Stan Rogers Folk Festival: Building resilience to the threat of climate change
This project is funded in part by the Government of Canada.
For two years, the Cultural Policy Hub has been working to better understand organizational precarity and resilience in Canadian arts, culture and heritage not-for-profit organizations. This research now leads the Hub to ask: what novel approaches are to organizational development, transformation and sustainability are organizations undertaking to address the precarity they face?
Over the course of March 2026, the Hub is sharing case studies that explore how nine organizations are responding to unique opportunities and challenges, ranging from financial precarity to governance, space insecurity, connection to community and the impacts of climate change.
This case study focuses on adaptability and resilience in the face of operational and financial risks due to climate change.
Taking place in a community of 1,200 people three hours away from Halifax, the annual Stan Rogers Folk Festival (“Stanfest”) welcomes over 30 artists from around the world who perform for an audience of 10,000 people. But Stanfest is no stranger to environmental disruption. Over a period of nine years between 2014 and 2023, the festival has had to cancel events and even scrap entire editions due to “rain outs,” a heatwave, a hurricane and the COVID-19 pandemic. These disruptions have put considerable operational and financial strain on an organization that faces many of the same challenges and vulnerabilities that other not-for-profit arts and culture organizations in Canada face.
In order to build resilience to the systemic and environmental challenges they’ve faced, Stanfest’s organizers have been transforming their model over the past ten years. In this case study, the Cultural Policy Hub explores the challenges Stan Rogers Folk Festival faces as a rural not-for-profit festival and how the festival has adapted to embed resilience to climate impacts into its strategy and operations. This case study is based on an interview with Stanfest’s Executive Director, Artistic Director and Founding Member Troy Greencorn. It concludes with insights from Stanfest for art leaders and also for government policymakers and funders.
Read the full Case study below:
