The City of Humboldt is hoping to positively increase their tourism numbers next year by bringing in a handful of musicians for a large-scale event.
Council approved a proposal on Monday to enter into a partnership with Pro:Fit Consulting to host an inaugural Living Skies Music Festival in 2024.
The city will be including a $30,000 cash sponsorship and any additional in-kind support for the festival.
“We’ve had several significant events over the years and coming out of COVID now, there seems to be that renewed desire from the community to see events here,” said director of community and leisure services for the City of Humboldt, Michael Ulriksen.
“We’ve been talking about this music festival for the last five or six years, and the timing just never seemed to be right, but now we think that going into 2024, the timing is right for us to logistically be able to manage an event of this size, as well as to have the resources to be able to put some funding behind bringing it to town.”
All funding and support required for this event would be funded through existing operating accounts and reserves or be generated through grants and on-site revenues.
With that in mind, the event is not expected to increase the 2024 Community and Leisure Services Department’s budget or residential tax rates.
“The majority of the investment that’s going in is going to be through existing sponsorship channels, we do have some sponsorship dollars that we have in our budgets already, that we use for these types of events, obviously, this is on a much larger scale,” Ulriksen added.
“There’s also some opportunity to generate a little bit of revenue for ourselves and some grant opportunities out there that can help support the funding side of this, so that’s fantastic.”
If deemed a success by both parties in year one, the expectation is that it could become an annual event for the region.
The renewed focus on event tourism within the community and the anticipated growth of the region over the next few years also makes the timing for an event of this type an expected investment.
“When we do host events in Humboldt, whether it’s larger events or smaller training events, we tend to have an easy time drawing from across the province and outside of our community, just due to our location. We’re kind of the center of many of the larger centers, so we think we’re well situated there,” Ulriksen told northeastNOW.
“From a tourist perspective, we haven’t done a great job of capitalizing on that, so we’re eager with events like this and other events and activities that we’re working with our local community groups on to drive traffic to Humboldt. Given our central location, we don’t have much for natural tourist attractions, so we’re really leaning into the event tourism side of things.”
More details on the festival such as artist names, dates, coinciding activities and more are expected to be released later this summer.
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