Opinion: Vancouver needs to double down on saving major events

Concord's New Year's Eve Vancouver. (Jenn Chan/Concord's New Year's Eve Vancouver)

FEATURED ON THE LISTED GUIDE

Sat, May 11, 1:00pm

Free Mother's Day Flowers on Robson Street

Thu, May 16, 7:30pm

The Arts Club Theatre Company presents Guys & Dolls

Sat, May 18, 12:00pm

Brewhalla Fort Langley

Sun, May 19, 2:00pm

Spirits In The Park

Click to add your event to the Listed Events Guide

Can I just ask: What constitutes BC culture?

Look, don’t get me wrong. I’m a born and raised British Columbian. I love it here. But I was recently hosting Daily Hive colleagues from Toronto, and the discussion of culture came up.

And they asked if BC’s culture was rain jackets and hiking boots, followed by a shot: “Or is it kayaks and skis?”

But, as much as I hate to say it, I think they have a point.

I love nature — so much so that I live in it. But some days, it feels like nature is increasingly all we have here. And all levels of our government seem to be increasingly fine with that, which is not okay.

You might also like:

As Kenneth Chan and I wrote in November 2022, events are a public benefit, and they have the power to be centrepieces in cultural celebration, expression, and memory-making.

This is especially important in an era where social isolation is on the rise. We read about it, but we can also feel it. Each of us spends more and more time in front of our screens, and we are all slowly drifting apart. With the holiday season approaching and beloved annual events hopefully announcing their returns, there will undoubtedly be some good reasons to reconnect with people. But there’s a reason it is also called the loneliest time of the year.

This is actually one of the main reasons why Kenneth and I volunteered and co-founded the non-profit organization behind Vancouver’s official New Year’s Eve fireworks nearly a decade ago — to give all Metro Vancouver residents and visitors a few moments of magic and cheer and bring us all together during a tough time of the year for many.

We also put our money where our mouth is: Daily Hive provided significant funding towards the event over the years — even more than the title sponsor on one occasion without asking for proportional recognition for the sake of the event — in addition to the immense in-kind value from the dedication of other company resources and labour to help stage the event.

At the time, the revival of New Year’s Eve celebrations also checked off the last box of “universal civic events” that was missing from Vancouver’s events calendar. Such events are purely basic calendar events that every major city should and is expected to have.

But now, we are also missing other universal civic events — the non-profit organization behind the long-running annual Santa Clause Parade in downtown Vancouver has fallen victim to funding issues, too. And the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority has completely dropped the ball with the permanent cancellation of the Canada Day at Canada Place fireworks tradition.

For many years, there were also other major annual parades in downtown Vancouver celebrating Canada Day and St. Patrick’s Day.

While a very small vocal minority may not like fireworks, from the perspective of an event organizer, fireworks are a highly cost-effective way for the programming needed to attract mass crowds and produce benefits for community, culture, placemaking, and businesses. The fireworks component is actually relatively low in cost, as the vast majority of the budget is everything else that comes after it to safely support the mass crowds, like security, street closures, and other logistics. There are also added costs and considerations for wintertime events, compared to the typical fair weather conditions enjoyed by summer events.

Fireworks also bring out a wide demographical range in crowds like no other, including many families with children.

Sadly, New Year’s Eve has repeatedly fallen victim to underfunding after its earlier immense success. This is in large part due to the frugal corporate culture here that places less weight on supporting events and culture, unlike the corporate culture in Seattle, Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal. Vancouver has always been an extremely weak sponsorship market for events.

But the challenges are also due to a government that does not provide adequate levels of financial support or initiative.

Plainly speaking, we need municipal governments to vocally support bringing people together, champion the value to the business community, and press our provincial government to help support these events’ rare power to create lasting memories of local culture and joy. There specifically needs to be a targeted focus on major mass crowd events that attract locals and visitors and produce immense economic benefits.

As we highlighted last year, our cities can look to carve out a section from the existing community amenity contribution (CACs) fees paid by developers, or perhaps offer the option to fund a “community culture fund” in lieu of the public art contribution to developers. This would require some collaboration between both the municipal and provincial governments to tweak the policies.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the big diamond ring in English Bay or the “A-maze-ing Laughter” sculptures at the corner of Davie and Denman streets as much as anyone, but also imagine what $500,000 in public art from a single sizeable building development could realize for a major event that attracts hundreds of thousands of people.

Simply put, government cheque-writing isn’t the only way to enable cultural events if events. If there is a will from our elected officials to prioritize the importance of events in our cultural fabric, there is a way.

After all, it should not be surprising to anyone in government that if you want to bring people together, you have to create or champion things. And you also need to fund it. In other cities in other provinces, they make this sort of thing a priority.

Toronto in the summer is a sea of street festivals, arts events, and sporting excitement — publicly supported marquee projects that bring people together. Vancouver has… what? Our municipal government can do better.

You might also like: