Ice on Whyte 2010

Yesterday was the final day of Ice on Whyte 2010, Edmonton’s ice carving festival (now part of Winter Light). Sharon and I had been planning to stop by ever since the festival started ten days ago, but for whatever reason we never made it out. We made up for it yesterday though, visiting twice – once during the day and once at night!

Here are some day & night shots of Ice on Whyte 2010:

You can read Sharon’s post here, read about the ice carving competition winners here, and you can see the rest of my photos here. Check out the Winter Light site for more upcoming events!

Recap: Mispon Winter Light Gala 2010

Winter Light 2010 kicked off this evening with the Mispon Gala, “a whimsical event that launches Edmonton’s winter festival season.” Winter Light started last year and is meant to showcase Edmonton as a beautiful and interesting winter city. The gala took place at City Hall and included light installations, music and dance performances, and free food! The word “mispon” means “it’s snowing” in Cree, and while there were no snowflakes falling tonight, there was an odd sort of ice fog hanging over downtown. At –19 C (and wind chill of about –26 C) the temperature tonight was actually warmer than it was for the start of Winter Light last year.

Unfortunately, the temperature was about the only thing that went up this year! The entire event seemed smaller than in 2009. I arrived at City Hall just before 5pm and found Churchill Square and the skating ring and steps out front completely deserted, save for the three Winter Light people manning the fire stations and a couple others. There was a skate performance right at 4:30pm that I missed, sadly, but I still expected to find some people outside – it is a winter festival after all! I suppose they had trouble with attendance last year too though, so maybe it was wise to focus just on City Hall this year.

Indoor activities included music by Johnny Quazar and the Swingbots, and dance performances by Kristine Nutting’s Warm Up Burlesque. The music was quite good, the dance wasn’t for me 🙂 They did have a neat balloon drop at the end of it though! Food was once again provided by NAIT and included bannock with saskatoon marmalade, baked beans with sourdough crostini, and glazed meatballs. There was also hot chocolate and iced tea. Very tasty! Unfortunately there weren’t very many people in attendance to enjoy it all.

John Mahon, Councillor Tony Caterina, Pamela Anthony, Christy Morin, Shirley Low, and Ritchie Velthuis were all on hand tonight to bring greetings and a heads up on the upcoming Winter Light events. The next one is Deep Freeze (on ShareEdmonton), which takes place Saturday and Sunday on Alberta Avenue.

Pamela, who is the director of Winter Light, also thanked the sponsors. Apparently the $1.5 million spent this year and last wasn’t enough – Citytv, Pattison, and Canadian Tire are among the event’s sponsors. Winter Light might stretch over 10 weeks, but it’s really just 11 events, the biggest 3 of which would happen with or without Winter Light. Given that so much was established last year (like the website, tents, giveaways, etc) I find myself questioning again whether the money is being spent wisely or not.

As with last year’s opening ceremonies, tonight was just marketing for the rest of Winter Light. There were some positive things, such as the very cool snowshoe lanterns by Dylan Toymaker, but I came away mostly unimpressed. I hope that the rest of Winter Light 2010 will blow me away! You can see my photos from this evening at Flickr, and some video at YouTube.

UPDATE: Here are Sharon’s thoughts on the event.

How green are Edmonton’s festivals? (Blog Action Day 2009)

Today is Blog Action Day, which means that bloggers around the world are writing about the same issue – climate change. The purpose of the initiative is to create a discussion. For my post, I’m hoping to stimulate a little discussion about how “green” Edmonton’s festivals are.

I first wrote about this topic back in December, when I noted a number of the changes BrightNights had made to become more environmentally friendly:

The City of Edmonton hopes to have a number of events operating green within three years, and BrightNights is just the first. I hope more festivals and events in Edmonton follow suit.

One of the big local stories this week is that BrightNights will no longer be taking place due to rising costs. I’m not at all sad to see the event go (the food bank and hot lunch program will be impacted in the short-term but will be fine I think). Even if they managed to make the event carbon-neutral (primarily by purchasing carbon credits, it should be noted) it still encouraged people to sit in a running car for an who knows how long. That’s not very green!

What about the rest of Edmonton’s festivals? What are they doing to be more environmentally friendly? If you have any links or other information, please post them in the comments!

As Canada’s Festival City, I think we have an opportunity (maybe even a responsibility) to lead the way in ensuring our events are green and sustainable. Let’s set the bar high and encourage others to follow suit!

