Ottawa Jazz Festival launches fundraising campaign in face of $400,000 debt

Music keeps it alive, but is it enough to keep it afloat? The Ottawa Jazz Festival is a summertime staple for the city and many music festival goers across the country, but it can't rely on ticket sales alone. All of our expenses started rising, as did for everybody else, but the public funding kind of stayed the same. And then a major sponsor pulled out of most of the jazz festivals across the country, including us. So it's been difficult to get those sponsorship dollars back to where they should be. Jazz Fest is not alone. The Ottawa Festival Network says many festivals in the city, as well as the rest of the National Capital Region, are experiencing challenges with funding. It currently has about 250 members. They all have different needs, and they're different types of festivals. Some are smaller community festivals that don't require street closures. You know, Pride requires a lot of street closures because it's a parade, so they have different sets of needs. But financial stress is across the board, you know, for all festivals. This year, Jazz Fest was identified as one of eight tourism-generating festivals in the city. It got a slice of the $1 million fund launched by Ottawa Tourism and the City of Ottawa. A lot of the problems that festivals encounter are baseline costs to just make their events happen. So that goes from security to permitting and everything in between. So we're trying to help festivals along with the Ottawa Festival Network to try and streamline or at least make these costs more affordable or at least more predictable for these event organizers. And it's incredible, but there's many levels of funding, and so it seems like everybody's understanding, and they're slowly getting the point and stepping up, but as amazing as it is, it's not enough. More help is on the way. The federal government has earmarked $25 million to support local festivals and performing arts events. It's been two weeks now since the Ottawa Jazz Fest launched Keep the Music Playing. It's a fundraising campaign aimed at turning things around with the help of the community. It's so far raised $50,000 with a target of $400,000. Jazz Fest is also working to cut costs wherever it can, including partnering with other organizations to share infrastructure. Chuck Tinte, CBC News, Ottawa.