30
Wednesday, September 13, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
CANCELLATION:
Event will carry on
and return in 2018
Continued from page 1
board monitored the situa-
tion for days, consulting with
meteorologists, fire manag-
ers and health professionals.
Wednesday was the absolute
last day the festival could
make the call and still get all
the work done necessary to
produce the festival.
“We had to put our volun-
teers out on Wednesday after-
noon if we were going to put
it on — and we couldn’t do
it,” he said.
Air quality on Wednesday
was hazardous. Advice from
health professionals was that
the festival would be put-
ting volunteers and paid
work-staff into a potentially
unhealthful condition if they
were to exert themselves in
the dense smoke. Schools sent
students home due to poor air
quality in the schools, which
also impacted the festival.
Plans had been drawn up to
move some venues indoors
to the schools, but the board
couldn’t be assured of good
air quality even there.
“We had a plan A, B, and
C, and none of it worked,”
Bott said.
The annual Americana
Song Academy, held at
Caldera at Blue Lake the
week running up to the festi-
val, was cut short by smoky
conditions.
Air quality was extremely
bad on Thursday, too, forc-
ing cancellation of the pre-
festival gathering of sponsors
and Folk Art Circle members.
And then it rained. It is a bit-
tersweet irony for event orga-
nizers that air quality, which
was still unhealthful Friday
morning, improved steadily
through the weekend to the
best it has been in weeks. The
improvement — welcomed
by all — came just a couple
of days too late to salvage the
festival.
While the cancellation was
heartbreaking for staff, vol-
unteers, artists and patrons,
people did what they could to
make the best of the situation.
Singer-songwriter Martha
Scanlan, who had taught at the
song academy, organized art-
ists who were in town for the
song camp or who had arrived
early for the festival, and pop-
up concerts were held Friday
and Saturday night at The
Belfry. Owner Angeline Rhett
opened the concert hall to the
public for free, and patrons
donated at the door to provide
some pay for the artists.
On Sunday, local musi-
cians joined community
members at the Village Green
for a spontaneous community
gathering.
All of those spontaneous
efforts to salvage some of the
spirit of the annual festival
seemed to lift peoples’ spir-
its — as did the sight of blue
skies and the Sisters mountain
skyline, obscured for weeks in
a smog of wildfire smoke.
SFF Managing Director
Ann Richardson said that a
large number of both patrons
and volunteers expressed
appreciation for the decision
to cancel in the interest of
people’s health. She said the
response from the public has
been overwhelmingly sup-
portive. She noted that many
people have contacted the
festival to explicitly state that
they are donating the price
of their 2017 ticket to the
festival.
Richardson noted that
any unused ticket value is a
tax-deductible donation to a
nonprofit 501(c)(3). She said
the festival will develop a
mechanism to generate a tax
receipt for anyone donating
the value of the ticket.
Staff and board are still
assessing the financial obliga-
tions of the festival for 2017
and expect to let ticketholders
know what the festival plans
to do in regard to any poten-
tial compensation in a couple
of weeks.
“Until we fully assess our
financial situation, we can’t
know what we can do for our
ticket-holders,” Richardson
said.
The financial impact of the
cancellation does not affect
the event alone.
“Proceeds from the fes-
tival support our music and
education programs in the
schools,” Bott said. “It’s our
number-one fundraiser… In a
few weeks, we’ll know what
we’re able to do and how it is
going to affect our programs.”
The festival does not carry
event cancellation insurance.
Bott explained that premi-
ums for such insurance are
extremely expensive — and
coverage is limited. In fact,
cancellation insurance would
not have covered the festival
this year, because the board
decided to cancel the event.
“You can’t make your own
call on your event (and be
PHOTO BY CODY RHEAULT
Singer-songwriter Martha Scanlan was instrumental in organizing a pop-
up concert featuring several festival musicians at The Belfry on Friday.
covered),” he explained. “It
has to be an external agency
to shut down the event, and
that wasn’t going to happen
here.”
Despite the tribulations of
the past week, festival orga-
nizers take heart from the
show of support among art-
ists, patrons and community
alike, and they vow to return
in 2018.
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