Upcoming Climate Change Events

October 24th is the International Day of Climate Action. People all over the world are holding events pledging action on the science of 350:

350 parts per million is what many scientists, climate experts, and progressive national governments are now saying is the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere.

We’re currently at 387 parts per million, and rising (check out the Pew Center’s Global Warming Facts & Figures for more). There are six actions listed for Edmonton so far.

Of course, the main event this year is the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15), which takes place from December 7th to 18th in Copenhagen.

dEdmonton – Something for everyone this Halloween!

It’s hard to believe that I haven’t really written about dEdmonton since February! Six months might seem like an eternity on the Internet, but it’s not very much time to put together Canada’s Halloween Festival. But that’s just what the dEdmonton team (or Council of E-ville) have done. In case you’re new to the concept:

dEdmonton is dEdicated to the celebration of all things Halloween. Our vision is to unleash a new Halloween festival upon our city – stitched, bolted and brought together from existing events across the Edmonton region. “The More…the Scarier” sums up the spirit of dEdmonton – a spirit personified by our fiendishly fun family activities; our devilishly diverse nightlife; and our horror happenings. Halloween in Edmonton offers something for everyone and so will dEdmonton.

Last week, organizers held a “stakeholders meeting” to get everyone up-to-speed on recent progress. It was really inspiring to hear how well everything is coming together! Though this year was supposed to be an opportunity to get established, there’s no doubt in my mind that dEdmonton is going to be a major success.

Already there are more than 20 events on the dEdmonton calendar for October 31st. There are dozens of other events taking place in the weeks leading up to Halloween too. One of those is the Miss dEdmonton contest:

As Miss dEdmonton you will be needed over the next year to let the world know all about dEdmonton and your duties will include parade appearances, general appearances, photo shoots and other promotional opportunities – some will be in bars, but some of them will have young ‘uns around. That’s right, this isn’t just a weekend gig, you get to be in costume several times over the next year!

Anyone interested can submit an original 90 second video to YouTube (deadline is September 30th – the winner will be announced on October 13th). I think this is a great idea, and I hope to see some amazing submissions! Full details and rules can be found here.

With less than two months until Halloween, dEdmonton-related news is starting to appear more frequently. Check out the website (and subscribe) for updates. You can also follow dEdmonton on Twitter and Facebook.

Edmonton & Winnipeg Fringe Festivals break records in 2009

The final numbers for the 28th Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival were released yesterday: a record-breaking 92,279 tickets were sold over 11 days. Less than a month ago, the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival announced that it had sold 81,565 tickets over 12 days, a new record at the time for fringe festivals in North America. Edmonton held the previous record – 77,700 tickets in 2006.

Clearly, this year has been a good one for North America’s two largest fringe festivals. Being the stats junkie that I am, I decided to look up the ticket sales for Edmonton and Winnipeg in recent years. I was able to find solid numbers for 2002 onward:

These numbers come from newspaper articles as well as press releases from the festivals themselves. There are a few minor discrepancies depending on which source you look at. For example, this year’s numbers for Winnipeg are inconsistent – the official site says 81,353 but all the media articles say 81,565. I went with the number I saw most often.

In tabular form:

Year	Edmonton	Winnipeg
2009	92279	81565
2008	77204	72722
2007	74693	71921
2006	77700	69320
2005	70700	66315
2004	60442	68470
2003	68000	67002
2002	68925	62801

I’m sure there’s a spreadsheet of ticket sales for all of the Canadian fringe festivals somewhere, but I haven’t been able to track it down (looking at you CAFF). I wanted to see how Edmonton and Winnipeg compared with other cities in Canada. It didn’t take long to find the numbers for 2007, which while slightly out of date, give you an idea of the relative size of each festival:

The red area is the metro population for each city, to show how big each festival is relative to the overall population. Edmonton and Winnipeg are clearly in a class of their own!

I look forward to the fringe each year, and I’m obviously not the only one. Here’s to hoping the friendly competition between Edmonton and Winnipeg continues to benefit both cities for years to come!

Attendance Numbers for Edmonton’s Capital EX

Edmonton’s Capital EX wrapped up yesterday. Sharon and I visited on Thursday evening and had a good time. Today Northlands released the attendance numbers, and though slightly lower than previous years, the ten-day festival still recorded an impressive 717,966 visits. I had been looking forward to the final numbers, so that I could compare it with previous years.

