Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Finances, competition cited as plug pulled on Victoria buskers fest

Squeezed by funding cuts and new competition, the Victoria International Buskers Festival has cancelled its 2017 season.

Squeezed by funding cuts and new competition, the Victoria International Buskers Festival has cancelled its 2017 season.

Festival founder John Vickers said daily operations can no longer be maintained in the face of a 25 per cent cut in funding from downtown organizations.

“It’s discouraging as heck, but life goes on,” he said.

As well as a $40,000 reduction in potential funding, Victoria International Buskers Festival faced the prospect of competing with a new buskers festival.

In November, the Downtown Victoria Business Association and partners announced the launch of the Downtown Victoria Buskers Festival. Both festivals were slated to happen in July 2017.

A spokesman for the Downtown Victoria Business Association said it has no comment on cancellation of the Victoria International Buskers Festival

Vickers said financial pressures came to a head last week. His festival was unable to pay a $1,700 bill from the City of Victoria for municipal services. This disqualified the Victoria International Buskers Festival from being considered for a city grant for the 2017 season. As well, it has no money to keep its office going.

“We’re sitting dead in the water because we had no money at all,” Vickers said.

The Victoria International Buskers Festival has cancelled a fundraiser planned for the Empress Hotel in February. Vickers said his festival, with an operating budget of $300,000, is left with $12,000 in debts that it is “unable to address.”

Tourism Victoria announced in November that it was ending financial support of the Victoria International Buskers Festival and declared support for the new Downtown Victoria Buskers Festival.

Tourism Victoria has partnered on the project with Hotel Association of Greater Victoria (which supported Vickers’ festival in the past) and the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority.

Tourism Victoria CEO Paul Nursey said there is a “deep and irreparable schism” between Vickers and Tourism Victoria and the other sponsors of the new buskers festival.

“There have been deep and ongoing disagreements about the amount of funds and in-kind services that sponsors were willing to contribute as requested by the operator [Vickers],” he said in statement sent to the Times Colonist on Wednesday.

Nursey said the new buskers festival will be a “more sustainable model going forward.”

A sometimes polarizing figure, Vickers is known as a passionate proponent of his festival and a fierce critic of anything that impedes his plans for it.

Last summer, he shifted some of the Victoria International Buskers Festival’s operations from downtown Government Street to Uptown shopping centre in Saanich.

He said the move was made partly because the City of Victoria and merchants were unsupportive of busker performances on Government Street.

Vickers said such a stance may have led to him being “painted as the Government Street bad guy” by organizations once supportive of his festival.

“When you put all those people together in the same room, it’s like: ‘That Vickers guy, let’s get rid of him.’ ”

He added: “It’s a power group that is trying to sanitize our downtown community. And the city’s standing there watching it, doing nothing.”

Vickers said he is concerned about the future of his Victoria International Chalk Festival. In 2016 it took place mainly on a pier at Ship Point. However, the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority told him it is “unable to confirm” whether the chalk festival will be able to return to the site in 2017.

As for the Victoria International Buskers Festival, Vickers doesn’t entirely discount a revival in the future.

“As of today, 2018 remains a possibility,” he said.

achamberlain@timescolonist.com