On The Edge Of Uncertainty - The Future Of Arts Funding
“The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented.”
With the summer now in full swing, it may feel as though perhaps the winds of change are finally sweeping through the arts in Montreal. Last month, the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal launched their 44th edition to great reception; Osheaga has recently come and gone, bringing with it tourists aplenty and its characteristic blend of music, art and frenetic celebration; and even the Just for Laughs Festival, slated for cancellation after its parent company Groupe Juste pour rire inc. sought creditor protection in March, was revived and relaunched in July after Quebec City-based entertainment firm ComediHa! acquired many of their assets. As great as these achievements are for the sector as a whole, they may be more superficial than meets the eye. The serious truth is that the arts sector as a whole is currently in a precarious position, and its future is uncertain at best.
In April and May of this year, hundreds of artists & cultural workers gathered to protest insufficient government funding for Quebec’s cultural sector under the banner of arts advocacy group La Grande Mobilisation des Artistes du Québec (GMAQ). This in itself is fantastic - seeing people of all ages, different levels of professional success, and countless disparate artistic disciplines and practices come together in the spirit of protecting the artistic community of this province is inspiring to say the least - but with the plethora of protesting that happens in our fair city, the question becomes: what came of it?
In this case, the answer is a variation on the theme: there’s simply not enough of the pie to go around, and we’ll have to fight for the scraps. While the GMAQ called for a budget increase of at least $100 million to support the work of artists and arts organizations, Quebec’s Minister of Culture and Communications Mathieu Lacombe announced in response that the government would only provide provincial arts agency the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) with an additional CA$15 million in assistance: a veritable drop in the bucket for an increasingly competitive and dwindling grant program.
Public confidence in the systems that are supposed to support the arts notwithstanding, it may be easy to handwave this as a problem for other people to solve, something that has nothing to do with the indie venues. But a general lack of funding for arts and culture has massive and legitimate ramifications for the longevity and sustainability of our beloved indie venues and artists; and understanding the overlap between the issues faced by them and other parts of the arts world and gaining a more comprehensive view of the systems at play could very well change the way we approach this problem. In fact, engaging in dialogue with different artists and arts organizations, including ones that have a modicum of power in deciding who hears about our issues and how to solve them, could very well help us create a future that benefits us all.
A Delicate Ecosystem
As the former Communications Manager for the Quebec Drama Federation (QDF), Cat Preston (she/they) has a lot to say about issues affecting the artistic community. QDF, while headquartered here in Montreal, notably serves the English theatre sector for all of Quebec. As a membership based organization focused on advocacy, development and visibility, they ensure that both companies and individual theatre artists get internal and external visibility for their art, offer workshops and development training, and most importantly, they listen to, and advocate for, their members. “Our members are able to come to us with different issues that they're facing, whether it be within their own company, within the community, within just working in the province as a whole, issues like federal funding, things like that,” she tells me, “and we help voice those concerns to the right people.”
“A couple of huge questions we are getting more and more frequently [from our members] are: ‘What are some venues that would be available to me, that are relatively affordable for me to be able to do a production in?’, and ‘Where are some affordable and accessible spaces for me to rehearse in?,’” Cat admits. “The loss of spaces like FMF, Diving Bell, and especially the Free Standing Room, was really keenly felt by the community.”
This may be a shock to those who view theatre as some snooty, protected class of art, but make no mistake: theatre, especially local, independent theatre, is just as in need as your local performance space is. Cat tells me that many of QDF’s member companies don’t actually have their own performance or rehearsal spaces, which makes the recent closures of spaces that much more felt. “Obviously there is still the same pool of people, arguably a growing pool of people that are all trying to get into the same venues,” they say, “so then we're encountering issues where spaces are booked for a year in advance, or two years in advance, where the waiting list becomes longer and longer, and it is becoming tougher and tougher for non-venued companies to find consistent spaces or venues that they can really plan their seasons for.”
