ARTISTIC HEAD GONE
Folk fest, Butel ‘part ways’
The Regina Folk Festival has “parted ways” with its longtime artistic director and chief executive, Sandra Butel.
That’s according to an emailed statement from Melissa Biro, the RFF board president. “The Regina Folk Festival and Sandra Butel have parted ways. We will not be discussing personnel matters at this time,” Biro wrote in an email sent this week in response to a Leader-post inquiry.
“Planning continues for the 2020 Regina Folk Festival, Aug. 7-9 in Victoria Park.”
Asked whether “parted ways” means Butel’s employment was terminated, Biro replied, “I will not elaborate as we are not discussing personnel matters at this time.”
In an online message, Butel wrote, “I can confirm I am no longer working with the RFF but on the advice of my legal counsel I can’t say more at this time.”
In advance of the 50th Regina Folk Festival in August 2019 — her 21st as artistic director — Butel said in an interview she had no imminent plans to retire.
She joked, “When you see Tom Waits booked, you know I’m out.”
The experimental blues-rock musician has not announced any concert dates of late.
Butel began working as artistic director of the festival in 1999.
“I got paid very little, $4,500. It was like, ‘Well, OK, I’m willing to try this out and grow with the organization and have the organization grow with me.’ I would have done it for nothing, basically, I guess,” Butel said in a 2014 interview.
It is unclear when her duties as executive director/ceo began. Until 2003, the non-profit organization employed a general manager; that position was replaced with an operations and marketing manager beginning in 2004.
During Butel’s tenure, the festival grew in attendance, diversity and inclusion, artistic draw, and boasts more staff and volunteers.
In the 2019 RFF official program, in a “welcome message,” Biro lauded Butel: “The ... RFF would not be as strong as it is without the guidance of our Artistic Director & CEO Sandra Butel and the dedicated team she has assembled.”
In 2012, Butel said in an interview: “There’s a history of coups happening and people getting taken out in not very diplomatic ways. There’s a history of people who have hung in there way after it was obvious it was their time to move on. So for me, I can assume that there’s some point in time where the time is right to move on and allow someone else the opportunity to do this.”