Last week, Kelowna city council listened to an updated report aimed at framing, shaping and launching the city's Cultural Plan.
Research for the report included 13 engagement events, 50 personal interviews, 180 completed survey responses and several other community engagement initiatives.
The results were formulated into 10 goals ranging from "enhancing cultural vitality at the street level" to "convening and connecting the cultural community."
Photo Credit: City of Kelowna.
Photo Credit: City of Kelowna.
Despite the in-depth report, many local musicians were unaware of the "Cultural Plan" when asked.
However, that doesn't mean they don't have opinions on what's working and what's not working in the local music scene.
KelownaNow spent the week canvassing the local music scene, here are the responses:
Becky Trook – Josh + Bex – Ukulele/Songwriter
What’s working: The City of Kelowna adopting a "Cultural Plan" shows they obviously value and appreciate input and collaboration and that to me is a beautiful and empowering thing! Who doesn’t love being heard!
What’s not working: The cultural plan includes enhancing cultural vitality at street level. I’d like to see buskers be able to use small amps with the city providing power sources to do so. Especially along the boardwalk where there is heavy tourism and foot traffic in the summer. The city of Victoria puts on a buskers festival every year, this kind of event could be cool here too!
It’s also important to integrate municipal policies, processes, organizational structure and funding mechanisms to developing cultural vitality. The City of Kelowna could improve on this by building stronger relationships with artists and art collectives—funding, opportunity, and connection. The valley has now more than 200+ wineries (great venues for live music and entertainment). I hope to see the city support building relationships between wine tourism and music culture—there is so much potential here!
Tomy Thisdale – The Carbons – Frontman
What’s working: The music scene in Kelowna is vibrant and growing in my opinion. There is more and more competition and that is a good thing.
What’s not working: I think the city of Kelowna can do a couple easy things to improve the music scene this year. Firstly, they should increase the artist budget for music in the park. There is no reason why West Kelowna should be paying nearly double what Kelowna does for their program.
Photo credit: NowMedia
Photo credit: NowMedia
Secondly, there are two main live music venues in Kelowna that are in dire need of functioning lighting rigs. The city of Kelowna could either invest $10,000 and implement lights in Fernando's and Doc's OR offer a rental assistance grant to artists ($300/show for rental and light technician). This is one small step to take the music scene to the next level that won't cost much money.
Mitch Carefoot – Thick as Thieves Ent. – Co-founder Denim on the Diamond
What’s working: The city of Kelowna is pushing for cultural events and there is a dedicated Events Team within the city who help navigate the procedures to ensure all the stakeholders are aware of the events and help to get the event approved. This Events team is great to work with and open to new ideas.
What’s not working: As a producer of live music, one of the struggles is finding venues that make it financially feasible to produce events. Capacity limitations, some venues available are seated only, others demand use of their ticketing platform, or they keep all food and beverage revenues.
Photo credit: NowMedia
Quinn McGraw – Living Machines – Bassist
What’s working: Thank Odin for Munnin's post. It's all we really have now.
What’s not working: The venue crisis is real. For heavier bands, losing the habitat was a heavy hit. We are losing out on the opportunity to bring bigger artists here and nurture our scene, simply due to a lack of capacity for the few venues we can use, or venues not wanting to work with us due to things as silly as: using different backlines (common for our genre), charging high rental rates for small capacity spaces, or not giving promoters enough presale tickets to secure deposits for bigger artists.
Photo credit: Contributed
Josh Smith – Josh + Bex/Kentucky Eileen – Singer Songwriter
What’s working: Since I moved here in 2008, the music/arts scene here has grown/developed steadily with the busking programs and downtown Kelowna Summer music events . There are pockets of artists collaborating and bringing that out into the streets which is cool to see.
What’s not working: I agree with Bex 100% regarding minimal amplification. Even if the City purchased a few guitar/vocal amps (not expensive) that artists could sign out or something along those lines to encourage and shine a light on the amazing talent we have in our downtown core. Busking is such an important part of any growing city’s arts culture.
Lucas Segall – Marci's Beach – Bass/Vocals
What’s working: Parks alive and many outdoor festivals that offer opportunities for musician exposure. The pianos around town during summer are also fantastic, even when they’re soaked in rain and drunk people puke.
What’s not working: Bylaws aimed against musicians – In my standalone house I’ve had bylaw officers show up at 5:30 PM lights flashing on a Tuesday after 30 minutes of playing, threatening me with huge fines. Kelowna is the only City I know of with such strict violations. How does a band get off the ground when there is a system in place where anyone can complain about anything at any time?
Photo credit: Contributed
Ben Stunden – Stund – DJ/Producer
What’s not working: I definitely think the lack of venues, and cracking down on COG doesn't help out local artists at all. Having venues and a major festival right in our city increases the scope of people who are more subjected to art being created within the city. It would be nice to see an actual music venue be created through this program. Sort of like the Palace in Calgary. Dedicated multi-use music hub.
Photo credit: NowMedia
Brian Looney – High Horse – Guitarist
What’s not working: What this music community needs is a dedicated community space where musicians can rehearse, collaborate, throw shows, and house a tool library where we can share the means of producing recordings, video, and merchandise. If the city provided a building and a small bit of funding, it would provide a space where all musicians have the access they need to create art and enrich our community and our city.
Siobhan Jennings-Bates – Owner of Muninn's Post
What's working: As far as owning a venue goes we see lots of shows coming through, the artists are definitely making the journey to Kelowna and we have a really great regular crowd of fans that come out to most shows.
What's not working: What we would love to see is more spaces to advertise with posters, more poster towers downtown as well as at the university and college. Accessibility for the public to find out what's going on and when would be awesome!"
Randy Peterson – ArkenFire – Guitarist
What's not working: The lack of a medium sized venue that doesn't charge an exuberant amount of money to use is a big factor in bringing bigger bands to the city, which in turns provides opening slots of local bands.
Tega Ovie – Post-Modern Connection – Vocals/Guitar
What's not working: We’re fairly new to scene and the city and from what we’ve noticed Kelowna’s music scene is catered towards grungy rock bands. And even though in the few years we’ve been involved, we’ve been seeing a lot of cool things happen, but that still seems to be the main demographic. So a lot of the bars and pubs are catered toward that. From our perspective, that’s not working anymore. We need more unique venues and events. And we need more support from the city for live music to curate these events.
We want to hear your thoughts on the new culture plan and the state of Kelowna's music scene, so let's keep this conversation going! Send your comments to News@KelownaNow.com