Not only that, but the same socio-economic struggles that have plagued the past four years also affect theatre artists and the accessibility of spaces. “A lot of venues have upped their rental prices to meet the cost of inflation,” Cat relates. “The cost of materials, everything is more expensive now including renting a space.” This is something she has learned from personal experience, having just produced a community theatre production at an institution where the rent alone cost them $16,000 for eight shows. And it's not just the rental of the space that can hurt a theatre company’s wallet: “Many of these spaces will have their own members of staff on hand because they want to make sure that their space is well taken care of,” they tell me, “and during rentals their salaries and their hourly rates also are a part of that cost. If you're doing a longer run you know you might be looking at like $20,000 for a space.”
Of course, the cost of renting spaces should be offset by ticket sales, but most theatres don’t get the same revenue as a concert hall able to book a well known artist. And like any business, a theatre company still has to make money to survive, while also accounting for a variety of challenges. Things like accessible ticketing (ex. setting ticket prices as ‘pay what you can’) have become quite common and “important to a lot of theatre companies and are really helpful tools to get patrons to come back, engage audiences with theatre,” Cat says. Even the idea of just booking a venue with a large house presents its own issues. “For a show where the exact numbers of audience patronage are never guaranteed, it can be a huge gamble to pay for a space that seats 400 people. Having 200 people in your house is a very healthy house for a theater show, but if that's only half of the seats that you're occupying? It’s a big money game, with cost versus financial return from ticket sales versus sponsorship you're able to get.”
As for why the theatre industry is also facing a lack of spaces, the issues overlap significantly with those faced by your local performance venue. “When we see an interdisciplinary space like Diving Bell, that's right across the street from Mainline Theatre, experience issues like noise complaints, or being buried under a mountain of fines, or being reno-victed,” Cat remarks, “[it just shows that] it doesn't matter if you're a concert venue or a theater space, those things are going to be affecting you, regardless of what you're doing in the space.” She also admits that bureaucracy and venue classification have a hand in what kind of issues - or even support - a venue or company gets. “It really depends on the venue,” they say, drawing similarities between the operating budget and support a larger theatre space may get to that of differently sized - and differently owned - creative spaces. “You have larger venues like your MTeluses or Place Bells, who just operate on a different budgetary level than the smaller spaces like Diving Bell, who just would not have the same kind of financial support, sponsorship support, or corporate support for when things financially go awry - you just have such a differential of resource. You can also see that looking at a space like Mainline versus looking at a space like Salle Wilfrid Pelletier, the issues that Salle Wilfrid Pelletier is going to face are not going to be the same that Mainline is going to face.”
Of course, as an organization that serves the English theatre community in Quebec, I was curious about any kind of differences between the English sector and the French sector when it came to issues like these: one could assume that being in Quebec, the English sector gets the short end of the stick compared to the French sector? Cat tells me nothing could be further from the truth. “Through conversations that have happened both with fellow collaborators from CQT (le Conseil Québécois du Théâtre) and bilingual artists, it’s clear that it’s not just one linguistic faction that we're seeing hurting,” she reports. “I find that's often something that is used almost as a divisive tool, you know? But the truth is we're one sector: whether you work in English or in French, or in a different language entirely, we're all part of the arts and culture sector in the same way. We're all interconnected in that way.”
In fact, apparently many venues and companies here in Montreal prove that the notion of a linguistic division is factually inaccurate. “There are so many venues in the city that intersect so greatly, that serve many different linguistic communities, that put on bilingual productions and host bilingual arts,” Cat shares. “And so when our venues are facing these issues, it's not just one linguistic community that's going to face them.”
Another rather poignant example of a shared issue between the English and French sector is, of course, access to public funding. “I would say it's very, very rare, especially when it comes to things like funding, that you're going to see one particular linguistic community be affected by it,” Cat tells me. “It's going to be sector wide.” Coming off the heels of a CAQ budget announced in March that projected an $11-billion deficit for the next fiscal year - news that rang alarm bells for many, and a pill that was hard to swallow for the province as a whole - it's easy to see why the arts sector as a whole is reeling.
