Culture in Climate Conversations with Troy Greencorn

Rosalyn: Hello and welcome to Refolkus. Our guest today is Troy Greencorn. Troy spent much of his career working in culture-based, economic and tourism based community development. He's also the founder and producer of the Stan Rogers Folk Festival now in his 28th year. Stan Fest, as it has come to be known, is an international songwriters festival that presents a roster of over 50 accomplished artists and acts from a wide range of genres. The event is hosted annually in Canso Nova Scotia. Troy is also the executive director of the dcos Performing [00:01:00] Arts Center in PIC two Nova Scotia, a 400 seat facility, which presents over a hundred events each year.

Troy, welcome. How are you doing?

Troy: great.

Rosalyn: Nice to see you as well. So we're continuing what we're calling Culture in Climate Conversations with this chat. And I've been really excited to get to speak with you in this context because you're a bit of a rebel Razer. I wanna call you an instigator.

An instigator in the climate conversations that I feel like you've inspired, a lot of you know, what we're doing at Full Canada in response to climate and really have started this really interesting conversation amongst festivals in response to the climate crisis.

I'm wondering if you can, take us back to what kind of inspired you to start taking action when it comes to climate.

Troy: Sure. Well, I guess that we unfortunately have too much experience dealing with extreme climate. So the festival for folks not familiar with Nova Scotia [00:02:00] geography is located in Northeastern Nova Scotia. And actually, I've always been told it's the most northerly point on mainland North America, which means this community is surrounded on three sides by the Atlantic Ocean.

So we, even for Nova Scotia, we have really variable I guess, you know, to put it in perspective, in the past 10 years, we have had three major rain notes which I define as at least two days of the three days of show canceling rain. So we've had three rain notes, a complete cancellation due to a hurricane that popped in the forecast four days out from the event.

You know, so that's four major weather events and then two pandemic years, you know, so there's six out of 10 festivals that have had major external kind of impacts. So really that's our experience. And I've been sitting around. National Festival tables for [00:03:00] decades now.

And in 2023 it was shocking to sit around. Actually. It was around a WRAD table and there was about 20 of us. And for folks who don't know, WRAD is the Western roots artistic directors, But it was shocking. You know, normally in any given year, there's two or three events across the country That have, you know, experienced a real climate anomaly. But in 2023, it seemed like there were 20 or more, and it was rain, it was wind, it was hail, it was forest fires. It was a shocking number of festivals impacted by forest fires. And I remember looking around the table and just seeing the emotion in everybody's eyes, and it was like This really abrupt realization that this factor that was on our radar and we all knew was sort of gradually coming towards us, was coming much quicker than we expected. You know, for us in 2023, our weekend, Nova Scotia had eight or nine deaths due to flash flooding and. In [00:04:00] my lifetime, I've never heard of that flash flooding in downtown Halifax and here we are with thousands of people on a folk festival site dealing with that. So, I believe it's by far the biggest issue that we all face. All folk festivals across the country, across the continent, around the world are certainly outdoor festivals.

It's this enormous, common challenge. I think the government is aware of it, and I think the government has opened a dialogue in some cases, but I don't feel it's being taken seriously enough. You know, I don't think it's really progressed to the point where there are actual programs, or, a festival could have a major climate incident and cease to exist because there aren't programs there to assist in that situation. At this point.

Rosalyn: I wanted to follow up by getting an idea if you could shine a bit of a light on kinda what the impact is. If you lose two days of programming or you have to shut down for [00:05:00] the weekend. Like what is the impact on the organization?

And you can talk about it in terms of Stan Fest or just, you know, in general as a festival. What does that look like for you as an organization?

Troy: The impacts are many and, you know, multi-level. The biggest immediate impact is at the gate. You know, and I think this is even more acute for urban festivals where the audience gets up every day and decides, okay, is it a nice day? Am I gonna go to the site?

You know, an event like ours, people have committed, most of them have traveled and they're onsite camping. But certainly we all rely on Day trippers, so that's the first impact. And then what we've experienced. Across all of our revenues, you just see a major impact right off the top.