Here are the attendance numbers for the last ten years (you can download the raw data below):

Though much of the data is missing, I was able to track down some numbers going all the way back to 1879:

After getting this information, I decided to compare it to the population of Edmonton for the same time periods. Here is the comparison for the last ten years:

And the same comparison starting in 1879:

A couple things to note about the data in this post:

The event changed from Klondike Days (adopted in 1962) to Capital EX in 2006. This explains the large drop that year.
The event was a six-day fair from 1912 to 1967, and a ten-day fair thereafter (I think, certainly for the last 20 years or so it has been). I haven’t adjusted the figures for this.
The population data, which comes from the City of Edmonton, doesn’t account for surrounding communities.

Download the Capital EX Attendance & Edmonton Population data in CSV

Sources: iNews880, CBC, Edmonton Journal, Amusement Business (1, 2, 3, 4), City of Edmonton, Capital EX Fair History

Winter Light 2009 by the numbers

At tomorrow’s City Council meeting, John Mahon, Executive Director of the Edmonton Arts Council, will share the Final Report on Winter Light Festival 2009. This year’s festival is being described as successful, so the Community Services Committee will recommend:

That one time funding of $450,000 from 2009 Council Contingency, to fund the Winter Light Festival 2010, be approved.
That Administration, in consultation with Edmonton Arts Council, prepare a base funding budget submission of $750,000 for continuation of a winter festival.

Let’s take a look at some numbers from the final report (in Word format):

Beginning on January 8 and ending on March 21, 2009, Winter Light produced 9 events, supported 3 existing winter festival events, 1 City winter event, and produced 15 community workshops.
Roughly 12,000 people attended the 9 events produced by Winter Light.
Over 62,000 people attended all Winter Light related events.
The estimated impact on the local economy was $1.7 million.
A total of 55 local producers, marketers, artists and recreation workers were directly employed by Winter Light.
To continue with the model used this year, it will cost the city $750,000 in 2010 and $675,000 in 2011.
Private sector fundraising will attempt to raise at least 10% of the total budget to be used in 2011.
An audience survey showed 50% of respondents were between the ages of 30 and 45, roughly 15% were between 18 and 30, and 32% were aged 45 to 60.
Over 94% of respondents said “yes” to the question “Do you think Winter Light was a good investment for the city?”
The winterlight.ca website received 3 million visits in 3 months.
There were more than 800 print, radio, television, and website articles mentioning Winter Light.
Over 1500 people subscribed to the Winter Light mailing list.

And some numbers related to expenses:

Deep Freeze Festival received $27,000 from Winter Light.
Ice on Whyte received $15,000 from Winter Light.
Silver Skate received $37,000 from Winter Light.
Total revenue for Winter Light 2009 was $808,500 (all but $28,500 of which came from the City).
Total expenses were $807,672.
A total of $119,031 was spent on a marketing campaign which included outdoor advertising (billboards and buses), print advertising, radio advertising, and electronic advertising.

The report also includes a goals & aspirations assessment. Here’s a wordle of the report (with Edmonton, Winter, and Light removed):

Back in March I wondered if Winter Light 2009 was a success. I concluded that while the concept is sound, there’s lots of room for improvement when it comes to the execution. Final attendance numbers were much lower than originally estimated, which I think supports that argument.

The challenge for Winter Light 2010 (if approved) will be to increase attendance and impact without increasing expense. Hopefully a strong foundation was established this year for accomplishing that.

2009 Festival Volunteer Fair – May 13th

As summer approaches, the number of festivals taking place in the Edmonton area will start to increase! We’ve got some really great ones, including Capital EX, the Edmonton International Street Performers Festival (25th anniversary this year) and the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival. You can find a full list at FestivalCity.ca.

All of these festivals require great volunteers, of course. That’s why Volunteer Edmonton is hosting another Festival Volunteer Fair on Wednesday:

This "one-stop festival volunteer shopping" experience is your chance to learn more about Edmonton’s diverse festivals all in one place and sign up to become a volunteer for one OR more festivals!

The event takes place on Wednesday, May 13th from 3pm to 8pm at the TransAlta Arts Barns (map). It’s completely free to attend, and you can take a look at the list of participating festivals here (warning: pdf). Last year around 20 festivals participated; this year, that number has grown to 32. Also new this year – increased marketing. I’ve seen posters and numerous online mentions of the fair, so I hope there’s a great turnout!

