Earlier this week on Jan. 17 Vancouver's beloved Folk Music Festival (VFMF) announced it won't return for 2023.
In fact, the festival may not return at all, as organizers have made the difficult decision to dissolve the Vancouver Folk Music Festival Society which is responsible for the annual event.
Many Vancouver festival-goers were dismayed at the news. However, some aren't willing to let the popular festival fizzle out without a fight.
One Vancouverite started a Facebook group yesterday (Jan. 20) titled "Save the Vancouver Folk Music Festival" to find a solution and keep the festival going. "The fans need to step up," the group admin writes.
In a post welcoming other locals to the group, the group explains that its first task is to ask Vancouver Folk Music Festival Society members to vote against dissolving the society.
"Hopefully once the vote is behind us, we can help the festival come up with possibilities to become more financially viable with some combination of better sponsorship, more arts and culture funding and looking at how to keep the scale of [the] festival more manageable," writes the Facebook group.
The group only has several days to achieve this goal as the member vote to dissolve the society will take place on Feb. 1.
So far, the Facebook group has amassed around 500 members.
While the group's current objective is to refrain the society from dissolving, some group members have offered additional ideas to keep the VFMF alive.
Several suggestions include a list of ways to cut down on festival costs, re-branding the festival to "Vancouver Music Festival," and to simply start over and create a new festival.
A few members proposed reaching out Vancouver's favourite celebrity Ryan Reynolds. "He's a Vancouverite who is so wonderful and has saved so many places," one member writes.
