The Philanthropist - Metcalf Foundation

The Philanthropist

2019

When the Foundation was first approached by the editors of The Philanthropist to curate a series of articles on arts and culture philanthropy in Canada, Metcalf President and CEO Sandy Houston was immediately intrigued. In the first article, Setting the Stage: A New Series on the Public Value of Arts and Culture in Canada, Sandy outlines the purpose of the series, stating that he sees it as an “opportunity to highlight the current state of the field, to animate some of the pressing questions it is facing, and to illuminate the impacts and the benefits that flow from arts and culture”.

Author Kelly Wilhelm, an Ottawa-based strategist who has worked with organizations such as the Canada Council for the Arts and the Office of the Minister of Canadian Heritage, brings a wealth of knowledge to the second article, A Balancing Act:Supporting the Arts in Canada. Kelly begins with a brief historical outline of support for the arts in Canada, moves on to contrasting the Canadian funding model with those found in the United States and Europe, before summarizing the challenges the sector currently faces. She concludes by arguing that the sheer growth in the number and diversity of art forms and organizations necessitates the evolution of complementary new collaborations between public and private partners.

The Art of Impact: Reflections from Five Canadian Artists, our third article, is a collection of personal and evocative statements from a group of artists reflecting on the value that their art brings to their communities. Those featured include artistic director and playwright Marcus Youssef, playwright Hannah Moscovitch, actor and director Antoni Cimolino, cellist Cris Derksen, and dancer and choreographer Mélanie Demers. The article provides an intimate look into how these artists imagine that their work resonates with the public, why they feel it matters, and how they sense their intentions will be received; unfiltered sense-making from the artist’s perspective.

The fourth instalment, Performing Artists Speak, features a series of three two minute videos with artists and administrators from three extraordinary and diverse companies: The Musical Stage Company, Peggy Baker Dance Projects, and Why Not Theatre. In these short films, we hear from the artistic and administrative leadership. They address questions such as: What role has philanthropy played, and what role does it continue to play in adding value to their creative visions? How do these artists and managers see the connection between their art, their audiences, and their relationships with philanthropy? And finally, what advice would they give to philanthropists about how to engage with the arts? Cutting between interviews and performance footage, these compelling videos go straight to the heart of these questions.

In Whose Art is it Anyway? cultural journalist Kate Taylor looks at how organizations from Halifax to Vancouver wrestle with the impacts of the digital revolution that is shaking up both the front and back of the house, and impacting the bottom line. Both creator and destroyer, technology is evolving at a faster and faster pace, creating profound challenges for the performing arts. “Artists who ignore these changes do so at their peril,” Taylor writes.

The series concluded in mid-November 2019 with an article from Metcalf’s Performing Arts Director Michael Trent. In the article A Leading Role: How Philanthropy Can Support Arts and Culture in Canada, he examines how we can better harness the power of philanthropy to enhance the public value of the arts in Canada and further unleash our creative potential.

Performing Arts

Setting the Stage: A New Series on the Public Value of Arts and Culture in Canada

by Sandy Houston
Executive Director, Metcalf Foundation

This is the first article in our series about arts and culture philanthropy. The series is published as a collaboration between The Philanthropist and The Metcalf Foundation.

The Metcalf Foundation is a long-term supporter of the performing arts, so when the editors of The Philanthropist broached the idea of having us curate a series of articles on arts and culture philanthropy in Canada, I was immediately intrigued. The clincher, however, was when I realized that The Philanthropist — through its long and distinguished history — has never focused specifically on arts and culture. Although this fact surprised me, it probably shouldn’t have. While there is considerable philanthropic support for arts and culture in Canada, it doesn’t attract the resources or the sustained attention that other areas do.

The Metcalf Foundation focuses on three key areas — the environment, poverty reduction, and the performing arts. Like many private foundations, the areas in which we work emerged originally from the passions of the family behind the endowment. Our involvement in the arts has always stemmed from a deep conviction about the value of engaging with art at both the individual and the community levels. But unlike our work on environmental and poverty reduction issues, the philanthropic case for the arts has always been more challenging to articulate.

Metcalf’s arts funding has been almost entirely focused on the professional performing arts: music, dance, theatre, and opera, and largely within the confines of Southern Ontario. Our program has two main streams. One is focused on augmenting the resilience and vitality of arts organizations by providing sustained opportunities for experimentation, risk, and learning. The other is centred on people and supports individual transitions and training through an internship program. Recently, our arts program has also linked, more explicitly, to many of the larger issues which absorb the Foundation’s attention: access, equity, inclusion, diversity, and the perennial need to create room for new thinking and practice.

Our long engagement with arts organizations has provoked a number of observations and questions over the years. These have been driven, in part, by our awareness that there is a relative lack of private philanthropic resources and capacity to address the significance and the complexity of how the arts support community and create public value. In our other two areas of focus we are accustomed to being in the company of other funders — colleagues who bring a rich variety of resources, perspectives, and priorities to our shared interests. The cumulative effect of this aggregation is often increased capacity and flexibility for both organizations and the sector to respond powerfully to changing circumstances and challenges.

This has not been our experience in the arts realm. There are relatively few foundations working within arts and culture. Why this is, is not clear. It may be because the arts do not present as compelling a case for support, on the level of basic human needs, as health or poverty. Or perhaps cultural activity is seen as a “nice to have” or embodying elite or exclusive attitudes and behaviours.

The arts provoke, challenge, and stimulate emotions and empathy. In some ways, we at Metcalf exemplify or hold within us some of the tensions in the debate about the significance of the arts for funders. We are, in tandem, maintainers of the status quo while also working to amplify the range of perspectives and the potential for disruption in both form and content.

With this series, we welcome the opportunity to highlight the current state of the field, to animate some of the pressing questions it is facing, and to illuminate the impacts and the benefits that flow from arts and culture.

Making the case: intrinsic or instrumental?

In an increasingly individualized and multi-faceted world, questions about the shared public value of the arts remain as scrutinized and as challenging as ever. They spur discussions that are often polarizing and binary. These include debates as to whether policy and resources should favour private or public interests, elite or popular art forms, professional productions or amateur expressions, and the primacy of the western canon, to name but a few.

One of the more contentious issues is whether the value of artistic expression lies in its intrinsic qualities — meaning integral to the individual or subjective experience. Or is the value instrumental, in which case the ability of the arts to achieve corollary social purposes, such as economic benefits or social cohesion, justifies its importance?

Much energy in the last few decades has been given to making the instrumental case, which in the crudest terms is to argue that support for the arts is ultimately about better outcomes such as higher test scores and more productive workers. There are several ways of framing the instrumental contributions of arts and culture. These include the effect they have on our cities, our economies, and the well-being of our citizens. And if the emphasis is on cities and economies, is it about communities and neighbourhoods, engaged citizens, or something more quantifiable and measurable?

Demonstrating and measuring these types of outcomes can be elusive. And perhaps more importantly, to attempt to do so raises the danger of taking away some of the elemental and most compelling aspects of creativity and culture. As a recent report from the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council put it, “it is imperative to reposition first-hand individual experience of arts and culture at the heart of the inquiry into cultural value” (Crossick and Kaszynska, 2016, p. 7).

The report argues that, beyond the importance of individual experiences of reflectiveness, empathy, and imagination, these intrinsic experiences are often the seed for instrumental impacts associated with arts and culture. “… perhaps not economic impact but rather the capacity to be economically innovative and creative; perhaps not urban regeneration driven by large new cultural buildings but rather the way small-scale arts assets and activities might help communities and neighbourhoods; and for health not just clinical arts therapies but also the link between arts engagement and supporting recovery from physical and mental illness” (ibid).

Encouragingly, there is evidence of an increased understanding that the role of arts and culture needn’t be so binary. An interesting movement is emerging among funders, which is conceptualizing the arts as an essential aspect of the “wellbeing of communities” (Szántó, 2010). The arts and culture become not a means to an end nor an end in itself, but rather an essential and desired aspect of our social goals.

The new realities of Canada’s arts and culture sector

Canadian’s appetite for culture remains strong. Recent data from Culture Track commissioned by Business / Arts shows that Canadians seek out and prize cultural experiences, while the range of what constitutes these experiences has broadened significantly. Both the creation and consumption of art is becoming democratized, and the delineation between creators of art and consumers of art is blurring.

It is worth noting that we have not had a major national examination of arts and cultural policy since the Massey Commission almost 70 years ago. Given the centrality of issues such as cultural expression, voice, inclusion, diversity, and reconciliation, coupled with a rapidly changing landscape, this seems like a significant omission. The ongoing role and responsibility of the arts and creative activities and their contributions to Canada is a topic worthy of sustained consideration and examination.

The timeliness of such an exercise is only underscored when we consider the challenges facing cultural organizations. Some of these are enduring while others are of more recent vintage. Technology is fundamentally altering the way in which all of us consume, experience, and engage with art. The ubiquity, variety, accessibility, and sheer quantity of digital material has profound consequences for live art.

Closely related to this is the changing nature of audiences. Traditionally, the performing arts have been rooted in the mutually reinforcing relationship between creator, performer, and audience. The structures and revenues of arts organizations have been premised around enduring bonds of predictability, loyalty, and commitment from audiences who are devotees of particular companies, artists, and art forms.

As patterns change and audiences seek different, more convenient, frequently less predictable, and more idiosyncratic relationships with art forms and experiences, the challenges for arts companies magnify. The chronic insufficiency of resources never seems to change. If anything, there are more organizations and artists chasing less money. The implications of this influence everything from the precarity of employment for arts workers, to the inadequacy of rehearsal times and performance space, strained marketing budgets, and reduced touring opportunities.

The hurdles inherent in our valuation frameworks present an additional challenge related to funding and investing. The current vogue is for evaluation frameworks premised on impact. It can be difficult for arts organizations to fully account for the effects of their work in this fashion. This difficulty has implications not just within the traditional grant frameworks, but also for the arts’ ability to participate in the growing field of social finance, which is largely built around impact metrics.

Compounding these enduring challenges are newer ones that reflect the changing nature of our country. We are a far more diverse society than we were when many of our cultural institutions were created. Arguably, the structures and priorities of our cultural systems do not adequately reflect or enable the many diverse creative communities seeking opportunities for expression, access, and growth. This observation has particular application to our Indigenous communities and our collective ongoing process of decolonialization.

Organizations and funders alike are struggling to find the appropriate path into pressing issues of representation, inclusion, diversity, gender, and reconciliation in a way that both reflects and redresses present realities while sustaining and augmenting existing organizations. No doubt these broader frameworks create more room for a more diverse group of funders to engage in new approaches and models.

The series: what we’ll explore

The arts and culture sector is made up of extraordinary people. We are constantly struck by their vision, tenacity, and commitment to constantly push, test, and provoke. Their willingness to re-examine and reinvent their relationships with community, audience, revenue, and even their art itself is exceptional and driven by a profound need to make, express, and connect. This is why we are honoured to be able to include the voices and perspectives of a variety of artists and arts leaders in this series.

The next article in the series will provide an analysis of how arts and culture is currently funded in Canada. The author will draw comparisons to the US and European approaches, predominantly philanthropic and state-funded, respectively. Next up, you will hear from a group of five artists who will speak about the value that their art brings to their communities. These artists will write about how they use their artistic visions to address the needs of today’s audiences.

The series will also include a video piece in which artists and administrators will share how philanthropy has helped them realize their visions, as well as ideas about how it can bolster better cultural engagement in Canada. Another piece will explore the issues that are shaping and defining the future of arts and culture in Canada, including decolonization, equity, newcomer realities, the individual artist, the digital imperative, and new patterns of public cultural consumption. We will conclude the series with a reflection from Metcalf.

We hope these contributions will do a few things. First, help illuminate the potency and variety of arts and culture contributions to Canada. Second, help us identify if there are forms of investment in arts and culture that philanthropy has not taken and new ways that philanthropy can partner with arts organizations to address shifting patterns within the country. And lastly, stimulate an increased collective appetite to take up some of these pressing questions.

References

Arts and Humanities Research Council. (2016). Understanding the Value of Arts & Culture: Then AHRC Cultural Value Project. Wiltshire, UK: Crossick, G., and Kaszynska, P.

Business / Arts. (2018). Culture Track Canada. Toronto, ON: Nanos and LePlaca Cohen

Szanto, A. (2010). Funding the state of the art. GIA Reader, 21(3). Retrieved from https://www.giarts.org/article/funding-state-art

Performing Arts

A Balancing Act: Supporting the Arts in Canada

by Kelly Wilhelm

This is the second article in our series about arts and culture philanthropy. The series is published as a collaboration between The Philanthropist and The Metcalf Foundation.

In Canada, we support the arts using what is sometimes called a “mixed” or “balanced” model. This means that non-profit arts organizations rely on a combination of public, private, and earned revenues. This model has been described as sitting between the primarily state-sponsored arts and culture of European countries like France, and the free market, privately-supported model in the United States.

These comparative descriptions of arts funding models are, of course, simplifications of complex realities. They do not capture the variety of approaches within each country, or the different realities experienced by artists and arts organizations within and outside the non-profit model.

Artists and arts organizations working in Canada must deftly piece together webs of support from a wide range of public, private, and earned revenue sources. It is a balancing act that requires constant renewal and attention. The growth in the number and diversity of art forms and organizations over the past several decades has outstripped the growth of available funds, which has pushed both artists and funders to work in new ways. The future vitality of the arts in Canada will depend on new complementary collaborations among public and private partners.

Origins and rationale

In Canada, private philanthropy predates public funding to the arts. In the early years of the 20th century, individual donors were instrumental in founding Canada’s first symphonies, dance, and theatre companies. US foundations like The Rockefeller Foundation and Carnegie Foundation supported the establishment of, and the creation of work by, several Canadian arts organizations, such as the National Ballet of Canada.

The 1951 report of the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences, known as the Massey Commission, highlighted these contributions as part of its rationale for the Government of Canada to take a larger role. The report recommended the establishment of what is now the Canada Council for the Arts to develop the arts and support non-profits dedicated to excellence in European art forms.

From its inception, public funding for the arts in Canada was intended to support the country’s two “founding” or settler cultures and official languages — English and French. It was intended to ensure space for Canadian voices and Canadian artists. The thinking was that without government intervention, Canada’s smaller population and its proximity to the US would lead to US voices dominating Canadian airwaves, screens, bookshelves, and stages. Without public support, Canada’s artists and arts organizations would not succeed. Canadian stories would not be told. Canadians’ understanding of one another — and Canada’s social cohesion — would be at risk. These concerns are still relevant today as digital technology and globalized trade influence the nature of cultural content available to Canadians.

The mixed model dates back to the founding of Canada’s first public arts funding agencies, which effectively took on the role of primary supporter for arts organizations as they grew in number and size in the second half of the 20th century. The Saskatchewan Arts Board was first, in 1948, followed by the Canada Council for the Arts in 1957. Many other provincial, territorial, and municipal departments and agencies have been created since.

Development of the current model

In the early days, government grants could be as much as 75–95% of an arts organization’s revenue (Marsland, 2013). Private support and earned revenues made up the rest. Government funders required, as they still do today, that arts organizations be non-profits to be eligible for funding. Foundations required that their recipients had charitable status.

By the 1990s, public funders began to expand their support to a broader and more diverse group of artists and arts organizations. Some created measures to support previously under-represented groups, including Indigenous and culturally diverse artists and art forms (ibid), with little or no increase in the size of their budgets. Public funding was spread thinner across a larger group of organizations. Recipients receiving public funding for the first time received smaller grants than those that had a history of public support.

Since the 1990s, the growth in the number of artists and arts organizations seeking government funding has far outstripped the growth of funds available. Private and earned revenue sources have become crucial for arts organizations to survive.

The mixed model revenue breakdown for non-profit arts organizations is sometimes described as one-third public, one-third private, and one-third earned revenue. However, this average does not accurately reflect the reality of individual arts organizations and art forms and differences according to region or length of operating history. For example, in 2013, the ratio of revenues for 75 artist-run centres in the visual and media arts was 73% public, 16% private, and 11% earned.

Public funding by Canadian provinces, territories, and municipalities varies. Quebec provides the highest level of provincial public funding to artists and arts organizations. The rationale for arts funding in Quebec is linked to the preservation of French language, culture, and identity, and reflects the state-sponsored arts funding model of France and European countries.

Municipalities play an increasing role in supporting the arts, providing direct funding as well as in-kind support through, for example, property tax rebates and services to festivals and events. Culture spending by Canada’s municipalities increased during the first part of the 2000s, reaching nearly $2.95 billion in 2009. In the same year, the federal government spent $4.16 billion on culture and the provinces and territories spent $3.02 billion.

The US model

Unlike Canada, the United States has traditionally looked primarily to individual donors and philanthropic foundations to support the arts. In 2012, revenue sources for non-profit performing arts groups and museums in the United States were just 6.7% public (local, state, and federal), 44.9% contributed (foundations at 9.5%, corporations at 8.4% and individuals at 20.3%), and 40.7% earned (National Endowment for the Arts, 2012).

Direct government funding to the arts is a small proportion of overall support in the US and can be unpredictable at both the state and national levels. Federal, state, and local public funding for the arts in the US totalled $1.37 billion in 2018. Despite the fact that it serves a population 10 times the size of Canada, national funding through the US National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was less than two-thirds the amount provided by the Canada Council for the Arts in 2018.

