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September 27, 2004

Folk rocks | Buzzing from the economic jolt of the National Folk Festival, Bangor plans its own independent version for next summer

By Brian O'keefe
Even while local organizers continue to count contributions for the National Folk Festival, which wrapped up its third and final year in Bangor last month, they already have their sights set on fundraising for the first installment of their independent continuation of the festival, to debut next year.

The new event, to be called the American Folk Festival on the Bangor Waterfront, is striving to be not much different from the old event. The producers clearly don't want to tamper with the success of the National, which drew larger audiences each year, culminating in an estimated 135,000 last month. Festival coordinator Heather McCarthy said most of this year's attendees who were surveyed said they would return to the festival in Bangor if it continues to feature high-caliber performers from across the country. This year's festival on the banks of the Penobscot included performances by a typically wide-ranging array of artists, from an Ivorian dance company to an Appalachian balladeer and an old-time string band. "As long as we can maintain those standards, we anticipate that the event will have a solid place in the Maine artistic calendar for a long time to come, and that's the plan that we're moving forward on," McCarthy said.

Bangor is following in the steps of Lowell, Mass., and Lansing, Mich., both of which created their own folk festivals to capitalize on the momentum they gained from hosting the National. The festivals have been successful ˆ— the Lowell Folk Festival marked its 16th year in July, and the Great Lakes Folk Festival, which began three years ago when the National moved from Lansing to Bangor, has managed to produce a well-attended event with a lower price tag than for the National's. But those cities also offer a clue to the challenges ahead for Bangor ˆ— namely, fundraising.

For the three years of the National, organizers did pre-event fundraising among individuals, corporations and foundations, soliciting both single- and multi-year commitments. They raised additional income at the event itself, including fees charged to festival vendors and sales of commemorative merchandise such as T-shirts and hats. At press time, McCarthy did not know whether the total funds raised covered the $1 million in costs this year. "We're still processing the income and the invoices that are coming inˆ… it did get us pretty close though," she said.

McCarthy expects costs for the American Folk Festival to remain at about $1 million. Fundraising has already yielded big results: The city of Bangor has pledged $75,000 in cash along with $50,000 of in-kind services. And Gov. John Baldacci recently pledged state funding totaling $100,000.

The money, organizers say, is well spent: According to a study completed last December by the Eastern Maine Development Corp., which was involved in the campaign to locate the National in Bangor, the festival has had a significant impact on local businesses. The study estimates an economic impact of $3.7 million per year on the Bangor area, including money spent locally to produce the festival, as well as both direct and indirect spending by festivalgoers. Michael Crowley, chairman of the festival's board of directors, estimates the economic impact of this year's festival at $4 million, bearing in mind the increased attendance.

The study found that Bangor restaurants and hotels in particular have benefited, increasing their sales by 13% in August 2002 over the previous August, a month when sales were flat for the rest of the state. And that was the first year of the festival, with the lowest attendance ˆ— about 80,000 as opposed to 135,000 this year. Surveys taken on the festival grounds last year indicated that about 15% of the audience came from outside of Maine, and area hotels reportedly were booked to capacity.

More anecdotally, Rod McKay, the city's director of community and economic development, said the regional and even national exposure the festival gave to Bangor has made people more aware of what the city has to offer. The city of Bangor owns 30 acres of former industrial land on the Penobscot River, including the site of the festival, and spent about 15 years cleaning it up and preparing it for redevelopment and recreational use. "I don't think before the folk festival that a great number of people realized what we were doing down there, or what it would mean to the city," said McKay.

Going it alone
Bangor organizers have consulted with festival producers in both Lansing and Lowell about the logistics of starting an independent festival. Lora Helou, communications manager at Michigan State University Museum, which organizes the Lansing festival, said fundraising was the most challenging aspect of running the festival independently ˆ— particularly because organizers began planning their first independent festival in the fall of 2001, in the midst of the national economic downturn. Nevertheless, the festival has met its fundraising goals every year.

Lansing organizers also succeeded in lowering their costs. Whereas the National had cost $1.2 million to produce each year, the Great Lakes festival has gotten by on $750,000 to $800,000 a year, according to Helou. They kept essentially the same program as the National ˆ— complete with blues, gospel, klezmer, jazz, bluegrass, polka, mariachi and more ˆ— but found other areas to trim back. "We've scaled back some of the travel; the musicians don't stay over as many nights. We use local crews rather than national crews. We've been able to reuse a lot of the staging and banners and interpretive signage," Helou said.

In-kind donations and competitive grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts have helped with costs, too. "We're trying to make more connections and reach out even further," Helou said. "In this [economic] climate, we need to solicit private donations more and more, and get kind of a core affinity group that invests in thisˆ… We did that for the first time this year, and got about $15,000. That was important cash in our budget, and we'll hope to grow that for next year."

One strategy they've used in Lansing is asking individuals and organizations to underwrite specific performances at the festival. "For example, if we had a group from Canada, we would pitch it to our Canadian consulate or our Canadian Studies program here at Michigan State University," said Helou. "We've had some success doing that." (Bangor organizers have not used this approach because their fundraising is often done long before performers are chosen.)

McCarthy said one of the biggest tasks of switching over to an independent festival is deciding which elements of the National festival should continue. Part of that hinges on negotiations for a new contract with Washington, D.C.'s National Council of Traditional Arts, which runs the National. Even though the new festival will be locally run, organizers seek to continue their partnership with the NCTA. "We're hopeful that their level of involvement will remain significant," said McCarthy.

McCarthy estimates that NCTA currently provides services ˆ— including staging and lighting expertise, as well as consulting ˆ— worth about $200,000 toward the $1 million annual cost. In addition, because of the relationships NCTA has built over its 66 years, it is able to negotiate contracts with performers and technicians at lower rates than if Bangor organizers contracted with them directly.

Putting together an independent festival will not be much different from running the National, because for the past three years the festival has been entirely organized out of an office in Bangor, McCarthy said. Bangor staff already have three years of experience in "everything from volunteers to marketing to fundraising to production logistics," she said.

With plans for 130,000-140,000 attendees next year, McCarthy and her staff of three employees are already at work. "Our biggest challenge that we anticipate is fundraising, which has been in a lot of ways our biggest challenge all along," she says. "We are trying to address that right up front and really start the ball rolling now."

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