Strategic Experimentation Fund: Applications Now Open and 2024 Cohort Update

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre is Toronto’s leading destination for artistically rigorous alternative theatre and a world leader in developing queer voices and stories for the stage.

Challenge: How to address perceptual barriers that keep people from attending Buddies.

Phase 1: Learned that the implementation of a “hosting culture” improved customer retention and experience but needed to gain a deeper understanding of perceptual barriers for patrons.

Phase 2: Clarifying the branding, messaging, and right channels that bring people to Buddies, to better reflect the experience that they’ll have in the building.

Canadian Stage

Canadian Stage is one of Canada’s leading nonprofit contemporary performance companies, producing and showcasing new, innovative art forms from Canada and around the world.

Challenge: How to build relationships with audiences when ticket revenue has shifted from a subscription-driven model to a more volatile, single ticket–dependent model

Phase 1: Learned and identified gaps between institutional expectations and audience motivation.

Phase 2: Testing language, tone, and content that reinforce shared knowledge, experience, and ownership of the art form by explicitly framing audience members as “insiders” rather than external consumers of the work.

Guild Festival Theatre

Guild Festival Theatre is Scarborough’s only professional theatre company, committed to expanding the conventional definition of theatre classics by highlighting stories and artists that reflect its diverse community.

Challenge: How to grow audiences to sustain the current level of programming,

Phase 1: Learned that trust with audience members is deeply place-based; activities rooted in Guild Park generated the most meaningful engagement.

Phase 2: Testing a destination-centred cultural ecosystem anchored in Guild Park & Gardens by intentionally integrating place-based programming, facilitated access, and continuity between visits.

Mammalian Diving Reflex

Mammalian Diving Reflex is a performing arts group that creates site and social-specific performance, theatre productions, participatory gallery installation, and more to foster dialogue and dismantle barriers between individuals of all backgrounds.

Challenge: How to build lasting technical skills and confidence with their youth-grown team as digital tools become a bigger part of our work.

Phase 1: Learned to mix sound, balance inputs, adjust latency, and troubleshoot through low-stakes, playful experiments, removing the expectation to “get it right.”

Phase 2: Testing and refining play-based approaches for youth to gain confidence in technical abilities.

Moonhorse Dance Theatre

Moonhorse Dance Theatre is dedicated to presenting the work of dance artists aged 45 and older.

Challenge: How to consistently integrate creative audio description into their current practice, offering a sophisticated experience of dance to blind/low vision audiences

Phase 1: Learned the value and artistic potential of creative audio description for dance, not just as an access measure, but as its own creative practice.

Phase 2: Investigating if the creative process generated in Phase 1 can be sustained as a regular offering at Moonhorse moving forward.

lbs/sq”

pounds per square inch performance is a Toronto dance company exploring how the body can be a primary source for artistic creation and performance.

Challenge: How a single dance artist-led company can overcome barriers to cooperation and become a sustainable model for artistic co-leadership.

Phase 1: Learned that bringing artists together around shared experiences builds creative capacity and makes the organization more resilient.

Phase 2: Refining the engagement process with the same cohort to better understand how solo-driven artists can balance collaborative and competitive instincts.

Small World Music

Small World Music is dedicated to celebrating cultural diversity and showcasing a diverse array of local, domestic, and international talent to audiences in Toronto.

Challenge: How to build sustainable earned-revenue models through arts education programs.

Phase 1: Learned that there is an urgent, unmet need for children’s arts education around the Trinity-Bellwoods neighbourhood.

Phase 2: Piloting culturally-grounded children’s arts education through camps, after school, and weekend programs.

Soulpepper Theatre

Soulpepper Theatre is Canada’s leading artist-driven theatre company that also offers a host of ancillary programs to nurture and develop the creativity of everyone who wishes to engage with the performing arts.

Challenge: How to embed AI expertise to unlock productivity gains.

Phase 1: Learned that AI tools can address Soulpepper’s acute capacity constraints.

Phase 2: Testing an embedded residency for a dedicated AI technologist, working on-site at Soulpepper’s facilities on a full-time basis.

Toronto Fringe

The Toronto Fringe is Ontario’s largest performing arts festival and a platform for innovative theatre and performance.

Challenge: How to foster artists’ economic and creative success in the face of rising costs for both independent producers and the Toronto Fringe.

Phase 1: Learned that artists and audiences are open to tiered and PWYC ticketing, and alternative, mobile venue methods.

Phase 2: Building the staff capacity needed to implement and refine the ticketing and venue experiments.

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2024 Strategic Experimentation Fund

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Buddies in Bad Times Theatre

Canadian Stage

Guild Festival Theatre

Mammalian Diving Reflex

Moonhorse Dance Theatre

lbs/sq”

Small World Music

Soulpepper Theatre

Toronto Fringe

Related News & Events