And then, it just goes from there in each of the cases where we've had extreme weather, we've had all kinds of site damage that gets done, and we're talking tens of thousands of dollars. You know, in 2023, our entire main field, we weren't really able to access it at [00:06:00] all, you know, and it's a municipal area. But what you discover in those extreme rain situations when a month of rain falls in a couple hours is the drainage systems just aren't. built for that, you know, so a field just becomes waterlogged, you know, so it's just heartbreaking to look at your main stage with, $50,000 worth of production and it's not in use for two days and you're moving shows to other venues.And we've been fortunate. We have a full scale hockey arena on our site. So, in an extreme weather situation, we can kind of move inside to keep the show going. But certainly it's not the same.

Rosalyn: Then do you see a ripple effect after a catastrophic year? Like after a year where you have these incidences, the next year, do people bounce back and it's like nothing happened or do you see ripple effects from it?

Troy: Yeah, I believe there is certainly a ripple effect. You know, we're lucky that We're going into our 28th year, so we have a fairly large portion of our audience that we like to refer to as lifers. You know, these are people who've attended [00:07:00] 20 or more. Of 28 festivals.

You know, and they're very resilient. They keep coming back and in fact, I'm often blown away by how resilient they are. But, you know, in any given year we may have 10 to 15, maybe 20% of our audience that are coming for the first time. And if your first experiences attending an event where half of the shows didn't happen, and the ones that did were.

confusing you know, array of rescheduled and relocated shows. or if you spend three days in a wet tent, the experience isn't great. And potentially we've lost that opportunity to create a new long-term customer. and I believe a lot of festivals across the country, certainly, coming through the decade that we just don't have huge reserves.

there's not a major push in there. So when a weather event has a couple hundred thousand dollars impact, that could be a really dire situation. It certainly has been for us numerous times over the years and we have wonderful support from our funding partners the event [00:08:00] is a major economic driver, a major tourism driver, so we've always been able to kind of access emergency funding, but still, that kind of just barely gets you through and you carry that weight sometimes for, three to five years, and you just hope that you don't get hit by another weather incident during that time.

Rosalyn: And you know, you mentioned that there's ways that festivals could receive more support in your dream scenario. Or in your easily actionable scenario, you know, what are the things that can be put in place? Are there policy changes? What can happen? How can festivals be more supported to gain some resiliency through this?

Troy: I've had lots of conversations with my colleagues and also I've had the opportunity to talk, you know, with the various funders over the years. And there's some real champions as you know, and I've kind of come to a line of thinking where.

I feel like there should be maybe three stage. Sort of program creates it, and stage one [00:09:00] would be funding available to organizations to do a climate action plan. You know, so what does that mean to me? That means looking at your event and determining what your level of vulnerability is and what you could do to reduce that level of vulnerability. And the reason this kind of came to mind for me is because we've had to do this without any support. we've had to do it ourself, you know, so part one is a planning piece, and you know, over the years our funders have nudged us. To do work on governance, to do work on EDI to do work on other important areas by providing some support.

You know, so part one is planning, and then I think that needs to be followed up with project funding. You know, so if a festival, for example, determines, okay, our site has major drainage issues and it's gonna cost a hundred thousand dollars to improve the drainage of that site, it would be wonderful if our [00:10:00] provincial funders and or our federal funders like heritage.

Would share in those projects it might be a third with the festival. You know, but It's no good to have a planning. Program if there's not an implementation program. And then I think, you know, ultimately part three of this continuum is an emergency fund.

And, you know, it kind of sounds extreme and radical and it's something we've never thought about really in our sector. I've never heard it discussed, but I know that it does exist in many other sectors. You know, whether it's farming or the fishery. You know, and this might be a fund where the provinces and the federal government partner on it.

You know, and some discussions, there's even been talk about events contributing to it. But really it's about, how do we prevent an event that. Let's say it's 30 years old like ours, ceasing to exist because of a hundred thousand dollars hit to revenue. You know, there should be an emergency fund. Really, I guess those are the three [00:11:00] things that I've been thinking about and sharing with our government. You know, our government funders, every chance I get.

