Client-partner
The Town of St. Marys
Service: Research and insight generation, Stakeholder consultation and engagement
June – October 2022
The Town of St. Marys needed to reimagine its Stonetown Heritage Festival and develop a clear direction for how to implement it in the near future. Working as one team, Bannikin and Ontario Culture Days worked with the Town of St. Marys to develop a Reimagined Festival Concept Note for the town that would engage stakeholders in informing the concept and building buy-in, understand the tourism potential of the festival, including how key assets could be integral parts of the festival, find alignments with exiting or upcoming plans, initiatives, and developments, and outline the steps needed to implement the reimagined festival in the years to come.
Activities
Document review (14 documents)
Cultural events and festival leaders survey
Research scoping
Key informant interviews (11 key informants)
In-market assessment (1-day in-person)
Stakeholder survey part 1 (33 industry & 177 attendee responses)
Jurisdictional scan (3 festivals/events)
Analysis and assessment
Reimagination of festival
Stakeholder survey part 2
Presentation (1 virtual)
Work planning meeting
Plan development
Outcome
“Town of St. Marys: Reimagined Stonetown Heritage Festival Finalized Concept Note” is the outcome of our collaborative work. The concept note is being used by the Town of St. Marys to guide the work for the 2024 reimagined Stonetown Heritage Festival, as well as inform components of the 2023 Stonetown Heritage Festival, including the development of a dedicated webpage for the festival, increased communications about the festival with attendees and participants, increased participation by different community groups, and increased buy-in by council members. To support St. Marys in the work towards the reimagined festival, we provided staff with implementation planning support, including an implementation planning framework for staff to use as they move forward.
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