This year’s budget was purportedly designed to prioritize health care and education, two public sectors that certainly needed it, if the workers’ strikes we saw in late 2023 and early 2024 have anything to show for it. And arts organizations like QDF are cognizant that they’re not the only ones in need of help. “Of course we're not the only sector where we're seeing call-outs for financial need,” Cat says. “Times are hard for everybody at the moment, you know, and I think the arts and culture sector is no exception to that.”
There seems to be a kind of mentality, especially in the public sphere, that even though everyone is suffering, not everyone can be helped. The CAQ 2024 budget certainly expresses that, practically pitting sectors against each other with their rhetoric. Why is it necessary for one sector to suffer so that another can be saved? Of course, there is a finite pool of money available to governing bodies to give out, and theoretically since public sectors deal with their own specific issues, it makes sense that others can have while others have not. Right?
In practice, the ecosystem of public sectors is much more interdependent than it is typically made out to be. According to Cat, you can see examples of this in the recent teacher strikes: “Sometimes there are strikes where teachers will go in and teach and do the basic responsibilities of their job, but are striking from things like extracurricular activities or striking from things like outings and field trips,” they relate. “If classes aren't going out on field trips, then there are no school shows. And that means that theater companies are then losing out on money that they could have made from putting on a matinee performance for a school. This is especially big in the French sector, or especially for a company that directly serves institutions and schools like, for example, Geordie Theatre: that’s their direct audience. It’s a prime example of how funding has really big impacts; here funding is put into education, but that funding then makes its way into the arts and culture sector.”
Bringing a holistic perspective to our understanding of the relationship between different public sectors to one another makes sense for a number of reasons. Firstly, as Cat put it, “we all live in a community and you know, we don't just need education, we don't just need healthcare, we don't just need the arts; we need all of those things, and we need those things in different ways and they serve different things in our lives.” But perhaps more importantly, it could help insulate our communities from sector privatization, something that’s become more and more rampant across the country as a whole in recent memory. If we designed our public spending models to prioritize the whole of peoples’ needs, it could decrease our reliance on the private sector, and revolutionize how we live. It may sound far-fetched, but models like this are already being developed and explored, according to Cat. “Speaking personally, I think that there are certainly models that could be explored that I think could provide a lot more funding to the public sector as opposed to the private sector.” She adds, “I think that there are models that could be explored that could be really interesting to look at in terms of being able to make sure that people have what they need, you know?”
AN EXODUS OF ARTISTS
Walking into the building that houses the Conseil des Arts de Montréal (CAM) feels like stepping back in time. The impressive columnated Gaston-Miron building (originally opened in 1917 and the home of Montreal’s first library) opens into a vast and stunning atrium adorned with a cathedral ceiling and spectacular stained-glass windows. The names of writers from Western Antiquity - Homer, Plato, Cicero - adorn the molding on the top levels, evoking the spirit of great artistic works and free thought.
Photo by Alexander Cruz
It’s here that I met with Julien Valmary, Support and Philanthropy Director for CAM, who himself has done quite a bit of thinking on new models not only for public funding, but for artistic work and sustainability in general. While Valmary is an arts manager by trade, having worked for numerous organizations over the past 20 years like the Tarragon Theater in Toronto, and the Segal Center for the Performing Arts here in Montreal, he understands the lived experience of an artist, having been an actor at a very young age in his native France. He is also an expert in philanthropy for the arts, and has a strong interest in public policy for the arts, which makes sense with his position at CAM. He runs a couple of their programs, the largest one being the Programme Géneral de Subvention, which is the largest bucket of funding for the arts CAM has, covering operating funding, multi-year operating funding, and project funding for all disciplines and mandates, as well as running the philanthropic side of things, like helping the community to develop their own capacity to receive donations and gifts from the community. Importantly for our conversation, he has also been highly involved in the issue of creative spaces, which according to him, “intersects with everything that we do.”
