“Moving to online sales will address the capacity and limit the amount of people that are going to be on site,” said Janie Ramsey, the President of the Kispiox Valley Music Festival. “But this is a huge change. We’ve always had gate sales, and with gate sales you don’t really know how many are going to show up until they come to the gate.”
Hosted in the last weekend of July, this festival had its most successful year in 2024, with close to 3000 people in attendance. Ramsey notes that with trailers, those camping in tents, parking on and off site, the organizing committee were merely just running out of space.
“We feel like we didn’t have enough time to implement that change between now and this July,” she said. “So the decision was made to pause the festival, and also take the opportunity to improve other infrastructure. So creating a parking plan, recruiting a membership, having volunteers and people from the community that have ideas.”
However, the board does not want this year to be looked at as a cancellation. Instead, they want it viewed more as a pause. They felt as though that a festival in July was going to be too early for this year’s festivities, and will look to recruit membership from the Northwest to update documentation on reflecting participation in the society and the volunteer base from outside of the valley.
The board will also look to create a five year plan for more sustainability, which hasn’t been updated since 2007.
When Ramsey went to her first KVMF in 2014, there were around 1600 to 1800 people in attendance. While the board does not have a number yet on how many people they would like to hold in 2026, they can confirm that they will not be aiming for 3000 people.
“You get to the point where you grow so much and it changes the flavour of the festival and this is an opportunity to make some changes,” said Ramsey. “We don’t want to be the biggest. We don’t want to grow, in fact we can’t grow anymore. In fact we just don’t have the infrastructure anymore, but part of the magic of the festival is that it isn’t really big. It gives us an opportunity to reflect and make sure that we’re providing a very good festival experience for all of our attendees that is safe.”