Indirect government support plays a larger role in the US. A favourable tax environment with specific incentives encourages private giving by charities and individuals. Americans give more to charity than Canadians — as much as two and a half times more (Lammam, MacIntyre, Ren, 2016). In Canada, government support to culture can be a disincentive for individuals to give, because of the view that their taxes already help (LaPlaca Cohen, Nanos Research, 2018).

The European model

By contrast, arts support in Europe is often described as a state-financed system in which governments directly fund artists and organizations to advance a unified vision of a country’s culture. However, support to the arts across EU member states varies widely dispelling to some extent the myth of a single, state-supported European model. Where the state-financed model does exist, such as in France, it is under increasing pressure.

Funding for the arts in the EU tends to follow the general trends of public budgets in each country (Čopič, Inkei, Kangas, Srakar, 2013). When and where government budgets decrease, state support for culture also falls. Foundations and private philanthropy, as well as national lottery schemes, are playing an increasingly important role (Miró, Tromp, 2019). Foundations provide funding and non-financial supports: skills training, access to networks, communications, and advocacy.

Changing political priorities, diversifying populations, and increasing movement of immigrants and refugees across EU borders will continue to challenge the idea of a singular cultural identity supported by the state.

Canada’s mixed model: strengths and challenges

Canada’s model has been fairly robust in developing the arts across the country. Today, we have outstanding artists in all art forms and innovative arts organizations from coast to coast to coast.

Because they rely on a diversity of revenue sources, non-profit arts organizations are, to some extent, resilient when one source fluctuates. Arts organizations are accountable to their communities because of their reliance on earned and contributed revenues. Many have excelled at seeking new ways to engage ever-broader audiences. Comparative economic stability in Canada, even following the 2008 global financial crisis, has provided a level of predictability to public funding over time.

Several current challenges are poised to deeply affect and test the success of Canada’s approach in the future.

Access to funding is increasingly competitive as the number and diversity of arts organizations rises. In the 1950s, the Canada Council for the Arts funded just 29 arts organizations (Canada Council for the Arts, 2001). Its 2017-2018 annual report noted that it funded 2244 organizations and groups in those years. The doubling of the Canada Council’s government funding to $360 million by 2021, announced in the 2016 federal budget, will make a difference for many but will likely not fully address the explosive growth in the arts in Canada and long-standing inequities by art form or region.

There is no longer enough public funding available to make it feasible for artists to establish and maintain a non-profit organization (Marsland, 2013). While the non-profit model creates accountability and connections to community through the organization’s mandate, board, and volunteers, it demands considerable staff time to maintain. This is a particular challenge for smaller arts organizations.

Arts organizations spend much of their time and effort developing and maintaining their revenue sources. A single arts organization may need to prepare, administer, and report on grants from foundations, its city, province, and the federal level, as well as seek sponsorships, donations, and one-off funding opportunities. Small organizations can struggle to keep up and to provide evidence of specific artistic, social, or economic impacts required by some supporters.

The non-profit model itself is a factor in chronic under-capitalization of arts organizations as organizations fear that, if they show a year-end surplus to build working capital or an unrestricted reserve, their government grants will be reduced. A lack of working capital can lead to under-investment in artistic work, particularly in risky or new work that may not attract a large audience. The operating margins are simply too small to allow for the organization to recover from failure to meet earned revenue targets.

Recent efforts to address under-capitalization have led to some solutions within the non-profit model, such as support for working capital reserves or endowments for medium-sized and large arts organizations. For example, the Department of Canadian Heritage Endowment Incentives program supported large and medium-sized organizations to create endowments by matching private donations. However, Canadian arts organizations generally continue to lack adequate working capital reserves.

Competition for scarce resources, changing arts practices, evolving technologies, and the blurring line between the “for-profit” and “non-profit” sectors mean that many artists work outside of the non-profit model (Litzenberger, 2013). Public arts funding bodies are trying to adapt and to support artistic collaboration and emerging work. Meanwhile, Canadian artists, particularly those who are self-employed, continue to live financially precarious lives.

Keeping an arts organization healthy in Canada is a balancing act between time spent on administrative and artistic work, generating private and public revenue sources, taking artistic risks, hitting earned revenue targets, and staying relevant to current audiences while engaging new ones.

A new balance: de-colonization, inclusion, and adaptation

Arts organizations rarely have enough resources and capacity to execute a major change in strategy, so change is often incremental. Yet, in this time of social, cultural, and economic disruption, organizations in all sectors must be nimble and adaptive to remain relevant. The arts are no exception.

Canada’s support for the arts was built on the two “founding” settler cultures, English and French. Yet Canada is now one of the most diverse countries in the world and seeks to be a model of strength in its diversity of cultures, gender identities, and abilities. Greater space must be made for today’s diversity of artists and art forms, and for the cultural expressions of the Indigenous peoples of this land. Making this space requires courageous change in the systems that support culture and identity. The question now is: how do we transform the existing model while also continuing to support the excellent work and the infrastructure built over the last 60 years?

Equitable support for the exceptional work created by artists and arts organizations requires significant new revenue sources. This is particularly true since artists and arts organizations that have been supported in the past are already in a financially fragile position. A new balance must be found between those that have historically benefitted from public and private support and those that have not.

Many public funders have implemented policies and programs to provide equitable access to artists working in culturally diverse art forms and Deaf and disability arts. Others have established partnerships. In British Columbia, since 1996, the BC Arts Council has partnered with the First Peoples’ Culture Council to deliver programs for Indigenous artists and organizations. Arts supporters and foundations are developing initiatives and, in many cases, hiring Indigenous staff to lead them. For example:

The {Re}conciliation partnership between the McConnell Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts;
The Canada Council’s commitment to triple its funding to Indigenous artists and organizations through an Indigenous-led, dedicated program; and
The National Arts Centre’s first Indigenous Theatre season, which provides presentation and employment opportunities for hundreds of Indigenous artists.

Philanthropy can be key, particularly because it is able to experiment more freely than the public and private sectors. Foundations can take risks, invest in new areas, and develop replicable models. They can provide significant new support to previously unfunded organizations or strategic support at key moments of transformation. They can target their support to innovation, adaptation, and positive change. For example:

The Wallace Foundation’s Audience-Building Grants to 26 US arts organizations to attract new audiences while retaining current ones;
The Metcalf Foundation’s Staging Change, an initiative led by EmcArts to support adaptive change initiatives for arts organizations in Toronto; and
Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Arts Innovation and Management program to provide long-term support to small and medium-sized arts non-profits to help them flourish in cities throughout the US.

Social finance and impact investing are emerging as options to be further explored and may hold some promise for generating new sources of revenue for the arts. In practice, developing the environment for these new models will require collaboration among many partners to shift the regulatory environment for charities in Canada.

Arts funding has always needed to evolve and change. Finding a new balance in arts support in Canada for the future will be a collective effort involving artists, arts organizations, and funders. Private, public, and individual supporters all have a role to play.

To address inequities, further reconciliation, and support evolving art forms and the growth of the sector, our approach should aim to achieve a new balance between continuity and change, stability and risk, and new funds to complement existing ones.

The best solutions will come out of a deep understanding of public engagement with the arts, and in conversations with artists and arts organizations. Artists are adept at imagining possible futures, asking many of the most important questions facing the world, and offering new ways of thinking about them. Together, we can create the conditions for the arts to flourish in our communities and in our country.

References

Canada Council for the Arts (2001). Canada’s Large Performing Arts Organizations: Improving Conditions for their Vitality and Sustainability. Ottawa, ON

Canada Council for the Arts (2018). Annual Report 2017/2018. Ottawa, ON

Čopič, V., Inkei, P., Kangas. A., and Srakar, A. (2014). Trends in Public Funding for Culture in the EU. European Expert Network on Culture

Hill, K., (2019). A Statistical Profile of Artists in Canada in 2016. Hamilton, ON. Hill Strategies

Lammam, C., MacIntyre, H., and Ren, F., (2016). Generosity in Canada and the United States: The 2016 Generosity Index. Vancouver, BC. Fraser Institute

LaPlaca Cohen, Nanos Research. (2018). Culture Track: Canada. Toronto, ON. Business/Arts

Litzenberger, S. (2013). Choreographing our Future: Strategies for supporting next generation arts practice. Toronto, ON. Metcalf Foundation

Marsland, J. (2013). Shared Platforms and Charitable Venture Organizations: A powerful possibility for a more resilient arts sector. Toronto, ON. Metcalf Foundation

MacKinnon, E., and Pellerin, C. (2018). More than money: How social finance can build resilience in the arts sector. Toronto, ON. Metcalf Foundation

Mullaney-Loss, P., and Stubbs, R. (2018). Public Funding for the Arts 2018. Bronx, NY. Grantmakers for the Arts

Miró, I., and Tromp, T. (2019). Arts and Culture at the Core of Philanthropy. Brussels, Belgium. European Foundation Centre

National Endowment for the Arts. (2012). How the United States Funds the Arts. Washington, DC

Performing Arts

The Art of Impact: Reflections from Five Canadian Artists

by Marcus Youssef

This is the third article in our series about arts and culture philanthropy. The series is published as a collaboration between The Philanthropist and The Metcalf Foundation.