Rosalyn: I mean, what does it mean for the community, for the province, if the festival ceases to exist? You know, like if you guys with your experience and your audience and your trust from the community can make it work. You know, the likeliness you know, somebody being able to come up and pick that up. And you know, start up something new in that same scenario with the same conditions is unlikely. You know, what kind of impact, what happens if, the festivals can't do it, you know, can't make it through a catastrophic event.

Troy: Yeah, well, 15 years ago, we probably would've thought and felt that, you know, our signature festivals across the country, were forever. And we've seen shockingly that's not the case. We've seen how fragile and vulnerable, you know, some of these major festivals are.

In the case of Stan Fest and it's a very small festival in comparison to others across the country. We just had an [00:12:00] economic impact assessment done last year, and it's about a $3 million direct impact in that region each year. I would say that's wonderful, but I think it's just the tip of the iceberg. You know, I think the real impact of the event is, what it's done culturally. You know, there's a thousand artists from around the world that have performed in one of Nova Scotia's smallest, most remote and economically challenged communities. the impact of that is, is impossible to quantify, but it, you know, it's changed lives, it's inspired careers people have moved to the community because of the festival, You know, so to think that could be wiped out by a major climate event, is shocking, but it's real as I say, in 10 years we've had four major weather impacted years and two pandemic years.

You know, like it's almost incredible that we're having this conversation to be totally honest. That's how real the situation is.

Rosalyn: you know, we're talking about what festivals can do, but what funders can do. But is there [00:13:00] ways for the community to step up in this way and show support or, or or affect any sort of, positive change there?

Troy: Yeah, I'll tell you a quick story and then I can talk about what we're doing to improve our resilience in this situation. So the story happens in 2014. When we discover on Wednesday morning that we have to cancel a folk festival, and it's because on Tuesday there's a weather alert that there's a hurricane coming at Nova Scotia and the cancel area is the impact zone. This is a category three or a category four hurricane. and so many people have asked me, how did you make that decision? That must've been the toughest decision you've ever made. And what I always say is, it was actually the easiest decision because it was really only one choice, but the next 10 decisions were the toughest decisions I've ever made.

You know, like, how do you do that? There were a dozen European artists in the air at that point. There's. 800 people in the [00:14:00] campground. we're four days out, the site has been built for a week, and how do you take something that took two weeks to build and tear it all down anyway?

You know, so one of the things we had to decide was. What do we do about refunds? And at that moment you're thinking about how do we survive this? But you're also thinking about how do we take care of our patrons, you know, because that's part of surviving this. So we quickly made a decision that we had to offer refunds, but we also communicated it to other options in our news release. And the other two options were that we proposed folks consider deferring their ticket to the next year or donating it, you know, to help us through the crisis. And in the end. Nearly 70% of our audience either donated or deferred, you know, which there couldn't be any better show of support, you know, or demonstration of what the event meant to people.

But, you know, our audience is smart and they knew, okay this organization is [00:15:00] on the ropes and this is an extreme situation beyond what anybody could ever. comprehend, you know, so we, there was a couple hours after the decision was made where I felt like, you know, I've just spent nearly 20 years of my life as have a lot of other people building something that's now gone because there is no way to recover. And within a couple hours as these messages kept coming in, you know, and our funders called us to say, look, you, you've made the right decision if you act based on safety. Nobody can really ever fall on that. You know, we had donors jump in and we even had other major festivals across the country make donations.

So it was this incredible outpouring of support. But That's not something that one can depend on, and I believe that was in the old days when it was an incredible anomaly. That's not possible when it's 20 events across. Across the country. You know, so flash forward to what are we doing now? So over the last two years we've been preparing a new strategic [00:16:00] plan for the next five years. And certainly the biggest factor that we're dealing with is climate. And we've embraced the fact that. It's our single biggest risk. We need to manage it. So we're in the process of making a major change to our model.