From the press release:

The estimated total number of volunteers required by all festivals is about 8,000 people. Statistics show that about 48 per cent of Edmontonians currently volunteer for a variety of worthwhile causes.

Let’s keep that percentage growing – tell a friend about the Festival Volunteer Fair!

Was Edmonton’s Winter Light 2009 a success?

Edmonton’s first Winter Light festival wrapped up on Saturday evening in Churchill Square with an event called Illuminations, described as a “final celebration of winter spirit”. I was there to take in the sights and sounds, just as I was on January 8th when Winter Light began its ten week celebration of winter. I found Illuminations enjoyable enough. I bought a Winter Light toque and filled my mug with hot chocolate (though it was more like warm chocolate and they were providing disposable cups, a step backward from the opening ceremonies). We wandered around looking at the displays, soaking up a bit of heat at each of the fire pits. We took some photos.

Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing.

I think that sentiment might apply to Winter Light 2009 as a whole. It wasn’t an outright failure, but I’m not sure it was the major success that organizer Pamela Anthony and her team were hoping for. She described the event to The Journal as “an extremely successful research project.” Successful enough for another year?

That remains to be seen. The city spent $750,000 on the festival this year. Total attendance is estimated at between 50,000 and 80,000 people, plus another 150,000 who attended the shared events such as Ice on Whyte (events which would have happened anyway). In comparison, the annual Heritage Festival costs about $500,000 to run and attracts well over 300,000 people. In 2006, the Edmonton International Fringe Festival had expenses of $1,552,797 (pdf – excluding artist ticket revenue) and total site attendance of more than 500,000 people.

Perhaps those comparisons aren’t fair. A warm, sunny day in August is a much easier sell than snow and temperatures well below freezing in February or March. So was Winter Light successful as a winter festival? The jury’s still out on that one too. Here’s what Edmonton Sun columnist Graham Hicks said on Friday:

Google "Harbin Winter Festival Pictures" to see what’s possible. This shouldn’t be so difficult. We have friends. Edmonton is twinned with Harbin and Alberta with Japan’s Hokkaido province, where Sapporo is located.

He felt the inaugural festival failed to “capture the public imagination” and was unable to move beyond the weather. I certainly didn’t hear many people talking about Winter Light in a “must attend” sort of way. And I still think that Illuminate Yaletown made better use of light than Illuminations. Bottom line: there’s definitely room for improvement.

City Council will review a report from the Winter Light organizers later this spring. Final attendance figures will no doubt be important in determining whether or not Winter Light happens again next year, but Mayor Mandel seems keen to support it anyway: “We can’t forget the idea that our job is to make sure that citizens have opportunity…this is a way for people in the wintertime to get out and enjoy our city.”

I still think the concept is a great one, and I agree that there’s lots of potential for winter tourism. My guess is that Winter Light will have to be much improved in 2010 to become a permanent fixture on Edmonton’s festival calendar, however.

What did you think of Winter Light 2009?

Where’s the Edmonton version of Illuminate Yaletown?

While in Vancouver last weekend, Megan and I went to check out an event called Illuminate Yaletown. Sponsored by the Yaletown Business Improvement Association, the event featured light-as-art installations spread throughout the heritage district. From the website:

Featuring light installations designed and developed by artists and architects, pyrotechnics, fire dancing, cutting edge music, interactive activities and a display of illuminated ice sculptures, Illuminate Yaletown shows off Vancouver’s hippest community in a whole new light!

We were impressed by what we saw! We started with the fire dancing and illuminated ice sculptures, and then made our way to the BMW Mini dealership that had been filled with lights. We saw another display where a video camera on the ground was projected up onto the side of a building. Down a little further were some illuminated windows with silhouettes moving about inside. There were lots of people walking around, taking in the sights!

Illuminate Yaletown was developed to “brighten up a gloomy winter evening” and is the only outdoor event taking place in Vancouver at this time of year. Sound familiar? I immediately thought of Winter Light. This event sounds exactly like the kind of thing you’d expect to be a part of Edmonton’s new winter festival. But it’s not.

The closest thing is Illuminations, taking place on March 21st in Churchill Square. It too will have fire and projected light. The big difference is that it takes place only in Churchill Square. What I really liked about Illuminate Yaletown is that it got people walking around, so they could check out the buildings, shops, and restaurants in the area. It was a great combination of interesting art and community exploration and discovery.

I’m hopeful that next year’s Winter Light festival will include something similar.

You can see the rest of my photos from Illuminate Yaletown here.

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