In this article, five highly-regarded artists from across the country and from a diverse range of disciplines reflect on the value they bring to their communities. The authors share — theoretically and anecdotally — how they use their artistic vision to address the needs of today’s audiences.

Marcus Youssef is a playwright and actor, artistic director of Neworld Theatre, and recipient of the 2017 Siminovitch Prize for Theatre.

Sometimes it’s hard to imagine that theatre and live performance can have any real, measurable impact. We live in a society obsessed with “disruption,” speed, and digital technology. However, in these times when people are also feeling increasingly alone and isolated, live theatre is where I sometimes — blissfully — experience a sense of authentic connection. Maybe even communion.

When this occurs, I think it is because of theatre’s fundamental liveness. It is an irrefutable fact that a performance event’s audience is, if fully engaged, keenly aware of every performer’s move and breath with a deep sense of what is actually going on.

To offer an audience an experience that can foster this level of engagement, I believe live performance must encompass some kind of risk. This can be the risk of attempting to invent a new form that isn’t a traditional narrative “play;” the risk of collaborating with artists who have intellectual disabilities and whose presence in our culture has been largely erased; or the risk in investigating political content that challenges our tendency or need to portray ourselves as inherently moral or good.

Winners and Losers is a performance I created with writer and theatre-maker James Long. It is about competition, capitalism, and personal relationships. In it, we are ourselves and play a game in which we name people, places, or things and debate whether they are “winners” or “losers.” It starts out funny but then turns highly personal. Towards the end of the show we assess each other according to this reductionist, zero-sum metric. We performed the show for five years, touring 15 cities in 10 countries. The reception was almost universally rapturous and also complex. Audiences and critics were at first entertained, then often enthralled and horrified to witness something normally hidden and masked — our collective complicity in dominance and exploitation — so nakedly exposed in a raw, personal way.

Another project is a writing collaboration with my friend Niall McNeil. Niall’s life includes Down syndrome. He identifies as a writer yet writes at the level of someone in Grade 1. We have devised a conversational, transcript-based method for writing together that allows me to define structure and edit material without changing his words. King Arthur’s Night has been performed at some of the largest performing arts venues and festivals, from the National Arts Centre to the Hong Kong Arts Festival. But the greatest impact I have noticed is when we do relaxed performances and the audience includes many people with intellectual disabilities and their families. People have approached me after and said, “Now I know this is possible for my son,” or “I would really like to be in this kind of play.”

At its best, theatre is a risky, often experimental attempt to change both how we tell stories and who gets to tell them. It is a real, not virtual, space where performers and audiences can choose to risk being fully present and celebrate the unmediated, non-idealized versions of ourselves in all our complexity, together. Theatre offers us communal pleasure in the unfiltered, corporeal presence of our own fallibility, absurdity, and joyful, tragic, unknowable humanity.

This is the impact I aspire to.

Performing Arts

The Art of Impact: Reflections from Five Canadian Artists

by Hannah Moscovitch

This is the third article in our series about arts and culture philanthropy. The series is published as a collaboration between The Philanthropist and The Metcalf Foundation.

Hannah Moscovitch is an acclaimed playwright and TV writer whose works for the stage include Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, East of Berlin, This is War, and Bunny.

I might have more impact if I wrote a TV show about zombies.

Not all artists pay attention to impact, but I do. I sit in the audience during previews and make sure the piece is having one. But sometimes the impact I want to have — for the audience to feel a lot of emotions, for example — is not necessarily the impact the audience wants to undergo. Sometimes audiences don’t want to be traumatized, or painfully enlightened, or sickened. Audience members have fainted during my work, for instance, and that’s a big impact to have on an audience member, but maybe not a very fun one.

Human behaviour is complex, sometimes indecipherable, and that is what I like to show onstage. At times, my audiences have wanted a simple story with jokes in it and I have told them a difficult, dense one.

In the last few years I’ve started to speak very specifically to women, because I wanted to do that (it feels original and meaningful), and because it seems like women want to hear about themselves. Women want me to tell them difficult stories, subvert the norm. Women are in the middle of a revolution. So right now, I feel very good about the meeting of my artistic vision with the audience (or my impact) because I can make the art I like at the same time that I can offer the audience what it wants.

I co-created a piece called Secret Life of a Mother a year ago. It’s a confessional work for the stage in which Maev Beaty (a performer and a friend of mine) plays the character “Hannah Moscovitch.” The piece is about my miscarriage, labour, and the early days of my motherhood, and about whether I am a good or bad mother. This work is my most formally experimental, most subversive, and most taboo-breaking. Its conceit is bizarre: Maev plays me, but because she is a dear friend, I talk about Maev during the show, which forces Maev to talk about herself — sometimes she breaks out of the character of “Hannah” to tell her own secrets. But experimenting with form aside, I’m pretty sure the show is having an impact because it speaks the truth — complex, ugly, frightening — at a time when women want that.

The impact of Secret Life of a Mother has been the most quantifiable of my work to date. (Because how do you define impact? Critical response? Audience enthusiasm? Revenue?) Women have written me letters and left them at the box office, emailed me, found me on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. There was an avalanche-like response. Women wanted to tell me about their worst experiences, because I had told them mine.

It was the best feeling.

All I’m really saying is to have an impact, find the right audience.

Performing Arts

The Art of Impact: Reflections from Five Canadian Artists

by Antoni Cimolino

This is the third article in our series about arts and culture philanthropy. The series is published as a collaboration between The Philanthropist and The Metcalf Foundation.

Antoni Cimolino is artistic director of the Stratford Festival. In 2019 he is directing The Merry Wives of Windsor and Birds of a Kind. Among his many accomplishments he was instrumental in establishing the Festival’s $81 million Endowment Foundation.

Whenever I think about what theatre is for, I always look back to ancient Greece. Greek theatre was more than just entertainment; it was a forum for engaging with matters of public concern. I believe a classical theatre today should, likewise, be a place where we scrutinize who we are and what we do.

I plan each Stratford Festival season around a theme, asking myself which plays seem particularly pertinent to our own moment. (That changes with the times: a play that meant one thing to us 20 years ago, or even five years ago, may mean something new today.) And each year we complement the playbill with our Forum — a season-long series of talks, discussions, and other events that explore issues and ideas arising from the productions on our stages.

In 2018, we explored “free will.” How far can we truly be free — politically, emotionally, spiritually — and how do the freedoms we crave impinge on those of others? In Robert Lepage’s production of Coriolanus, modern dress and a uniquely cinematic staging drew parallels between ancient Rome and our own digital era. We used different kinds of cross-gender casting in The Tempest and Julius Caesar to reveal Shakespeare’s critiques of patriarchal warrior societies, and in The Comedy of Errors to incorporate gender fluidity into the world of a play deeply concerned with issues of identity.

I programmed and directed Eduardo De Filippo’s 1940s classic Napoli Milionaria! to draw attention to moral and ethical dilemmas that are just as pressing today, while director Nigel Shawn Williams reframed To Kill a Mockingbird to give it a more biting edge in the age of Black Lives Matter. In a lighter vein, we had fun contrasting sexual liberty with inhibition in The Rocky Horror Show, while the brilliant new play Paradise Lost posed profound questions about freedom and fate in a literally cosmic context.

In all our 2018 productions, we sought not only to entertain but also to illuminate, to provoke, to galvanize thinking about the choices we make and the attitudes we hold. Ticket sales — which in 2018 surpassed the half-million mark, a 10% increase over the previous year — indicate that this is increasingly what patrons want. Audience demand prompted us to extend five productions, among them The Comedy of Errors (a particular hit with young people) and Rocky Horror, which ran into December — unprecedented in our history. Not only was The Tempest another of the season’s revenue leaders, but many patrons told me they could no longer imagine Prospero not being female.

By distilling complex and often contradictory truths from the diverse experiences of our fellow humans, theatre can be as vital to our democracy as it was to that of the ancient Greeks. Unlike the echo chambers and keyboard warriors of social media, its emotional immediacy offers us visceral experiences of other points of view, encouraging empathy in times of widespread extremism and intolerance. The experience of our past season only encourages me to keep pushing the envelopes of possibility in 2019 — a season whose theme, appropriately enough, is “breaking boundaries.”

Performing Arts

The Art of Impact: Reflections from Five Canadian Artists

by Cris Derksen

This is the third article in our series about arts and culture philanthropy. The series is published as a collaboration between The Philanthropist and The Metcalf Foundation.