You know, and this could be a really complicated discussion or you can really simplify it. And what that means to us is we need to get some of our stages indoors, So what we're creating Is a fairly unique hybrid kind of model, you know, so across the country there are many site-based folk festivals and there are certainly a growing number of distributed festivals.

And what we're creating is a new model that's actually both, you know, so last year was the first year. where we had in the three days leading into the festival, we had eight shows and six venues. This year, I believe it's nine shows and eight, eight venues. And, you know, it's growing.

So that was step one, you know, [00:17:00] and the region is very excited because the duration has now been extended, the geographic footprint has been expanded, and it's weather resilient. You know, in most cases, unless we're talking about power outages or those sorts of things. The shows go on now, this year we're sort of moving into stage two of this model, which is actually taking a stage or two or three off the site into facilities in the community, you know, and the goal ultimately is that when there is extreme weather, most of the show can still happen.

So there's not that, financial So, you know, like we've moved on from talking about it to actually making Major changes. And you know, on one hand it's terrifying at year 28 to be making these kinds of changes, but I think it's also exciting and inspiring and, it's a new challenge, but it's just so practical.

You know, and I think if we and other festivals put our head in the sand. we're not really [00:18:00] doing our community justice or our event justice. so that's, you know, that's the direction we're heading. And the reaction has been wonderful.

You know, like, every festival needs to be really deliberate and active at engaging their community and reengaging their community. You know, and because we've steered in this direction mostly from a climate change perspective, you know, there are eight or nine new communities that now feel they have ownership of a piece of the festival.

You know, and we. We've been able to support this activity to some degree through our existing funding sources, but there wasn't a program there specifically to help us do this, you know, not to help us plan it, you know, not to do those during each projects or to do all the marketing that's required to make a major pivot

Rosalyn: Yeah, I imagine there's like community consultation, there's just like, just the facilitation of changing your strategic plan and being able to come up with these alternatives. All this stuff takes resources [00:19:00] and yeah. I'm wondering if I guess, you know, when you're dealing with the community at a certain point, you know, the community.

Is there to help out and to pitch in during these events. And I imagine that after a certain point they're expecting something to change. Right. And you guys have implemented this massive organizational change within the festival. I'm wondering if you have some advice for other organizations that maybe haven't faced this challenge head on yet? You know, there's a lot of provinces with, like, just all the festivals within a region, that are just starting to, I think, feel some, extra pressure from climate change and you know, that they maybe haven't felt before.

So what would be your advice for these organizations that are starting to come around to realizing that they have to start making some changes?

Troy: I think there's sort of a direct line of action which every festival has to take, which is, you know, kind of doing what we've. been doing and looking at their event and where those vulnerabilities [00:20:00] are and what they can do. You know, and for some festivals it might be, changing to a different type of tent that's more.

Whether resilient over stage for many it's site improvements. You know, for some it's emergency planning. You know, so on a direct level, I think every festival has to do that, even if there isn't support, it's really about survival. for our various funding partners, I think it really is time to, to walk the talk.

It's time for there to be a national gathering where all the provinces and heritage come together and decide, okay, what is it, what does it look like? Is it a three-part program like this crazy guy in Nova Scotia is going on about, or is it something different than that?

But it's not good enough for there to be nothing. And I think, you know, from organizing conferences, you know it, we're still in that stage where every year we have a discussion and everybody comes together and everybody agrees how big of an issue it is, but there's not enough change from one year [00:21:00] to the next.

You know, by now a new program should be announced. I think when we embrace it, there's gonna be all kinds of wonderful innovation across the country. You know, I think back to the COVID crisis and how so many of us, you know, came up with these incredible models to keep the shows happening, whether that was online or spaced or whatever it may be.

But really, think there needs to be a national summit, and whether that is a standalone event or whether it's, you know, connected to another major national event it really has to go to that level. And, you know, I don't know how to instigate that. I guess, you know, there's a role for organizations like Folk Canada, as you know, representatives of the sector.

