The private company behind the Ambleside Music Festival is holding onto more than $150,000 in provincial government grant funding issued for the promoter’s 2024 rock concert, despite the company putting the festival on hiatus last year.
B.C.’s Ministry of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport put up $154,300 for the festival – which has featured artists including Weezer, Neil Young, Sheryl Crow and Ed Sheerhan in past years – from its fairs, festivals and events fund. It was one of more than 1,000 events that received provincial funding.
Ambleside Live Entertainment Inc., however, announced in June last year that the concert series would be postponed until 2025.
Vancouver lawyer Tim Lack, who volunteers with two non-profit festivals on West Vancouver’s waterfront, said something is amiss.
“The guidelines are pretty clear and the rules are pretty strict and so you think that it’s well managed, and then you see $150,000, which is much at the very higher end of the grant money, going to a festival that didn’t happen, so it is concerning,” he said. “These are hard-earned tax dollars going to a venture that never took off.”
In a statement, a ministry spokesperson confirmed that the Ambleside Music Festival would be allowed to hang onto the money, pending the festival’s return.
“Ambleside Music Festival has postponed the 2024 festival until July 18 to 20, 2025, due to costs associated with the festival and availability of performers in 2024. The fairs, festivals and events funding for this event remains with the organizer so it can continue to plan for 2025,” the statement read.
A District of West Vancouver spokesperson confirmed they are in talks with promoters, but “do not have a confirmed date or line-up currently.”
GSL Group, Ambleside Live Entertainment Inc.’s parent company, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At the very least, the ministry’s decision to allow organizers to hold onto the cash while postponing the festival is inconsistent with the guidelines posted on the website, Lack said.
If the funds were being properly administered, promoters should have been required to return the unspent cash and then reapply for funding in 2025, “just like every other festival is expected to,” Lack said.
The exemption was particularly galling, Lack said, because the ministry also acknowledges on its website that there is both limited funding and overwhelming demand from non-profits, Indigenous groups, businesses and local governments for financial support for events.
The West Vancouver Coho Festival, which Lack volunteers at every year, provides education about fisheries ecology, live entertainment and a well-loved barbecue. It received $13,400 for its 2024 event.
The Dundarave Festival of Lights, which puts up hundreds of Christmas trees in the Forest of Miracles and offers concerts and a bonfire, was nearly cancelled in 2024, in part because it was rejected by the ministry for grant funding.
The province’s guidelines stipulate that it will not fund events that are considered fundraisers. Since its founding in 2008, the Dundarave Festival of Lights has donated more than $1 million raised from the Forest of Miracles to the homelessness assistance non-profit Lookout Housing and Health Society. In 2018, those donations helped the purchase of a condo committed in perpetuity to use as affordable housing for low-income seniors.
“It’s nonsensical that a festival that attracts tens of thousands of people and then cuts a nice, fat check to end homelessness is punted out of the guidelines, and yet a for-profit venture can get a sizable grant. I just don’t understand that,” Lack said. “If the mandate is to bring people together, they both do that.”
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