Of course, the issue of lack of creative spaces is not the core mandate of CAM - that would be providing financial support to artists and arts organizations based on peer assessments - but they are in the business of serving the interests of the artistic community at large. “Our governance model comes from the community,” Valmary tells me. “We develop our vision from consultations with the community of artists, and they are the core of our business. We have 100 or so artists and arts workers involved in our juries on a 3 year term and we have a board of directors of 21, and the majority of the board is comprised of artists and arts workers. Of course, it's perfectable, it can also evolve, and so we always try to be in sync with social changes and we try to be as relevant as possible with the demography in Montreal in terms of representativity, funding, and process.”
This aspect of CAM, making decisions based on artist juries and community, is something that makes them stand out as an arts funder. “The fact that our staff here also comes from the arts milieu makes a huge difference,” says Valmary. “They understand the issues, they understand the difficulties, because most of them have been through those difficulties and so they can provide adequate counsel.” Not only that, but he believes that CAM and the initiatives it develops are constantly inspired by the very nature of artistic work. “Since we're not the largest organization, we are quite agile as well, we can adapt quite rapidly, which artists do all the time,” he says. “Artists are highly creative, they are the most creative entrepreneurs you can think of. They are masters of planning, masters of doing things without large budgets, so they can teach a bunch to entrepreneurs on how to be efficient.”
Institutions like CAM are vital to the sustainability of artistic work, not only for the assistance they can provide financially: often their impact can vary depending on the stage at which artists or groups come to them in their project or development. “If you come to us for the first time for funding, we might have a big impact as starting funding, but also a direct impact because then you can maybe go to other funders to get more capacity,” Valmary tells me. “Our impact is very different depending on the organization. With the museum of Fine Arts for example, we have an impact of influence because we interact with that organization, we can also advocate for them to have an impact on the rest of the ecosystem as well. We also try to leverage some of the influence that we have, sometimes it's not the influence of money, but the influence of having a relationship.”
Increasingly, artists rely on funding from CAM not only to rehearse and produce their art, but simply to survive. “The reality for artists and arts organizations right now is really, really difficult,” Valmary acknowledges. According to a recent release from CAM based on the 2020-2021 federal census number regarding artists’ wages on the island of Montreal, the median income for artists on the island is only $17,400; well below the national average from 2022 of $57,100. As to why that is, Valmary is blunt: “Artists are living in conditions that are not decent, and they are well & truly affected by inflation, by other factors of gentrification such as higher housing costs and the housing crisis, and on top of that they need to practice their art.”
Similarly, he attributes the increasingly worsening social and economic problems spurred on by the pandemic, gentrification and inflation - among other things - to the current lack of spaces. “There's many, many factors. … The costs of running spaces are increasing, and the cost of building and construction is getting higher,” he states. “Public funding is not increasing - it had increased during the pandemic, but now it's mostly gone back to pre-pandemic levels, with some exceptions - but also there's a housing crisis, so there's less real estate.” While he is optimistic about Montreal specifically - stating that Montreal is “still a city where artists can make the choice to stay,” he holds no illusions that the situation will magically get better if nothing is done, and that it’s not just happening here. “We are really at the precipice, you know. Creative cities and leading metropolises around the world have the same issue around gentrification that we have. The housing crisis and rental increases, interest rates getting higher and higher; and the living conditions of artists and the conditions of practicing or rehearsing are linked.”
That being said, Mr. Valmary did have some further interesting insights about the ‘why’ of the arts space crisis, related to how government bodies and arts organizations can or cannot act. “One of the issues we face when a space is about to be re-developed or lost is the speed at which the decisions about it have to be made, which is usually not the same speed at which a government institution can act,” he admits. “Whenever a place goes on the market and it's about to be purchased by a developer, they act fast: much faster than the time it takes for an arts organization to react and find the funds to purchase it themselves, or to build a business plan.” Additionally, a lack of business expertise could play into things, as Valmary outlines. “Most arts organizations are not equipped to be real estate managers, that's not the core of their mandate,” he says. “So whenever there's an urgent decision to be made, they have to consider a list of factors, and they’re not specialists in real estate management, or real estate development, or purchasing, financing, all of that.”
