This commitment takes a variety of forms. In our Performing Arts Internships, we invest in people at the beginning of their careers. And with both the Toronto Sector Skills Academy and Staging Change we back innovative immersive ways for leaders to acquire and deploy new professional skills.

We created the Metcalf Performing Arts Internships program in recognition of the power of internships to change not only the trajectory of an individual life, but also for their contributions to organizational and ultimately even sectoral vitality. Over the past 18 years, we have supported almost 300 interns, creating opportunities for individuals to be mentored and trained in their future careers. Interns have worked in occupations as distinct as production design, stage management, and artistic direction and in disciplines as diverse as opera, ballet, music, and theatre. Many interns have gone on to become mentors themselves, a testimony to the initiative’s success. I encourage you to meet our current 17 interns and explore the history of the program on this new page on our website.

Earlier this month, the 24 participants in our Toronto Sector Skills Academy graduated, the second cohort to do so since we launched the program in 2016. These workforce leaders are drawn from a wide range of backgrounds – everything from skills training intermediaries to labour, government, and community organizations. They work on improving economic outcomes for low-wage workers and low-income job seekers, and are on the frontlines in confronting what graduation guest speaker Jamison Steeve, Executive Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute and the Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity called “one of the most important policy challenges society will face over the next 25 years.”

Staging Change is the Foundation’s latest strategic multi-year investment program in the Performing Arts. We are pleased to announce the eight performing arts companies and organizations that have been selected to participate in Stage 2. In the second stage of the program, the participants will have the opportunity to continue to work intensively with our colleagues at EmcArts to uncover potent ways in which their organizations can adapt to our rapidly changing environment and better meet the challenges facing the performing arts in the 21st century.

All of these initiatives are grounded in the Foundation’s conviction that change happens when we work and learn collectively, think broadly in pursuit of comprehensive solutions, and share hopeful visions of the future.

— Sandy Houston, President and CEO