Cris Derksen is a half-Cree, half-Mennonite cellist and composer who pays rent in Toronto, tours the globe, writes music for all genres of art, and is the proud mother of three guinea pigs with her wife Rebecca Benson.

I see impact in art as a pebble hitting water and the ripple effect it creates. This ripple is held by time and space. Its effects are varied — sometimes welcomed, sometimes ignored. But do I make art because of how it affects others or how it affects myself? The answer is both.

I am very conscious of my positionality in my work. I am a Two-Spirit, half-Cree, half-Mennonite, classically trained cellist and composer from northern Alberta based in Toronto. These dichotomies influence all choices I make in art — being true to my perspectives of “tradition” while living in the now. I have always been interested in the intersections of the contemporary and the traditional art forms. Music, visual arts, fashion, writing, and theatre all move forward through these intersections to try to explain the human condition in new ways by pushing the old in new directions.

I used to see this from a two-dimensional intersectional vantage point, but I now see how my perspectives can be translated through my work to give my audience a magnified look at themselves through my perspective. As I write commissioned work for non-Indigenous ensembles with a non-Indigenous audience in mind, I have been able to shift my own perspectives to the audience to give undercurrents of meaning that would not be present if a non-Indigenous person were writing it.

Most recently I’ve been writing music that includes National Film Board and CBC archival recordings from the 1940s of white people talking about Indigenous people. There is no denying the power structures that were and are present and the mis-information about, among many things, the existence and/or impacts of residential schools, Indian Hospitals, and the disappearance of more than 3000 missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people that continues to this day.

Using older classical tools with powwow groups is one way I can express the intersections between old and new. My third studio album, The Orchestral Powwow Project, received a Juno nomination in the Instrumental Album of the Year category. It brings together all parts of who I am. What excites me most about Orchestral Powwow is placing our Indigenous music in the centre of the European model and having Indigenous artists lead the way with our drums and our heartbeat to create new forms of music.

Now, how do I know the audience has been impacted? I know because I’ve dropped a pebble of “Indigenous classical music” into the water that did not have my perspective before. I write music for myself and to help shift other people’s perspectives of indigeneity.

Performing Arts

The Art of Impact: Reflections from Five Canadian Artists

by Mélanie Demers

This is the third article in our series about arts and culture philanthropy. The series is published as a collaboration between The Philanthropist and The Metcalf Foundation.

Mélanie Demers’ work crosses the disciplines of dance, theatre, literature, and visual arts. Through her company MAYDAY she combines political issues with poetic imagery. Her work crosses borders and is being presented internationally.

Note: English translation follows below.

Comme artiste, se poser la question de notre impact sur le public relève un peu de la même absurdité que pour un mourant se demander s’il y aura foule à ses funérailles. Il y a quelque chose de complètement indécent dans cette façon de regarder l’art comme s’il y avait un quelconque retour possible, un résultat, une réciprocité, un échange de bon procédé.

La beauté de l’art réside dans sa quête et non dans son achèvement. L’art est un coup d’épée dans l’eau. Un point c’est tout.

L’artiste est celui qui décrira le mieux le poids de l’arme, le trouble de l’eau, le scintillement de la lame, le sel des larmes, la cruauté du moment, la fatigue du muscle, l’odeur de l’humus et l’incessant recommencement.

Il n’y a rien d’autre.

Pourtant, combien de fois ai-je eu l’impression d’avoir été sauvée, comprise, éprise par un agencement de mots, de notes ou de couleurs, une chute, une lumière, une atmosphère.

Nous, artistes, devant la brutalité du monde, nous répliquons avec force procédés, combines et stratagèmes, espérant l’esbroufe, faisant subir au spectateur ruses et manipulations, tirant les fils et les ficelles… Pour que quelqu’un, quelque part, soit ému… Mais rien ne le garantit. Jamais.

Parce que depuis que le monde est monde et que le Sapiens est savant, il y a un souffle qui soulève nos carcasses, qui meut nos corps et qui anime notre race. Et c’est de ce souffle que se nourrit le mystère.

Le mystère qui permet parfois cet apaisement, cette consolation, cette demi-tranquilité pour les phases terminales, pour les sur-le-point-de-se-suicider, pour les presque vivants, pour les revenus de guerre, pour les revenus de tout, pour les revenus de loin, pour les jamais partis, pour les ressuscités et pour les poqués de la vie. Mais c’est si rare.

Au final, moi, je n’attends de rien de l’art. Vous devriez en faire autant.

L’art est bien des choses mais rien qui ne répond à un besoin.

L’art est un polaroid. Un arrêt sur image. Une brèche. Un échantillon de la grande sauvagerie du monde. L’art est un faux traité de bonnes manières. L’art est un élixir qui rend fou. L’art est un tunnel sans fin. Un puits sans fond. Un baume à lèvres qui goûte la cerise. Une carte routière. Un labyrinthe. Une cicatrice. Un pawnshop pour les riches. Une niche. Une bécosse. Un playboy sous le matelas. L’art est une utopie. Un suppositoire dans le cul. Une peine d’amour. Une panne d’essence en plein désert. Un dessert. Une recette de grand-mère. Une couche souillée. Un langage inventé. Une salle d’attente. L’art est un one night stand qui dure. L’art est une menace. Une insulte. Une trahison. L’art est une exception. L’art est un effritement. Un effondrement. Une guerre de tranchées. Un drapeau blanc. Un mariage arrangé. Une messe païenne. Un dessin d’enfant.

L’art est un acte de foi. Souvent un acte manqué. Mais toujours un acte d’amour.

C’est toujours ça de pris.

The following translation of Mélanie Demers’ statement is by Marie Claire Forté — a Montréal-based artist driven by the relational, experiential, and experimental potential of dance.

An artist wondering what impact their work will have on audiences is perhaps as absurd as a dying person wondering if their funeral will draw a crowd. When considering art, it is absolutely indecent to look for any possibility of return, result, reciprocity, quid pro quo.

Art’s beauty lays in the quest, not the completion. Art is using a sword to stab water. Period.

The artist is the one who best describes the weight of the sword, the troubled water, the glistening blade, the salty tears, the cruelty of the moment, the tired muscles, the smell of the soil on the shore and the unending return to begin again.

There is nothing else.

Yet how many times have I felt saved, understood, or been dumbstruck by an assembly of words, notes or colours, a fall, a light, an ambiance.

To the world’s brutality, we artists answer with processes, combinations and stratagems, hoping for bombast, subjecting the audience to our cunning and manipulations and pulling strings in the hopes that somebody somewhere will be moved. But there is no guarantee. Ever.

Because the world is as it is, and Homo sapiens have knowledge, there is a breath that enlivens our carcasses, moves our bodies, and animates our race. This same breath feeds the mystery.

The mystery sometimes appeases, consoles and offers some kind of rest to the terminally ill, those on the cusp of suicide, the nearly living, those returning from war, returning from far, returning from everything, those who never left, those brought back to life and those damaged for life. But this is so rare.

In the end, I do not expect anything from art. You should not either.

Art is many things, but nothing that answers a need.

Art is a polaroid. A freeze frame. A breach. A sample of the world’s great wildness. Art is a false treaty of good manners. Art is an elixir that makes you lose your mind. Art is an endless tunnel. A bottomless well. A cherry-flavoured lip balm. A road map. A labyrinth. A scar. A pawnshop for the wealthy. A niche. An outhouse. A Playboy magazine under a mattress. Art is a utopia. A suppository. A heartbreak. An empty tank in the middle of the desert. A dessert. A grandmother’s recipe. A dirty diaper. An invented language. A waiting room. Art is a lasting one-night stand. Art is a threat. An insult. A betrayal. Art is an exception. Art is an unravelling. A collapsing. A war in the trenches. A white flag. An arranged marriage. A pagan mass. A child’s drawing.

Art is an act of faith. Often a failed attempt. And always an act of love.

There’s always that.

Performing Arts

Whose Art is it Anyway? Issues Shaping the Arts and Culture Sector

Kate Taylor

This is the fifth installment in our series about arts and culture philanthropy. The series is published as a collaboration between The Philanthropist and The Metcalf Foundation.

When people gather for a pops concert by Symphony Nova Scotia, Chris Wilkinson scans the lobby of the Dalhousie Arts Centre in Halifax. The last thing the symphony’s CEO wants to see is a familiar face.

“If I can’t recognize the audience, I’ve done my job,” he says. To draw audiences who are younger and more diverse than the usual crowd, the orchestra has programmed concerts with personalities visiting town for a sci-fi convention, the drag queen violinist Thorgy Thor, and the Soul Sisters duo from Halifax’s black community in North Preston. Ticket sales have doubled since 2013.

“Our goal is to present concerts that appeal to all people,” Wilkinson says.

All people? With its main season still filled with Beethoven and Mozart that may sound impossibly ambitious. Culture’s relationship with audiences is perhaps the single largest issue — or series of issues — that Canadian arts groups face today. Their challenges include everything from the proverbial getting “bums in seats” when people might prefer to stay home with Netflix, to answering society’s call for diversity, gender equity, and reconciliation with First Nations. As an organization that has had to rethink who it serves and how, Symphony Nova Scotia is typical of arts organizations across the country.

“People who care”

When not upending the taxi industry or closing local newspapers, the digital revolution has also transformed Canada’s cultural sector. The cultural industries, including film and television production, broadcasting, the music business, and book publishing, have always had to compete with Hollywood and New York. But they now find that competition particularly stiff in a landscape that now includes Netflix, Amazon, and Apple. These industries are often regulated, even governed in some instances, by Canadian-content rules, and sometimes subsidized by tax credits and government loans. Nonetheless, they are commercial ventures.

The non-profit cultural sector — including public art galleries and museums, most of the performing arts, and literary, film, and some music festivals — is a different beast, free of direct government regulation but ruled by the competition for arts council grants. The level of subsidy varies widely. At the lowest end, an entertainment machine such as the Stratford Festival receives a paltry 5% of its budget from grants. At regional theatres such as Winnipeg’s Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre (Royal MTC) or Halifax’s Neptune Theatre, less than 20% of the budget comes from government, while capital-intensive museums are subsidized more heavily — around 30 to 50%. Meanwhile, the small, independent groups — an artist-run gallery; a new-music performance space; a shoestring theatre company — depend mostly on their individual success getting arts councils grants.

Whatever the endeavour, non-profit cultural organizations depend on what one arts administrator refers to as “people who care.” These are the patrons who buy tickets and pay for parking, a coffee, or an item in the gift shop. And they are also the enthusiastic volunteers, committed corporate donors, and generous philanthropists. Today, who those people should be and how an arts organization should serve them is increasingly a matter of debate. For donors, the arts are sometimes an afterthought once contributions have been made to health or education charities, but the sector offers extraordinary opportunities for philanthropic engagement, from glamorous national institutions to grassroots indie groups.

Digital delights

In many ways, digital technology has invigorated the sector. Artists are certainly excited by new media. In Toronto, Anishinaabe filmmaker Lisa Jackson has created Biidaaban: First Light, a virtual-reality experience that imagines the city returning to nature in a rich piece of Indigenous futurism, while playwright Jordan Tannahill’s Draw Me Close merges virtual reality into a live performance about his mother’s impending death. In Vancouver, visual artist Howie Tsui has created a new hybrid video form with Retainers of Anarchy, a randomly-generated animated martial arts story that plays out on a huge scroll-like screen. In theatre, incorporating filmed elements has become almost commonplace – from Robert Lepage’s Coriolanus at Stratford in 2018 to Kim Collier’s recent production of the new Daniel Brooks family drama, The Full Light of Day, in Vancouver and Toronto.

And the back office is no less engaged by the technology that has enabled social media marketing. “On the communications side, it has been a boon,” says Kim Gaynor, general director of Vancouver Opera. “It allows us to communicate widely, cheaply, and quickly.”

However, digital administrative systems can be expensive. For example, few Canadian organizations can afford “shopping cart abandonment” software that lets vendors email buyers who changed their minds and ask why. “The danger with digital is that I am going to fall behind,” Wilkinson says.

Missing audiences

But perhaps the largest concern about the digital revolution is what it may have done to audience attitudes. Will millennial consumers, addicted to the choice, convenience, and interactivity offered by their home entertainment subscriptions and social media feeds, darken the door of the theatre or concert hall?

“Twenty years ago, the performing arts assumed if the work was good, the audience would find it,” says Camilla Holland, executive director at Winnipeg’s Royal MTC. “Twenty years later we believe the work is good and wonder where the audience is.”

Holland attributes this to busy schedules. “People’s lives have changed; the work day has expanded; commuting has eaten into leisure activity,” she says. To boost existing audiences and build new ones, Royal MTC uses targeting marketing, enhances the playgoing experience with talks, guides, and free community activities, and, like many a cultural group, is trying to plug gaps in public school arts curriculums by expanding its youth programs.

Adults certainly have more time for the arts when they retire, yet Holland and her colleagues dispute the suggestion that audiences are not only grey-haired but actually dying off. In Vancouver, Gaynor holds to the old wisdom that the performing arts are a mature pastime. Take Richmond, BC, chartered accountant and music lover Christine Woodington. When she was in her 20s, relatives invited Woodington to a performance of Figaro but she was intimidated by the notion of an opera in a foreign language. She is now 36, and when a colleague offered her tickets to La Cenerentola at Vancouver Opera’s annual festival last May, she figured she would at least understand the Cinderella story. Delighted to discover translated titles projected above the stage and singers who performed without microphones, she came home raving to friends. “I was amazed,” she says, promising she will be buying tickets for next year’s festival.

Woodington’s conversion is exactly what was supposed to happen in 2015 when Vancouver Opera announced it was abandoning the traditional fall-to-spring season in favour of a three-week event in May. The idea was to boost flagging subscriber audiences with younger single-ticket buyers and cultural tourists excited by crossover music offerings and the intensity of a festival experience. However, the financial efficiencies of a shorter performance cycle were less than expected. The tourists didn’t materialize and many long-time subscribers simply cancelled. When Gaynor arrived in 2016, she quickly restored the fall and winter productions and shortened the festival to nine days.

“We are trying to be all things to all people,” she says, echoing Wilkinson on the opposite side of the country.

Democratization in the arts

Indeed, one of the impacts of digitization, and of social media in particular, is a democratization of the arts. In a cultural climate in which anybody can be an internet blogger, Instagram influencer, or YouTube star, the boundary between professional and amateur content is softening, perhaps leading to less inherent respect for arts institutions. Certainly, citizens not only expect easy access to culture but also demand transparency and social engagement. Arts groups set lofty standards for themselves. “We all believe art can build empathy, foster community, and create better citizens,” says Holland — which may explain why people perceive them as public institutions no matter their scale. So, audiences and the media often take an intense proprietary interest. Witness the heavy scrutiny the Soulpepper theatre company experienced when four actresses sued former artistic director Albert Schultz for sexual harassment. Meanwhile, notions of a curator’s expertise or an artist’s creative licence have been challenged by ideas about the primacy of community and controversies over appropriation of voice.

Artists who ignore these changes do so at their peril. Lepage is an internationally-acclaimed theatre director, yet North American producing partners pulled out of Kanata, his Canadian history show, last year when activists complained that it represented Indigenous characters without including Indigenous actors. In this instance, public concerns about representative casting trumped Lepage’s practice of creating collaboratively with a longstanding group of performers.

Sometimes, unforeseen sensitivities can blindside an institution. After bitter protests against their “Into the Heart of Africa” show back in 1989, curators at the Royal Ontario Museum began seeking input from any community they feature. The ROM has recently engaged Japanese Canadian co-curators for an exhibition about the wartime internments and consulted representatives of the Indo-Canadian community on a show of photographs by Raghubir Singh. Still, that exhibition was snared in controversy when a serious #MeToo allegation emerged against Singh, who died in 1999. The ROM hurriedly organized a smaller exhibition about #MeToo for its lobby, as well as panel discussions about sexual harassment, and gender and power in photography.

Neither public controversy nor funding bodies will let arts institutions sidestep these issues. In 2017, the Canada Council adopted a policy that reaffirmed its commitment to equity-seeking groups within its main granting system. It has also enlarged programs for Indigenous art. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission specifically recommended that museums and heritage centres acknowledge Indigenous history and perspectives, a task the sector has energetically undertaken, organizing exhibitions devoted to First Nations and Inuit culture while redoubling efforts to repatriate Indigenous artifacts and ancestral remains to their original communities.

Reconciliation in the performing arts is less well defined but non-Indigenous audiences have been enjoying the fruits of a renaissance in Indigenous art. For example, at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre last winter, theatregoers enthusiastically welcomed Kiviuq Returns — a production from Iqaluit told entirely in Inuktitut without benefit of subtitles — as they let the language wash over them like the lyrics of a foreign opera. On the other hand, some organizations target Canada’s newest arrivals: Canoo, an app offered by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, provides new Canadians with free passes to arts events in the first year of their citizenship, while the Toronto Arts Council has a special grant program for newcomer artists.

Still, new or shifting categories can make it difficult for arts organizations centred on traditional European art forms. At Vancouver Opera, Gaynor says she can get grants for projects such as The Flight of the Hummingbird, a new opera for young audiences with an ecological theme based on both a South American Indigenous myth and the work of Haida illustrator Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas. Money for Eugene Onegin or La Traviata is scarcer. “The core of our work is becoming harder to fund,” she says.

Redefining roles

There are varying approaches to these demands that the arts reach both more people and different people. In some ways, museums have it easier than the performing arts because they are community hubs open all day and year-round. Larger museums, in particular, are rapidly expanding their role as cultural custodians and research institutions to become community centres that offer an alternative to the mall, the amusement park, and even the doctor’s office.

