Summerfolk Festival Organizers Seek City Partnership and Financial Relief
The Georgian Bay Folk Society has requested a $10,000 grant and waiver of park rental fees from the City of Owen Sound, citing rising costs and the Summerfolk Festival’s significant economic impact.

Owen Sound City Council has a new ask headed their way for 2025 budget deliberations Monday: a $10,000 grant request and additional rental fees waiver for Summerfolk.
Jaret Koop, Operations Manager at Georgian Bay Folk Society (GBFS), producers of the Summerfolk Music & Crafts Festival, gave a deputation to the City of Owen Sound’s Community Services Committee on Wednesday, January 22. The ask: the waiver of rental fees for Kelso Beach at Nawash Park and a $10,000 grant under the City’s Grants to Community Groups Program.
Koop highlighted the ongoing partnership between GBFS and the City, citing financial investments, park upgrades, and hours spent collaborating on the event. However, he said, the partnership has never really been official.
“It's always been something that people have cared about enough to work together on, but it's never really been an official part of the city's business,” Koop told the committee, and noted that “…while that has served us up until now, I don't think they'll serve us well going into the future.”
Tourism is a major priority for both the City of Owen Sound and Summerfolk, Koop said, and he sees an opportunity for
“We are the number one event to puts heads in beds,” Koop said, rephrasing a quote attributed to Jason Hemstock, Chair of the Owen Sound Chamber of Commerce and GM of The Best Western Inn on the Bay, in his presentation.
Koop presented figures showing the event generates over $300,000 in local spending during the week, a significant boost for a small town of 20,000 in a county of 100,000, with few other events drawing comparable numbers.
Among the costs GBFS is looking for relief on are a 30% rise in policing costs, 150% in the expense for washrooms, and a 400% increase in the City’s park fees from 2023 to 2024. Overall, Koop said, the festival’s costs increased 40% from 2019 to 2023, even as ticket sales suffered the impact of the pandemic.
In response to their clarifying questions, committee members learned that the fee waiver would amount to approximately $2,300, and GBFS is asking for an ongoing partnership that would provide that funding and a $10,000 grant each year.
Melanie Middlebro, one of City Council’s representatives on the committee, suggested deferring the discussion to Council. While she acknowledged Summerfolk’s importance, Middlebro said, “You're not the only person who comes and asks for money,” and that if the City helped fund Summerfolk, they would have to give every event money that asked.
She recommended that the Folk Society approach local restaurants and hotels, as they are the ones benefitting from “heads in beds” and the boost to tourism.
Koop, given an opportunity to respond, said he respectfully disagreed. “All of the other events that you spoke of, and all of the other organizations that you spoke of, they aren't Summerfolk,” he said, noting that this is a 50-year festival.
It takes over 600 people, including volunteers, to run the festival, he said, and there are over 40 vendors, including 15 food vendors and 30 to 40 artists. “We've got a community village with many representatives of other nonprofit organizations, and there are roughly 3000 people on site every day,” Koop noted.
Councilor Travis Dodd then recommended the GBFS reach out to the Chamber of Commerce to see if any of the MAT (Municipal Accommodation Tax) revenue might be available to Summerfolk.
“I think that’s a perfect avenue for your organization to access funding that has been collected for that purpose,” Dodd said. He also questioned what changes the GBFS board has made to “help with some of these extra costs that you're taking on, but also to ensure that if the revenue is down, that's not having an overall impact on the entire event.”
Koop indicated he had spoken with the Chair of the Chamber of Commerce but said his understanding is that the Chamber is still working on the framework for distributing MAT funds.
After COVID-related funding ended in 2023, he said, GBFS tried to “budget our way out of it” by downsizing their office, cutting artistic fees, and “basically went as skinny as we could,” Koop said.
Had they had a normal Summerfolk weekend in 2024, he said, they could have come close to making up the difference. However, they endured record storms and rainfall, and sold 1000 tickets less than expected.
GBFS also turned to their community of supporters and raised over $20,000 through their recent “Summersoak” t-shirt fundraiser. And while finding volunteers has been challenging, Koop said they finally have a committed funding committee of people with backgrounds in fund development working on a year-round fundraising model. The federal and provincial funding available in decades past is shrinking, he said, and dollars are having to stretch further.
On the sponsorship front, Koop said the festival is back up to almost 30 sponsors amounting to approximately $60,000 in sponsorship funding. This year, their fundraising goal is $100,000 in sponsorship. He mentioned that he’s currently working on his eighth grant application, but grant funding is notoriously unstable.

Dodd suggested one way the City of Owen Sound could partner with Summerfolk is to carry their fundraising merchandise in city tourism retail outlets. He also suggested the organization consider holding a 50/50 draw.
For her part, committee chair and Councilor Marion Koepke noted that she appreciates the economic spinoff of Summerfolk, as a 40-year volunteer. She asked City staff to explain Summerfolk’s rental fees from 2023 and 2024.
Pam Coulter, Director of Community Services, said the rental fee for Kelso Park is approximately $340 for event days. Set-up and tear-down days are billed at $250 per day since the City updated its fees by-law; in 2023, that fee was $50. In total, Summerfolk paid $2,396 in rental fees for 2024 and will receive $400 back of their $2,000 damage deposit.
Koop said he was unaware of the damage deposit withholding and hadn’t heard back on that before Coulter’s comments.
Typically, Koop said, GBFS and City staff do a walk-through after the event to see what repairs need to be done. “So, for example, for the past two years, we needed to rent a roller to roll out a couple of areas on the ground. So we paid for the roller,” he explained.
“It’s been one of those agreements that we've been happy to do, but it's been a little bit opaque as to what it is that we end up paying for on the other side of it (the damage deposit),” Koop added. He said a more official relationship between the festival and the City would help clear up issues that seem to happen at the end of the festival.
Coulter also mentioned that City facility rental fees are generally only waived when a non-profit organization is hosting an event in a City facility that will directly benefit the City, such as fundraising for a City playground.
Committee members had a brief discussion about the finer points of partnerships versus grants, the various sources of funding that may be available, and whether the City should be involved in multi-year partnerships.
Koop then mentioned that in removing a washroom facility, the City also removed electrical equipment belonging to the Festival — equipment the GBFS had installed and paid for. Despite what he acknowledged as good intentions, Koop said, the result was that the City removed all power for the Festival’s artisan village.
Summerfolk then had to bring in generators and run them for four days straight. When the group went to replace it, prices had changed and it didn’t fit in the budget. GBFS had to devise a temporary solution during festival setup, Koop explained, noting that volunteers were still rebuilding it throughout the weekend of the Festival.
This is an example of where partnership, better communication, and collaboration could help, he said.
“We have the ability to write grants for things that you guys don't necessarily have access to, that we can do as partners,” Koop added. “The cultural spaces grant with the federal government would be one that I've already talked to them about, and they would say this would be a great idea. We can help each other, but it requires a level of cooperation and coordination that we have never done.”
In the end, the Committee passed a motion to ask City Council on Monday to consider adding a $10,000 grant to the 2025 budget to assist the Summerfolk Festival this year. The committee can then also consider a staff report that will outline what partnership options might exist given City bylaws, programs, and policies.
The meeting video is available to view in full here on the City of Owen Sound’s website.
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