But I think it's also each of us, you know, advocating for that with our provincial MOAs and our federal mps. you know, in our economy, the strong survive, you know, and those sectors that advocate strongly and advocate well, get what they need. And, [00:22:00] it's a major challenge that we have to.

Rosalyn: Can, regular citizens of the world. Share in that advocacy, you know, if somebody is listening in and going like, okay, I'm not a festival organizer, but I want to support and I wanna help to see the festival in my community. Keep going. Is there a way for them to add their voice and show support or to engage in some sort of action that would be helpful.

Troy: Well, you know, I often, when I'm asked a question like that I think back to one of my earliest and biggest mentors, Mitch and Mitch would say, buy a God ticket. You know,

Rosalyn: Probably even more colorful language than that.

Troy: yeah. You know, get off the bench, I think that's the most basic level that you can support your festival, you know, or perhaps it's volunteering, you know, almost anywhere in Canada, you could be part of a festival. And it can be very accessible, through volunteering. You know, certainly if folks have a [00:23:00] channel to speak with their elected representatives. It would be a wonderful help. it takes repetition to be heard because there are so many, there are so many issues and so many sectors.

You know, and I think it gets overlooked what the incredible economic and cultural impact is of these events, you know, I always thought it would be amazing if we did a national combination of economic impact numbers.

Troy: it would be a shocking number but having that number would perhaps get us the audience we need for change.

Rosalyn: Yeah, we just went through our federal election and, you don't even have to pick up a phone. They come right to your door and ask you what you're interested in. what are the issues that you're voting on, that you care about.

And yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunity, as an audience or fans or citizens of our communities as simple as just saying, I care about arts and culture, or I care about live music. I care about letting folks know that it's on your priority list and you're gonna vote based on that priority list, you know?

Troy: Yeah, I mean I think, you know, it has [00:24:00] to be said that, you know, it's not that we're doing a bad job, you know, I think, all of us as festivals are advocating. and doing a good job in our regions and our funding partners have been tremendous. You know, I look at the COVID crisis and I remember the early days thinking how can we ever survive this?

Like, we're in the gathering business and what we thought was impossible is now law. We can't gather, you know, and through incredible support. From our provincial and federal partners. we all came through that and I believe that can happen again around climate, you know, and so many organizations have done great advocacy on our behalf. folk Canada the Canadian Live Music Association, you know, the Provincial Music Industry Association, CCMA it was a major victory to get through that. crisis and come out, perhaps even stronger, certainly more unified and connected.

And I think we came out of that with government having a better understanding of why the [00:25:00] sector is important and what the actual value is, economic and otherwise.

Rosalyn: So now, you know, looking ahead you have a festival coming up this summer. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what you're looking forward to for Stan Fest 2025.

Troy: Yeah, so our event happens in late July and normally I would be saying July 25 to 27th, but as I mentioned, we're now. In year two of being a week long event. So it's July 21st to 27 in nine communities.

Rosalyn: Wow.

Troy: yeah, so super excited about that. We're going through a strategic planning, I. Process, sort of the final step in our strategic planning process, which is engaging our 30 crew leaders to kind of, provide input into that plan.

So we have a summit coming up to do that. we're. Solidly embracing succession planning with our board, with our staff. we've brought on a new artistic director in the past couple years Steve McIntyre

Rosalyn: Lovely

Troy: many, yeah. Many [00:26:00] will have met Steve and he's doing incredible. And he's booked an incredible festival. this year. So, you know, certainly would encourage folks to take a look at stanfest.com. Incredible lineup. And a really interesting model, you know, and it takes place. I mean, I'm a, I'm I. I'm more than a little bit biased, but it takes place in the most beautiful part of Canada and the most incredible little community which is actually my hometown.

It's pretty incredible to look back at what's been created in this little community and the whole region is super engaged and proud of.

Rosalyn: Yes. Get your tickets now if you don't have them already. And definitely go check out the lineup. I think you know, Stan Fest has continually had, you know, such an impressive lineup of artists. It's it's been a real treat to see how the programming's evolved. Troy, thanks so much for, for the conversation. I appreciate your time.

Troy: Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity.

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