beyond that is foggy. Instead, the Whistler Writers Group is planning to offer courses and other programming throughout the year as opposed to a concentrated weekend.
“This helps us stay alive and present in this community, and meeting the needs of the writers and readers in this community, without it being a burden financially, and actually physically,” said Stella Harvey, writers group founder and festival director.
“Hopefully people will feel positive about it.”
With a growing festival produced solely by volunteers, the next stage would have been to hire someone full time and become a professional organization that can access more grant funding. But the group isn’t in a position to hire anyone, Harvey said.
“It’s a difficult thing to maintain, especially the calibre and intensity and the type of event we put on,” she said. “Other festivals have people who are there full time and are being paid.”
The writers’ group executive decided last Thursday (Nov. 26) to cancel the festival. The move came out of a debriefing discussion about the most recent festival, held Sept. 11 to 13, and dialogue about how the group can best serve the local writing community in the future, Harvey said.
The 2009 Whistler Writers Festival enjoyed a 15 per cent increase in attendance, and that was building on a 25 per cent increase in 2008 — a total of 40 per cent more participation in just two years. This year’s festival also received more media attention, community support and funding than ever before.
A Cultural Capitals grant allowed festival organizers to advertise outside the Sea to Sky and turn their sights on attracting people from outside the corridor. But with about 80 per cent of attendees still coming from Whistler, Pemberton and Squamish, there hasn’t been enough uptake from outside the local community to continue to support the festival, Harvey said.
If demand increases for an intensive, destination festival, the writers group is flexible enough to offer that kind of programming in the future, she added.
Meanwhile, the group is planning to continue the successful Writer in Residence program, as well as offering a range of writing workshops for all levels throughout the year. Harvey said she’s currently gathering feedback from local writers and instructors, and a schedule of offerings should be available in January.
There are also two writing critique groups running in Whistler and another planned to start in Pemberton. The writers group is looking to offer professional editing services for a fee starting in January.
With a blog entry on the decision to cancel the festival only having hit the Internet over the weekend, on Monday (Nov. 30) Harvey said she hasn’t heard any feedback yet from festival attendees.
Local writer Stephen Vogler said he understands that the group is tired and the festival is “a struggle” to put together every year. Still, he said he would have liked to see the festival continue.
“It’s unfortunate, but I can understand,” he said.
He had hoped the festival could have found a permanent home at the hostel site on Alta Lake Road, making the event a little easier and more affordable to pull together.
Vogler is leading the charge on a grassroots proposal to turn the hostel into an artist-run centre that would include day studios, live/work studios, and space for exhibits, workshops, events and other programming.
The municipality is taking over ownership of the hostel site when Hostelling International relocates to Cheakamus Crossing (the Whistler Athletes’ Village) next year. A group of local artists is proposing that the site become a public park where people can come to see artists at work, enjoy performances and engage in a sort of “conversation between the public and the arts,” Vogler said.
“I think it’ll be an exciting place for people to come down and… interact,” he said.
A non-profit artist cooperative has already been formed to develop the proposal, which is called The Point Artist Run Centre, or PARC. Writers, musicians, visual artists, theatre and film artists are all involved, he said.
“I think it’s important to develop this from the grassroots up, from the artists themselves,” Vogler said.
An artist-run centre would have the opportunity to generate revenue to keep the property going, with rental income from live/work studios and fees from workshops and events. Such a centre is already a Whistler 2020 task force item, and would meet identified community needs such as education opportunities and diversifying the local economy, he said.
The cooperative is starting to discuss the PARC idea with local groups such as the writers group, Whistler Arts Council and others as it develops a comprehensive proposal this winter. So far there’s been a lot of interest and excitement, Vogler said.
