It started with uncomfortable calls from bankers and bookkeepers. As 2023 progressed, Canada’s cultural institutions began to realize that the money coming in was down and the money going out was up. Way up.to reckon with this reality, last summer, when it could no longer make its $70,000-a-month loan payments. Soon, globally lionized festivals fromreached the brink.
This past March, PACT published a startling number from the Canadian Arts Data statistics database: Theatre attendance was down 46 per cent from 2019 across the country. A mix of factors is likely to blame. A recenttried to unpack why consumer spending is much higher right now in the U.S. than Canada.
Off the top was GDP: New Statscan data released this week confirmed that live performances’ recovery lagged behind the rest of the cultural economy by a year, in terms of gross domestic product. And while their contribution to the economy had an annual growth rate of 5.9 per cent between 2010 and 2019, Julien points out that it was effectively the same in 2023 as in 2019. This isn’t a perfect proxy, but it suggests less enthusiasm for the stage.
Executive director Anita Gaffney says that Stratford’s costs last season were up 25 per cent over 2019, and that her team has cut the 2024 budget by 3 per cent over last season in ways they hope won’t interfere with artistry and audience experiences. So far, that’s meant trimming digital content, marketing consultant fees and even cutting down on printed materials wherever possible.with a roughly half-million-dollar blessing from its longtime title sponsor, the Bank of Nova Scotia.
Since the nineties, philanthropists have taken advantage of alternative-minimum tax rules implemented by finance ministers including Paul Martin and Jim Flaherty, which reduced capital-gains hits on gifts of publicly listed securities to, for a while, zero. The current Liberals walked back some of this benefit in the 2023 budget, drawing ire from charity leaders and philanthropists.
The Canada Council has been a crucial lifeline for Canadian artists and arts organizations since 1957, offering up grants to support the creation, sustaining and promotion of art. Under previous CEO Simon Brault, the council began making changes to how funding is disbursed, including allocating 20 per cent to first-time applicants and introducing cross-disciplinary juries to assess applications.
Both individual artists and nationally recognized organizations are trying to grapple with this. The Vancouver-based Chutzpah! Festival, for one, had to launch a $60,000 fundraising campaign through CanadaHelps in part to compensate for recently declined grants. Numerous dance organizations and performers, such as Vancouver’s Kidd Pivot and Shay Kuebler, have told supporters they’ve lost significant grant funding and had to make extreme adjustments.
MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCES: ANNUAL REPORTS, AUDITED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS, GOVERNMENT BUDGETS AND E-MAILED CONVERSATIONS WITH CANADA COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS, CONSEIL DES ARTS ET DES LETTRES DU QUÉBEC, ONTARIO ARTS COUNCIL, ALBERTA FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, AND THE BC ARTS COUNCIL; STATISTICS CANADAAs baseline funding for some of the country's biggest arts councils remained largely stagnant since 2019, the cost of living has risen byas measured by Consumer Price Index...
MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCES: ANNUAL REPORTS, AUDITED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS, GOVERNMENT BUDGETS AND E-MAILED CONVERSATIONS WITH CANADA COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS, CONSEIL DES ARTS ET DES LETTRES DU QUÉBEC, ONTARIO ARTS COUNCIL, ALBERTA FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, AND THE BC ARTS COUNCIL; STATISTICS CANADAbeen grappling with stagnant or declining grant funding from their provincial and municipal granting bodies, too – sometimes because of cuts to arts-council budgets, sometimes...
This isn’t to say all funding comes from granting bodies. In April’s federal budget, the Liberals offered boosts to programs such as the Canada Book Fund, the With so many studios on unsteady ground, Day says, “My fear in Toronto is that we’re going to just fully lose an entire generation of artists, especially recent grads, who are not going to be able to get their foot in the door.”