“The biggest reason millennials are coming to a museum is to chill out,” says Stephen Borys, executive director of the Winnipeg Art Gallery, where social dialogue and reconciliation have been added to a mandate of collecting, exhibiting, and researching. “Art museums are places that are safe and respectable — and neutral. Public trust is still high.”

Montreal’s Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) is an international leader in reconfiguring what may have been considered an elitist institution. The MMFA has added wellness to its mandate, pioneering a program in which Quebec doctors can prescribe a free trip to the museum for mental health. It has also built the largest art education and therapy centre in North America, serving teens with eating disorders and adults with dementia, while maintaining a fully-equipped studio that is open to anyone who wants to try their hand at creation.

“The question of being elitist is related to an understanding that art belongs to experts and can just be interpreted by those experts,” says MMFA Director General and Chief Curator Nathalie Bondil. “I’m sorry, but it’s the 21st century: Horizontality is everywhere.”

In Toronto, the Art Gallery of Ontario is also making changes. Without much fanfare, the gallery has rethought who it features in major exhibitions, replacing “mighty whities” with female and Indigenous artists. Recent shows have included the African American Mickalene Thomas, Inuit artists Kenojuak Ashevak and Tim Pitsiulak, BC First Nations artist Brian Jungen, and, from Japan, Yayoi Kusama, whose infinity mirror rooms provide an Instagram-friendly gallery experience. These big shows have proved popular, and the AGO has also launched a major outreach to youth, offering free admission to anyone younger than 25, as well as a new $35 annual pass to older visitors. (It would cost the gallery $14 million annually to offer free admission to all, as London’s National Gallery or the Smithsonian museums in Washington, DC, do.)

So far, the AGO’s bold experiment is producing some success stories. Western University student Phoebe Liao, 21, who hopes to become a doctor, visited the Kusama show after she saw the artist’s work on Instagram. She then followed the story as the AGO acquired its own infinity room for its permanent collection and got word of the new youth passes on the gallery’s website. During an internship in Toronto last summer, she took to dropping by the gallery after work.

Perils of populism

Liao has begun what may become a lifelong relationship with public art galleries thanks to both Kusama and the free admission. But is everyone’s connection this deep? Many programming experiments raise questions about how long audiences drawn by shiny offerings will stick around. When the AGO used the email list from its Kusama exhibition to crowdsource money to buy its own infinity room it drew half the response it had predicted. For some visitors, Kusama at the AGO was a fling not a marriage. That wouldn’t surprise Wilkinson of Symphony Nova Scotia, who has no expectation pop audiences will return to hear the classics. The point is to serve them, not convert them.

The trick seems to be balancing the popular with the smart. For example, when Bondil borrowed a blockbuster show about the African influences in Pablo Picasso’s work from a French museum in 2018, she made sure to add a selection of works by African American and Black Canadian artists, winning kudos from museum colleagues while drawing big crowds. The last time the Stratford Festival staged The Merchant of Venice, in 2013, it impressed critics with the way it addressed the play’s potential anti-Semitism: organizing a mock human rights hearing for Shakespeare’s Shylock with former Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin presiding.

Arts groups need to know who they mean when they say “community” so they can actually chart the effects of outreach. Targeting specific audiences may be effective, but nobody should check groups off a list or consider diversity initiatives as a “one and done,” says Ravi Jain, artistic director of Why Not Theatre in Toronto. After the company mounted Prince Hamlet last winter with deaf actress Dawn Jani Birley in a production that included both spoken English and American Sign Language, it continued working with her on a second project and also remodelled a training program for Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre so that it could include deaf participants

Why Not is a cross-cultural company launched following the 2011 production of A Brimful of Asha, in which Jain appeared on stage with his own mother to tell the true story of her attempt to arrange his marriage to an Indian bride. The company now also helps other artists administer their companies and tour their work. “There is a role for a community changemaker that Netflix is not going to play,” Jain says, adding “Only a third of our activity is producing our own shows.”

“Two-thirds of our activity is saving the world,” chimes in Managing Director Owais Lightwala, with only a hint of irony. “An audience is people who buy tickets. Community is people you have accountability to. Loblaws has audiences; the arts should build communities.”

Kate Taylor is a Toronto cultural journalist, critic, and novelist. A long-time staffer at the Globe and Mail, she currently serves as visual art critic when not writing about film and cultural policy. Her most recent novel is Serial Monogamy.

Performing Arts

A Leading Role: How Philanthropy Can Support Arts and Culture in Canada

by Michael Trent
Performing Arts Program Director, Metcalf Foundation

This is the sixth and final installment in our series about arts and culture philanthropy. The series is published as a collaboration between The Philanthropist and The Metcalf Foundation.

A few years ago, at the Metcalf Foundation, we began to think about developing a new granting stream for our performing arts program. Recognizing the value of including members of the community in the design process, we decided to ask 100 Toronto artists a simple question: if you were given more money tomorrow, what would you do with it?

Responses came in swiftly. A significant number, most in fact, wanted one of three things: more time to make art, more money to better pay those who create the art, and more people to work on developing the art. For anyone working within the field of artistic practice these responses will not come as a surprise. Competition for resources is fierce and funding is unpredictable. Artists and arts organizations are constantly under pressure to source the means — time, financial, human — to meet their artistic ambitions and share the fruits of their labour.

As a Canadian dance artist, I have experienced firsthand how philanthropic giving can be a gamechanger. When I was artistic director of Dancemakers, we were once awarded a sizable donation at the conclusion of a one-hour meeting. Though hardly a common occurrence, the one-time gift made all the difference in our ability to bridge the gap between ambition and capacity. Since becoming a grantmaker in 2015, as Director of Performing Arts, Metcalf Foundation, I’ve gained further insights and perspectives into what makes philanthropy a natural dance partner for the arts and culture sector.

Risk and responsiveness

The non-profit arts and culture sector in Canada relies on a combination of public, private, and earned revenues. Canada’s robust network of public funders represents the largest source of funding revenue for the sector and supports a vast range of activities — from a one-off project by an independent artist to multi-year grants that underwrite an institution’s programming. By necessity, public funders operate under strict demands of public accountability to ensure inclusive and fair access to public money. They do this by negotiating a set of measurements that encompass artistic excellence, financial health, and public impact.

Philanthropy’s flexible governance and decision-making structures allow it to be more responsive to opportunities in shorter timelines. This also means it is well positioned to be able to accept higher levels of risk. Philanthropy can augment and complement public funding by filling in where there is a compelling need to act on requests where outcomes are less certain or respond quickly to a timely opportunity.

As Kelly Wilhelm states in this series, philanthropy has greater freedom than the public and private sectors to experiment. “Foundations can take risks, invest in new areas, and develop replicable models.” Metcalf’s own Staging Change funding stream is designed to provide organizational support that favours innovation and adaptability. As a funder, this demands that we make the most of our tolerance for both the unknown and the unpredictable.

The amount of private philanthropic giving varies within the wider non-profit sector, but research by Philanthropic Foundations Canada (PFC) suggests that education and research, health, and social services receive almost half of all grant dollars. Arts and culture usually ranks fourth or fifth. In 2015, the 150 top Canadian grantmaking foundations that support arts and culture contributed a total of $108 million. This does not include donor-advised funds or community foundations, which have a long history of supporting arts and culture. The total investment within the sector certainly exceeds this amount.

Though we may not know the exact size of philanthropic support for arts and culture in Canada, we do know it is considerable. As we have curated this series, we have been struck by what we see as a tremendous opportunity for arts and culture funders to partner and collaborate in ways that can strengthen and increase the impact of our efforts. This seems especially cogent given not only the amount of philanthropic dollars at play, but also the complexity of the issues facing the arts and culture sector. They range, as Kate Taylor notes in this series, “from the proverbial getting ‘bums in seats’ when people might prefer to stay home with Netflix, to answering society’s call for diversity, gender equity, and reconciliation with First Nations.”

The issues that demand our attention

Artmakers in Canada are deeply engaged in wide-ranging approaches to issues of accessibility, equity, reconciliation, and decolonization. As we saw in the third article in this series with, for example, Marcus Youssef’s King Arthur’s Night and Cris Derksen’s Orchestral Powwow Project, today’s artists are exploring ways to service a more diverse audience both prior to, and during, the arts engagement experience. Similarly, the philanthropic sector is starting to turn its attention to consider how equity-seeking and Indigenous communities see the world, what they need, and what they offer.

In his 2018 book, Decolonizing Wealth, Edgar Villanueva, an American expert on social justice philanthropy and a member of the Lumbee Tribe, provides a practical roadmap to restoring balance in philanthropy through Indigenous wisdom. Villanueva suggests that Indigenous sacred values of truth, humility, compassion, openness, listening, wisdom, and love hold great potential for philanthropy itself. These human-centric qualities seem like an ideal match for the very ethos that underlies arts and culture: the cultivation and stimulation of empathy and imagination.