Needless to say, the impact of recent venue closures and a lack of artistic spaces is felt just as keenly by CAM as by the community. “The fact is, you know, when you lose any venue, you lose the diversity of audiences and artists that used to be in that venue,” Valmary expresses. “Whether it is a bar that has a stage, or a professional venue, or an artist workshop, you lose the essence of what's being done and the relationship that's being created in that space, which has even more value.” For a creative city like Montreal, losing both valuable artistic works and the communities crafted therein can be a death knell. As Valmary puts it, “cities that are seeing an exodus of artists are not cities where people want to live.”
FUNDING THE ARTS
If public institutions like QDF and CAM are joining the artistic community in decrying the state of arts & culture and lack of affordable creative spaces here in Montreal, alarm bells should be ringing for all of us. These organizations are designed to aid artists and arts organizations against these issues: so what’s stopping them from doing so? The heart of the issue, at least for QDF and CAM, is public arts funding.
As noted earlier, public arts funding - or rather, a lack thereof - is what’s on everybody’s lips, especially arts institutions like QDF and CAM. “There's been - especially since the pandemic started and in the years that followed - a lot of freezes in funding,” says Cat Preston. “So the amount of funding that people have received has been the same for multiple years, instead of kind of growing with the way that costs have been growing.” This sentiment is echoed by Julien Valmary, who says that this year, CAM got a 2% increase to their final budget, which is “way, way below what we need and what the needs of the committee are.” This is apparently a trend for CAM, as Valmary notes that, “For the past three years, we’ve gotten an average increase of 1.85% each year, which is not on par with what the needs are. So we are in a situation where the decisions that will be made will be difficult - it’s a tough time.”
This, of course, hinders the ability of CAM to carry out their primary mandate: giving money to artists and arts organizations in need. Auspiciously, I spoke with Mr. Valmary the day after the CALC provincial budget announcement, who confirmed that the needs of the community are much larger than what the budget indicates. “We've seen a huge growth in funding requests,” he shares. “The last call that we did on a project basis, we saw a 65% increase in the grant applications, so the choices that we are making now are that much more difficult. We are making decisions in June for the multi-year funding, and we are committing ourselves for a 4 year cycle of funding, which is really based on trust, since we only get our budget on an annual basis.”
While a lack of public funding makes it difficult for a paramunicipal organization like CAM to do their job, it is doubly difficult for QDF, which itself relies on government funding to carry out new initiatives for their membership. A recent QDF initiative called the QDF Membership Empowerment Project, which could “facilitate community consultations and communication moving forward,” according to Cat, was only possible thanks to their applying for a federal funding opportunity.
Looking deeper into the issue, the question becomes why is there such a lack of funding in the arts recently? Of course, we’ve seen cuts to arts budgets and funding at the federal and provincial over the years, and Cat is quick to assess that arts funding is subject to political whim. “It's really determined by the budget that is created by the government and the party that is in charge at the time,” they say. “This is why you tend to see ebbs and flows of arts funding based on where a party that has the majority may stand on how important arts and culture is to their platform. That will affect the budget and will affect how much money artists have to apply for.” While QDF does engage in talks with all levels of government, from municipal to federal, those conversations don’t always go the same; if they happen at all. “For example this year,” she says, “conversations at the provincial level haven’t necessarily happened yet.”
The logical conclusion from that would be that our governments - at the municipal, provincial, or federal level - simply do not care about the arts. Why else would they choose to malign the arts sector and slash funding? Valmary sees a little more nuance to the point than that. “I mean, they do care, but they have to deal with a number of priorities,” he remarks. “They have to make some tough choices because resources are limited. I don't think there's a lack of will.” In fact, overall, he’s surprisingly optimistic about the overall sentiment towards arts and arts funding that our governing bodies have. “The good news is that there's social consensus about how public funding for the arts is the right thing to do, and that it has a lot of value in our community,” he tells me. “So the good news is that we have a country where, especially in Quebec, and especially in Montreal, where the social, economical and political consensus is quite good around funding the arts and why we need to fund the arts.”
