Flying Canoë Volant wants to transition to a 'culture of contribution'
If each of the 100,000 people who are likely to attend Flying Canoë Volant between Jan. 29 and Feb. 1 donated $5, the festival could quickly become more sustainable or think bigger, its head producer said.
"I would say 90% of my fiscal challenges would be resolved (if that happened)," Daniel Cournoyer, the executive director of La Cité francophone, told Taproot. "At the end of the day, I have to pay my artists, I have to pay my infrastructure cost, and producing in winter is not cheap."
Admission to Flying Canoë Volant is free but that increasingly creates hurdles, Cournoyer said.
"All festivals that don't have a gate admission are living in some challenging times," he said. "We're seeing public funding being rolled back — or it's just become more competitive — and we do need to look at ways in which we can create revenue within our own events."
Held in and near the Mill Creek Ravine, the festival is inspired by myths like La Chasse-galerie, which is about lumberjacks who make a deal with the devil for a flying canoe to take them home. The festival celebrates French Canadian, First Nations, and Métis cultures with art, performance, sport, and food. It is produced by La Cité francophone, a cultural organization that houses Café Bicyclette, theatre space, and other amenities among its 104,000 square feet. The organization was borne from a 1944 call from the French Canadian Association of Alberta (Association canadienne-française de l'Alberta) to create a cultural centre, which led to two phases of building in 1997 and 2010.
La Cité francophone took over what used to be called the Mill Creek Adventure Walk about 12 years ago to create Flying Canoë Volant.
Cournoyer said he's trying something new this year to inspire contribution — an interactive art project by Dylan Toymaker of LightCraft.Design, the light-and-installation artist who defines Flying Canoë Volant's visual identity. Toymaker's new work is a 16-foot tall tower that will "flash and dance" in exchange for a donation, Cournoyer said.
Spending on novel entertainment while keeping costs lean is a "balancing act," Cournoyer said. The new Toymaker work is one example. Another is a new, 360° video dome, which cost roughly $150,000. "(It's) what you would see in a planetarium or at the TELUS World of Science," Cournoyer said of the dome. "We're able to create that same environment here on our site."
Cournoyer said new features like these lead attendees to feel a stake in the event's success, but he wants to take the next step. "We've created the culture of free, but how do we translate that? How do we transition from the culture of free to a culture of contribution?"
