Renaissance Festival Rejected

Saturday, 22 March 2014 08:53

Woodstock City Councillors aren't prepared to loosen the purse strings and offer a donation before seeing the Oxford Renaissance Festival's balance sheet first.

WOODSTOCK -- The City of Woodstock isn't committing any funding to the Oxford Renaissance Festival without seeing a budget first.

Council was asked Thursday night with help for the festival through the donation of picnic tables, bus signage, bus service to and from the event, advertising in the city's What's On magazine or even a bylaw amendment to allow for small signs to be placed along the roadway 6 weeks in advance of the event.

While council donated $10,000 to the event last year, they asked the organizer to come back at the next meeting with a firm in-kind budget they could look at.

Organizer Greg Schuurman says he wasn't surprised with the response.

"It seems to be an actual issue right across the province let alone Canada itself where not for profit organizations get all of the government funding when for profit organizations, just because of that word for profit, everybody thinks we're making tens of thousands of dollars and we're not."

Schuurman says last year's event broke even and a lot of that had to do with the advertising grant the city gave them.

He says as far as the budget request goes, he admits he came into the council meeting unprepared and he isn't surprised that's what they asked for.

Schuurman says he never designed the event to count on anybody and it will go forward regardless.

"Am I taking a larger risk without getting any funding, absolutely. I mean we could have rainy days, we could have lots of things that happen so the risk is always there. The problem going forward with not just my festival but anybody that tries to do anything new like this, if they have a few bad years, or one bad year, it never happens again."

Schuurman is expected to present his budget at a council meeting in April.

The Oxford Renaissance Festival is scheduled to run June 13 to 15 at the Woodstock Fairgrounds regardless of council's decision.