While it may not feel that way, Valmary is right about this positive feeling towards funding the arts, especially at the municipal level. As a paramunicipal organization, CAM gets its funding in part from the municipal government, which is working to provide CAM what it needs to do what it must. He even notes, in regards to the issue of creative spaces, that “The city is doing much of the leg work, because they’re funding infrastructure with the Ministry of culture.” This is echoed by Cat as well, who says that QDF and many other artistic organizations have had some really wonderful dialogue with CAM and the city as a whole. “I think CAM especially, and the city, loves their arts and culture scene: I think it's palpably important to them, and that has always been clear in the dialogue that we've had with them,” she says. “They gave a great presentation [at the most recent strategic planning meeting for the 2024-2027 period] on some stats about where we're at in terms of arts and culture in the city, how many artists there are in the city and things like that. These are numbers that they're keenly aware of. So we know that the city really is listening and is really passionate about making sure that the vitality of arts and culture in the city continues and grows and expands.”
Despite this, the reality is that our governing bodies continue to slash funding for the arts, despite what good will is there. Why is that? The answer, according to Valmary, is layered. At the political level, he explains, “The arts world does not pay lobbies to do the work. Other industries do, and they do it very well.” CAM is technically a lobbying body, and does the best it can, but as Valmary says, “it needs to be consistent and it needs to be a concerted effort.” The other side of this coin is at the individual level, and our personal relationships to the levers of political action. “When we meet an elected official,” he jokes, “we don't oftentimes tell them, ‘you should continue taking those wise decisions on funding the arts, because I'm an artist and it makes a difference to me as an artist or an arts worker, please continue doing this.’ No one does that, but we can always meet elected officials, and they are our representatives, not the other way around.” He continues to note that today, what many consider activism has been relegated to the social media sphere. “We are very fast at taking [causes we want to advocate for] to social media, but we're not doing the groundwork [that we can be] as citizens. Who goes to city council meetings? Not many people. As long as politicians don't hear an issue, it doesn't exist to them.”
These words are certainly true - in an age of social media ‘activism’ and isolation in the face of late stage capitalism, it does us some good to be reminded of the power of actually meeting and speaking with our representatives - but the bulk of the work cannot be put on individuals to make the changes they want to see in the world. Clearly, artists and arts organizations are being let down: the old ways of doing and thinking cannot be relied upon in the face of increasing socio-economic issues faced by not only the arts community as a whole but everyone, everywhere, all at once, and the constantly shifting priorities of governments and balance books. We need to think outside of the box, and develop new tools and strategies to support the arts; perhaps with a bit of social innovation and collaboration, a de-siloing of different social/economic sectors, and continuous advocacy.
COLLABORATION
CAM and QDF can’t fix all of the arts world’s problems by themselves - especially when it comes to the issue of lack of creative spaces - and they know it. Julien Valmary admits that, “the issues around lack of space for sure involve many, many players. The Council does not fund infrastructure, so it's in the pockets of the Ministry of Culture of Quebec, the city of Montreal and the federal government; and private owners and arts organizations as well. Money is an issue, it requires infrastructure, and space requires a lot of funding, especially now, in the economic times that we are going through.” Cat echoes a similar constraint, saying “If QDF had endless funding, and endless resources, we would do all of the workshops and all of the things and all of the services, you know? But as an organization, we make the effort to use the funding and the resources we have to address the issues that are the most important to our membership at the time and we do our best to meet those needs.”
What they can do, however, is of incredible importance: “We can advocate, we can push forward more decent working conditions, we can make sure that the decisions that we make don't endanger their living conditions and we can also put up some conditions for them to thrive,” says Valmary. Aiding in the amelioration of artists’ living conditions is something that he believes is paramount in uplifting the sector as a whole, and underpins a significant amount of the work CAM does. It makes sense: creativity, creative spaces and affordability go hand in hand. If an artist can’t afford to live, they can’t afford to make their art, and then it doesn’t make a difference whether or not there are enough spaces to create in.
