01
The edition header
Year, the two dates it actually ran on, the venue it actually stood on, and the theme the communities chose for that year. Written on the Monday after, from the record of what happened.
About · the record of editions
An archive with nothing in it yet.
Capital Cultures has run zero editions. This page is the shelf, built before there is anything to put on it: the shape of an edition page, the counting rules we are fixing in advance, and the date the first entry appears.
Status · 28 August 2026 · zero editions held · first entry planned for September 2027
| Edition | Dates | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 2027 | 7–8 August 2027 | Planned · subject to permits · page opens September 2027 |
What lands here after August 2027.
One page per edition, at /archive/2027, then a page a year after that. Nine blocks, in this order, every year the same. Here is the structure, with the content left empty until the day it is earned.
Template · one page per edition · first entry September 2027
Nine blocks · same order every year · empty until the edition happens
02
The result in numbers
Visits, pavilions built, performers on stage, volunteer hours signed for, vendors trading. Every figure carries the method that produced it in the same line. A figure without a method stays off the page.
03
How we counted
The counting method in plain words: where the counters stood, how often the crew counted, who ran the intercept survey, how big the sample was. A funder reads this block before the one above it, and so should everybody else.
04
The programme as it ran
The saved grid — stage by stage, hour by hour, including what moved, what was cut and what the weather took. The plan and the day rarely match, and the archive keeps the day.
05
The pavilions
Every community that built one that year, each linked to its article in Cultures, each with the organisation that operated it named. This is the block a community sends to its own members and its own funders.
06
Photographs
Twenty to thirty frames of the actual day, shot by named photographers, published with consent and credit. The first archive page is
07
Voices
What participants said afterwards, quoted with their names and their permission, gathered in the two weeks after the gate closed. Until somebody has said something, this block does not exist.
08
Partners
Who stood behind that edition, by tier, with what they paid for. A partner earns a place here by having been there, and the entry stays for as long as the archive does.
09
The report
A link to the financial report for that edition once the board has signed it off. Income, spend, what the surplus or the shortfall went to. Late here is forgivable. Missing is a broken promise.
How we will count.
Attendance figures are the easiest thing at a free festival to inflate, and the hardest to defend a year later. The method is settled now, in public, while there is still nothing at stake in settling it honestly.
Decided in advance · the rule applies to every document we sign
A free festival has no ticket, so it has no automatic denominator. Every organiser fills that gap somehow, and the way it gets filled is what separates a number a funder can use from a number a funder quietly discounts. Ours is fixed here first, so the crew is trained for it before the gates open rather than after.
Visits are the unit of planning and of reporting on this site. Unique visitors get published as a separate figure with the survey behind them attached, because they come from a survey and a survey has a sample size that the reader is entitled to see.
| Term | What it means here | How it gets measured |
|---|---|---|
| Visit | One person entering once. The same person on both days counts twice. | Entrance counters plus an hourly crew headcount, on a schedule published beforehand. |
| Unique visitor | One person across the whole event. | An intercept survey on site, published with its method and its sample size. |
| Tourist | Travelled 40 km one way, or crossed into Ontario to be there. | Postal codes from the same survey. The definition belongs to the provincial programme. |
| Volunteer hour | One hour on a shift somebody signed for. | The shift sheet. Unsigned hours stay out of the total. |
- Every figure travels with its method. No attendance number goes into a grant application, a sponsor deck or a press release on its own. The sentence and the method arrive together or neither arrives.
- The count gets published whatever it says. A first edition below its own planning range is a fact about the first edition, and it goes on this page in the same size type as any other result.
- Advertising value equivalent and earned media value stay out. Both are scored by the agency being measured, and an archive built for funders has no room for a metric that grades its own homework.
- Comparisons name whose denominator they use. Other festivals count differently, some of them count generously, and any line on this site setting us beside them will say which unit each side is using.
- The goal and the result never share a typeface. The 8,000–12,000 visits the festival is built for live with the plan; the archive carries measured figures only, and this page is the promise that the line holds.
Why the shelf goes up first.
Every funding body, every sponsor and every community organisation opens with a version of the same question: have you done this before, and what happened. The archive is where that question gets answered in one link.
The record is a working document · built for the next application
A first-year festival stands at the worst point of a loop. Funding wants a track record, and a track record wants funding. The way through it runs on evidence: state the method before the event, measure honestly during it, publish everything within a month of it, and arrive at the next application with a page instead of an anecdote.
An archive built after the fact is a scrapbook assembled from whatever survived. An archive designed before the fact tells the crew what to record on the day — which sheets to keep, which frames to shoot, which questions to ask a visitor while she is standing in front of you and never again.
- Funders. Programme officers ask for a completed edition, its attendance and its method. A single page carrying all three beats an appendix every time.
- Sponsors. A second-year sponsorship conversation opens with what the first year delivered, in figures the sponsor's own finance team can check.
- Communities. A community deciding whether to build a pavilion wants to see what last year's pavilion looked like, who ran it, and what it drew.
- The city. Permits, noise files and traffic plans go smoother for an organiser who publishes what happened, including the parts that went badly.
- Us. Year two is planned from year one's grid, its queue times and its shortfalls. Memory decays inside a month; the record does not.
0
Editions in this archive
Capital Cultures has held no festival. Zero is the honest figure today, it is printed here at full size, and it changes exactly once — in September 2027, if the first edition runs.
Capital Cultures · status on 28 August 2026
When the first entry appears.
Five steps stand between this page and its first edition. Four of them are ours to take.
Timeline · updated the day any line on it changes
- August 2026Done The archive is designed before the festival This page, the nine-block template and the counting rules exist ahead of edition one, so the record is a requirement on the crew rather than a favour asked of them afterwards.
- 13 September 2026Now The counting method gets a rehearsal The same team runs a Ukrainian community festival in Lanark County, and its fourth season is where the counters, the hourly headcount and the intercept survey get their first run. What we learned at UAFest sets out what that team carries here. The figures that rehearsal produces belong to that festival and stay off this site.
- October 2026 onwardPlanned Permits, funding, communities The applications, the venue process and the pavilion agreements that decide whether an edition happens at all. Each one is tracked in public on the pages that own it.
- 7–8 August 2027Planned The first edition runs Counters at the entrances, the crew on the hourly schedule, the survey in the field, photographers briefed on consent, the shift sheets collected at the end of each day.
- September 2027Planned /archive/2027 is published Nine blocks filled in: the header, the figures with their methods, the programme as it ran, the pavilions, the photographs, the voices, the partners, and a placeholder for the report with the date it is due.
- After the board signs offPlanned The financial report joins it Income and spend for the edition, linked from block nine. The archive page is finished on the day that link goes live.
The first sentence in this archive will be a number with its method attached.
Be told when it fills.
The mailing list is the only channel open today. Subscribers hear the first edition dates when the permits land, and get the archive page the week it goes up.
Intake 01 · consent per mailing type, one click out