Volunteers needed if the show’s to go on for Home County Music and Arts Festival | CBC News
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Members of the Home County Folk League (HCFL) that oversees London’s longest running music festival are looking for volunteers to join a committee to help save the summer music festival.
The three-day free Home County Music and Art Festival took place at Victoria Park each July and first launched in 1974. It brought together some of Canada’s best-known musical acts and was a summertime favourite for many people.
Last month, the HCFL board announced the show will be cancelled for next summer due to financial pressures, a lack of sponsorship and few volunteers willing to participating at the organizational level.
“We’re asking the members step up and help with the direction of what they want the folk league to be doing in the future,” said Sara Lanthier, HCFL’s outgoing chair at a board meeting Tuesday night.
WATCH: Volunteers needed to rethink the Home County Music and Arts Festival:
Featured VideoThe group that oversees the London summer folk festival is looking for help. Former board chair Sara Lanthier explains to London Morning’s Andrew Brown what Londoners can do if they want the show to go on.
“A lot of people love going to the festival but they don’t know what it takes to put that on. Many comments [we got] started with ‘Why don’t you just’ but we need people to help those ideas get accomplished and right now, we don’t have enough people to see that through.”
The festival has run a deficit for the past two years, with an estimated loss of $30,000 in 2023. HCFL predicts losses to jump between $40,000 and $45,000 in the next two years, on top of a struggle to find board members and festival organizers.
HCFL members pay a nominal $20 fee to the non-profit, and it currently has 70 registered members, which is a decline from 100 paid members last year, Lanthier said.
‘Not a straightforward situation’
Andy Lester has attended the event for several years. He was one of nearly 50 members who went to Tuesday’s meeting to find out where exactly things went wrong, he said.
“I learned how complicated organizing a festival is,” Lester said. “For years, I would just go to the festival and think it’s going great, but COVID has changed everything, every venue and musicians have been having a hard time.”
Lanthier hopes that now that there’s more information about the situation, Londoners will be encouraged to get involved in trying to preserve the festival and its long history, Lester said.
Candace Frank grew up going to the shows with her family every year, and has been involved with the festival as a volunteer and coordinator in the past. She’s not sure what the path forward is she said.
“I have friendships I’ve made, purely because of the festival and I’ve brought my children, but it’s not a straightforward situation, there’s a lot of things that have to be worked out that have to go through different tiers,” said Frank.
Members have 90 days to join the committee, a timeline that can be amended depending on solutions and ideas found.
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