Examples are emerging of public and private funders across Canada holding space and opportunity for Indigenous-led projects. In 2015, the Canada Council for the Arts, in partnership with the McConnell Foundation and the Circle on Philanthropy, launched the {Re}conciliation Initiative in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action. The support later morphed into the Council’s Creating, Knowing, and Sharing funding stream. The Inspirit Foundation also fosters reconciliation, in part by supporting change leaders working in arts and media.

Pathways for engagement

Those of us who fund arts and culture never stop asking ourselves an essential question: how can we best continue to deepen and diversify our relationship to the sector? It is an exhilarating challenge seeing as the range of aesthetic expression in Canada today is dizzyingly potent, with many avenues for consideration in addition to the traditional forms of opera, ballet, symphony, and museums.

For those who may be new to the idea of supporting arts and culture, you may have wondered how those individuals and family foundations, listed in playbills at performances and arts events across the country, determine how to align their own mandates and missions within such a varying and idiosyncratic landscape. In pragmatic terms, here are four entry points for participation along with several current examples of funding.

Artistic development: Artists need time to reflect, identify collaborators, and undertake early stage experimentation and development. The Theatre Centre in Toronto, the Banff Centre in Alberta, and Circuit-Est in Montreal are Canadian leaders in providing time, space, and dramaturgical support for new ideas. In addition to receiving public funding, each of them is supported by philanthropy, including the J.P. Bickell Foundation, the Slaight Family Foundation, and RBC, respectively.

Once a work is more fully realized, arts organizations turn their attention to the task of finding an audience. This can be achieved in partnership with one or more presenters or through a network of co-producers. The National Arts Centre’s National Creation Fund is an excellent and innovative example of this kind of support. Twenty-nine projects have received funding to date, including such international hits as Revisor by Crystal Pite and Jonathan Young, and promising new productions such as Treemonisha by Volcano Theatre, and Unikkaaqtuat, a circus arts and Inuit founding myth collaboration by the 7 Fingers of Montreal, Artcirq of Igloolik, and Taqqut Productions of Iqaluit. The National Creation Fund was created thanks to individual, foundation, and corporate giving including a lead gift by Winnipeg philanthropist Gail Asper.

Organizational capacity: An organization is the entity that houses an artistic vision while also worrying about keeping the lights on, heating the studios, marketing the work, and paying folks for keeping it all going. Public funders have long supported organizational sustainability and growth through ongoing, reliable, and predictable operational funding. Philanthropy can play a welcomed and complementary role by augmenting capacity in one of two ways. The first is through strategic intervention. Metcalf’s Staging Change program, for example, is a multi-year strategic initiative that supports new thinking and adaptive muscle building within an organization.

Alternatively, philanthropy can play a significant role in providing unrestricted operational funding that is connected to the often unglamorous, yet crucial, aspects of running the day-to-day business of arts organizations. When the Stratford Festival launched a capital campaign, in January 2018, for a new multi-use theatre, the case was successfully made to donors that it was as important to support the new centre’s future ongoing operations through an endowment, as it was to find the money to build the facility (Nestruck, 2019).

Leadership: Over the past decade, institutional arts leadership in Canada has often been addressed by looking outside our borders. This has been due to a gap left by retiring senior leadership combined with an inconsistent pipeline for creating leadership opportunities that ensure Canadian talent can be developed here and stay here. Two leading examples to counter this trend are Calgary’s Rozsa Foundation, which champions the arts through its arts leadership development programs, and Metcalf’s performing arts internship program, which, since 2001, has provided more than 300 year-long internships in Ontario.

Promising policy: As Sandy Houston mentions in this series, there has not been a substantial national examination of arts and culture since the Massey report in 1957. However, a recent series of 42 recommendations from a Senate Special Committee on the charitable sector — tasked in 2018 to learn how Canada could better support this important work — holds great promise. If two of the recommendations are adopted, the arts and culture sector will benefit greatly. The first is concerned with expanding the definition of activities that charities can undertake in a related business, especially regarding opportunities arising from new technologies.

The second, and most promising, would allow charities to make gifts to non-qualified donees in certain limited circumstances if the funds support exclusively charitable purposes (The Senate Special Committee on the Charitable Sector, 2019). This move alone could begin to shift the framework of the charitable sector from one that can seem preoccupied with compliance, toward one that is more enabling, such that an expanded pool of artists and arts organizations would be able to access philanthropic dollars. There is a definite opportunity for philanthropy to play a leadership role in supporting these kinds of policy shifts.

Philanthropy’s gift

In the spirit of the arts and culture sector, which thrives on new creative ventures, Metcalf recently developed an Ontario-based performing arts prize. The inaugural prize, to be awarded in December of this year, is named in honour of Johanna Metcalf, who passed away last year. Johanna was at the heart of the Foundation’s work for 40 years and had a deep belief in the potential of culture for transformation.

The prize — which was the culmination of a long process of carefully considered options that originally began with our question to 100 Toronto artists: if you were given more money tomorrow, what would you do with it? — will be unrestricted. Laureates may use the monetary value as they see fit — be it towards time or other resources. The result is that recipients will be more likely to be able to bridge gaps between their ambitions and their capacity, and in turn continue to use their talents in service of others. This, we believe, is philanthropy’s true gift.

Strength in numbers

It is interesting to note that, based on PFC’s research, the arts and culture sector receives approximately three times more in gifts than the environmental sector. Perhaps rising from necessity due to their smaller scale, our colleagues in the environment field understand the benefits of, and foster, ongoing collaboration. The Canadian Environmental Grantmakers’ Network (CEGN) for example, brings together “private, public, community, and corporate foundations that share a desire to learn, collaborate, and leverage resources in pursuit of common priorities” (CEGN 2019).

At Metcalf, we believe the time is right for arts and culture philanthropy to do the same. To take a page from both CEGN and our many grantees in the arts sector who all rely on the power of collaborations. A network of arts and culture philanthropists, from across Canada, could provide opportunities to learn from each other’s locally-gleaned insights and address the isolation that comes from being a small group in a massive country. We could build a community of practice, leverage our resources, contribute to advocacy and policy dialogue, and amplify our strategic interventions.

We believe that there is huge untapped potential among private philanthropy in Canada to respond to some of the urgent and complex issues of our times — climate change, wealth inequality, impacts of colonization, and gender disparity — with imagination, creativity, and a sense of boundless possibility. The parallels with the arts community, in terms of spirit and approach, could not be more striking. As Ravi Jain says in this series, speaking of theatre, “it is a tool for social change, a way to inspire people to dream bigger, better worlds.”

Imagine what a more coordinated philanthropic investment in arts and culture could mean to artists, arts organizations, and Canadian culture. Will you join us?

Acknowledgement: this series has been guest edited by Anne Perdue, Senior Editor, Metcalf Foundation.

References

Canadian Environmental Grantmakers Network (2019) Available at http://www.cegn.org (Accessed: August 9, 2019).

Nestruck, J. K., “Bricks versus arts: An old funding debate re-emerges at the NAC,” The Globe and Mail, August 31, 2019.

Philanthropic Foundations Canada Snapshot of Foundation Giving in 2015 (2017) Available at http://pfc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/pfc-snapshot-giving-2015.pdf (Accessed: August 9, 2019).

The Senate Special Committee on the Charitable Sector (2019) Catalyst for Change: A Roadmap to a Stronger Charitable Sector Available at: https://sencanada.ca/en/info-page/parl-42-1/cssb-catalyst-for-change/(Accessed: July 26, 2019)

Villanueva, E., (2018) Decolonizing Wealth. First edition. Toronto: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Setting the Stage: A New Series on the Public Value of Arts and Culture in Canada

Making the case: intrinsic or instrumental?

The new realities of Canada’s arts and culture sector

The series: what we’ll explore

References

A Balancing Act: Supporting the Arts in Canada

Origins and rationale

Development of the current model

The US model

The European model

Canada’s mixed model: strengths and challenges

A new balance: de-colonization, inclusion, and adaptation

References

The Art of Impact: Reflections from Five Canadian Artists

The Art of Impact: Reflections from Five Canadian Artists

The Art of Impact: Reflections from Five Canadian Artists

The Art of Impact: Reflections from Five Canadian Artists

The Art of Impact: Reflections from Five Canadian Artists

Performing Artists Speak: Three Short Films About the Transformative Power of Giving

Performing Artists Speak: Three Short Films About the Transformative Power of Giving

Performing Artists Speak: Three Short Films About the Transformative Power of Giving

Whose Art is it Anyway? Issues Shaping the Arts and Culture Sector

A Leading Role: How Philanthropy Can Support Arts and Culture in Canada

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