Arts groups want funding to be election campaign issue Provincial support for the arts has flatlined for decades By: Alan Small Posted: 6:52 PM CDT Wednesday, Sep. 27, 2023

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This article was published 27/09/2023 (710 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra handed Gail Asper a microphone prior to its season-opening concert Sept. 14 and the local philanthropist didn’t let the opportunity go to waste.

Asper welcomed the audience to the Centennial Concert Hall show, which was sponsored by the Asper Foundation, but also reminded them Manitoba was in the midst of a provincial election and urged the crowd to ask their candidates what would they do for the arts.

She then told the audience the province’s funding for the Manitoba Arts Council, the arm’s-length government agency that provides provincial grants for arts groups and individuals, has failed to keep up with inflation over the past two decades, and arts organizations such as the WSO need the province’s help more than ever to cope with a post-pandemic world of rising inflation, slumping attendance and donor fatigue.

For Angela Birdsell, the orchestra’s executive director who introduced Asper, the surprising remarks were music to her ears.

“It was great that she put that out there, because I think it put things on people’s radar,” Birdsell says. “Our funding at the WSO, and I think the same could be said for many of my colleague organizations, has been flatlined, not for years, but for decades.”

The provincial and federal governments provided additional pandemic-related funding to arts groups in 2021 and 2022 but they have felt the bottom-line crunch when those programs ended.

Arts groups such as the WSO, the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre and Royal Winnipeg Ballet have yet to return to the same subscription levels they had in March 2020, when COVID-19 forced the cancellation of months of shows before live audiences.

Asper’s plea joins several lobbying tactics Manitoba arts groups have begun employing this fall to help bolster a sector mired in financial quicksand that has already claimed one victim.

The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Ontario’s third-largest orchestra and an organization two years older than its Winnipeg counterpart, told its musicians two hours before its season-opening concert on Sept. 16 it was suspending operations.

“Our funding at the WSO, and I think the same could be said for many of my colleague organizations, has been flatlined, not for years, but for decades.”–Angela Birdsell

It filed for bankruptcy Sept. 21, two days after its leaders said it needed $2 million to proceed with the season.

The decision left the 52-member orchestra stunned and fellow organizations around the country double-checking their balance sheets to see where their numbers were at.

“The Kitchener-Waterloo situation is unfortunately the canary in the coal mine and we’re all, nationally, talking among ourselves, ‘Who’s next?’ ” Birdsell says.

Birdsell, who worked with the Canada Council for the Arts and later as an arts-policy consultant with the cities of Kitchener and Waterloo before joining the WSO in July 2021, knew about the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony’s difficulties prior to it filing for bankruptcy.

She fears arts organizations across the country, including companies in Manitoba, risk sinking into the same quagmire.

“It’s something we at the WSO have been aware of since May 2022,” she says. “We looked at the data. We looked at the audiences. We looked at the predictions. We looked at reserves we had from (federal) rent and wage subsidies. We looked at all possible cost-cutting initiatives and we basically said this is the year we run out. It’s very concerning.”

“It’s something we at the WSO have been aware of since May 2022… We looked at all possible cost-cutting initiatives and we basically said this is the year we run out.”–Angela Birdsell

Other arts groups and their supporters, many of whom are members of Manitobans for the Arts, a non-partisan group that lobbies government decision-makers and aims to raise public awareness of arts and culture, have sent a priority list to Manitoba political parties during the provincial election campaign.

“A bold investment in the arts” — doubling the budgets for the Manitoba Arts Council and Manitoba Film and Music — is at the top of the priority list Manitobans for the Arts handed to party leaders and candidates ahead of next Tuesday’s vote.

“I know that it sounds ambitious, but if you get into the financials of it, it’s not as large of an ask as other promises,” says Manitobans for the Arts’ board chairman Brendan McKeen, who is also Manitoba Underground Opera’s general manager and Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s individual giving manager.

McKeen estimates it would cost the province about $10.5 million for its top priority to be fulfilled, but he says there’s recent precedent for such a commitment.

“When the federal Liberals came to power, it was on their platform to double the Canada Council for the Arts budget and their way of implementing it was 20 per cent per year over five years,” he says. “These aren’t necessarily problems that will be fixed in the first 100 days in office.”

Manitobans for the Arts also seeks to make permanent the Arts, Culture and Sport in Community Fund, a $100-million capital-investment initiative the province introduced in 2022 and to re-imagine the relationship between government and arts-and-culture stakeholders.

“That’s not something we need to do in the first 10 days of office,” McKeen says. “Let’s figure out how we can work together over the course of (the next) government.”

The PCs and NDP have both formed governments in Manitoba during the past 20 years, and one of those parties will likely form a government after the Oct. 3 vote.

Arts announcements by Manitoba’s major parties have flown under the radar during the buildup to next Tuesday’s provincial election, but the Progressive Conservatives, the NDP and Liberals have all made commitments to the arts in their platforms.

• PC Leader Heather Stefanson said Sept. 14 a PC government would add to its existing film and production tax credit by 10 per cent if the Manitoba-made production’s soundtrack included at least 50 per cent local performers. The PCs also committed $4.5 million to a soundstage to attract blockbuster film and TV productions to Manitoba.

• NDP announced $8 million in annual investment in grants and capital funds on Sept. 19 to support Manitoba’s artists, festivals, musicians and performing-arts organizations and a revamped film and video production tax credit that would allow companies to receive cash advances rather than applying for funds after the filming is finished.

• Manitoba’s Liberals, who held three of the 57 seats in the legislature when the legislature dissolved, said it would increase Manitoba Arts Council funding to $20 million annually if elected.

“We know the provincial government has a lot of competing priorities. They have a lot of problems to solve,” Sean McManus, the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra’s executive director and former head of Manitoba Music, says. “But we also know the impact arts and culture has for people’s quality of life.

“We also know that there’s a lot of arts organizations struggling to be part of the provincial support system just because that budget hasn’t grown in the past 20 years.”

Arts groups haven’t saved their focus solely for provincial politicians.

Fifteen performing-arts groups from Western Canada, including the WSO, MTC, RWB, Manitoba Opera and the Prairie Theatre Exchange, have hired the Ottawa firm PAA to request $15 million for the performing arts through PrairiesCan, a federal agency focusing on economic development in Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan, rather than making a request to the Canada Council for the Arts, which administers operating grants to arts organizations and individuals across the country.

“It certainly has got the attention of the Canada Council and we’ll be having meetings to discuss this,” Birdsell says.

Alan.Small@winnipegfreepress.com

X: @AlanDSmall

Alan Small
Reporter

Alan Small was a journalist at the Free Press for more than 22 years in a variety of roles, the last being a reporter in the Arts and Life section.

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