Metro Vancouver city sees event boom with 500% attendance boost since 2019
A Metro Vancouver municipality is experiencing an events boom.
According to a staff report, Burnaby events have seen a massive 500 per cent attendance increase since 2019, signalling how popular the city’s festivals and community initiatives have been.
The report highlights some standout events hosted by the city in 2024. These include the Burnaby Blues and Roots Festival, which was attended by an estimated 9,000 people. The festival was also free, with a well-rounded and impressive entertainment lineup that included headlining act Mavis Staples.
Burnaby Blues and Roots Festival/Instagram
StreetFest on Central and Central Spark was estimated to have seen an increase of 10,000 people at each event.
The Burnaby Village Museum has also seen a boost in attendance. Popular events held at the site include free Halloween and Christmas festivities, as well as other cultural programming.
The report added that the museum has seen a “dramatic increase” in visitors since 2019 “when gate attendance was under 175,000. In 2023, this number rose to over 272,000 and was still high at 227,600 in 2024.”
The City of Burnaby’s director of culture, Emmaline Hill, said that much of the success the city has seen with its events over recent years is because they are “low barrier.”
The events are easy to access via transit and are free, family-friendly festivities that offer a wide variety of entertainment options.
The staff report cited 2024 event attendance surveys, which found that 68 per cent of respondents said attending Burnaby event gave them a sense of pride in their community.
Festivities also attracted folks from outside the city, as 33 per cent stated they were travelling from other parts of Metro Vancouver to attend.
Burnaby Village Museum/Facebook
“Reasons for attendance varied with each event and included music, free admission and fireworks,” noted the report.
Hill added that a boost in events and attendees comes with challenges.
“Everything’s getting more complex, it’s getting more expensive, and we want these activities to continue, [and] there needs to be sustained support in order to manage them.”
She explained that as the city continues to ramp up its event programming, it needs to take increasing talent and production costs into account.
“All of those things impact us as well, and so we manage that in a number of different ways, and one of them is and will be, probably, requests for increases in funding,” she stated, noting that “inflationary increases” are being projected for this year and are currently in the cycle for this year’s budget.
These struggles are being experienced industry-wide, especially with larger-scale events across Metro Vancouver.
Earlier this month, major event organizers in the region signed an open letter to the province warning of a “looming crisis” facing the events scene, including FVDED In The Park, Bard on the Beach, and the Honda Celebration of Light.
The letter was urging B.C. Premier David Eby and the B.C. Minister of Tourism to renew the B.C. Fairs, Festivals and Events Fund (BCFFE) or provide a replacement, among other recommendations.
When asked if Burnaby could welcome hosting these bigger events and festivals in the city, Hill said that likely wouldn’t happen.
“I don’t see that scenario arising because we are not operating at the scale to provide the kind of funding that these organizations are looking for… When we’re talking about these large-scale events, they really are incredibly complex, multi-day, multi-stakeholder-engaged operations to present, which is why they are needing that sustained funding,” she said.
Burnaby’s Hats Off Day is a grassroots street festival held in the city’s Heights neighbourhood. (Burnaby Heights/Facebook)
Hill explained that the City of Burnaby is focused on a series of in-house “signature” events and also collaborating with grassroots organizations and cultural communities to support them with presenting their events to the community as well.
As for what comes next for Burnaby’s event scene, Hill said that staff is exploring facilitating street festivals and car-free days.
Hill explained that could look like an event taking over a roadway and bringing in street vendors, artists and performers “and being able to bring people together in a really unique and different way.”
Do you live in a Metro Vancouver city where you enjoy the events programming? Let us know in the comments.
With files from Amir Ali