One notable issue that Valmary brings up in this regard is the lack of a general safety net for artists in Canada. “Most artists are self-employed, and they don't have access to government insurance,” he relates. “It doesn't make any sense in a country like ours, and we've been advocating for having a more robust safety net for artists in Canada, with our colleagues from the Toronto Arts council, Calgary Arts Council, the Winnipeg Arts Council and the Edmonton Arts Council.” Shockingly, he fully tells me that this is an open gap that arts funding can’t solve. “We are here to fund research and development, production, creation, and dissemination of great art and ensure that it's relevant to communities. But if we don't solve the issue of decent living conditions and decent safety net for artists in Canada, we won’t solve the issue and our impact will be limited.”
Additionally, he challenges the very idea of artistic practice as not being work; which could change the very way we consider and provide funding for the arts. “In my opinion,” he says, “society as a whole does not really consider artists as workers, and it doesn’t make sense. The way we set up work in society is that the number of hours of work equals the pay you get, right? Well, artists - who are highly trained, highly educated and highly specialized - alternate between periods of work that are quite intense and periods of non-work, usually in order to refine who they are as workers. But we don't consider the period of non-work as being as essential to the embetterment of you as a worker, as a professional, as the period of work. All industries in Canada receive public funding: the battery sector, the aerospace sector, the mining sector, the fishing sector, the automotive sector, everyone. And they have workers. There's lots of ways that we could rethink work based on the way that work is set up in an artistic environment.”
It’s this out-of-the-box thinking that CAM is now known for, and to me, it’s exactly what we need to reframe support for the arts and find solutions to the issues facing our community. In talking of potential solutions to the problem of artists’ safety net, Valmary mentions a French model called an ‘intermittent du spectacle’, which is “a very specific status within the overall EI system in which, if you've committed a number of hours within a certain time frame as an artist, for example, or an arts worker, you would get EI benefits,” that could be something that we can take inspiration from. While he notes that we’re not there yet - “there are specialists in labor who have examined that, and they had to consider the specific nature of artists’ work in the EI reform because there's a current reform in employment insurance at the federal level, but we’re not at a point where there's any acting on that” - the very idea of other systems existing where where artists don't have to have three jobs to make a living, fear for their livelihood or accept every gig they can is exciting.
Around the issue of creative spaces, Valmary tells me that, “There's been a number of things that we've been experimenting with with the city of Montreal, where we provided support to the City to explore new avenues of speeding up processes, or helping a project go from one stage to another.” How exactly CAM can act is technically restricted, but the impact areas they can affect can be significant. “Taxation and regulation are issues where we can act,” he says, for example “making sure that regulation can also accommodate real estate developers so they can keep the presence of artists [in a city], or bending or adapting some of the regulation on their duties to preserve what's there.” This is noteworthy, as artists are mostly concentrated in urban centers in Canada, so the pressure of speculation or gentrification have a higher impact on artists.
One of those experiments is the Innovation Lab for Creative Spaces which CAM has run for the past year now, where, as Mr. Valmary puts it, “we got 100 people from all kinds of different fields - from social innovation, to the arts, to philanthropy, to municipal divisions, to foundations, even churches together,” to explore possible solutions to challenges in art space real estate projects. At the end of February, they hosted the second stage of that innovation lab, and kept 10 projects, and they’re currently working to get their ideas to a different stage. Another thing CAM is doing to help make spaces more affordable is boosting rental grants for visual arts and craft workshops. While a little niche, they’ve increased the dollar/square meter available to the program, and added an additional grant for storage, which Mr. Valmary qualifies as a success. “There are around 350 beneficiaries of that,” he says, “and it's a good chunk of money.”
Not to be outdone, QDF has had their fair share of innovation in the realm of space availability too. When we originally spoke back in February, Cat hinted at a project QDF was working on to help their membership know what kinds of venues were out there for their needs; a concern that members had been voicing for some time now. “It can be really hard,” she told me. “It’s not just doing a Google search - it takes time to really sift through everybody's individual websites and things like that, it's a lot of research to do.“ They told me they would be revamping their Resource Corner an launching “a comprehensive venues list, which will have information like the name of the venue, where it is located, whether it can be used for performance or rehearsal, can it be used for both, on average what the rental cost is, whether it is wheelchair accessible or accessible in general, how to book it, what language will you likely need to speak to customer service in, and things like that.”
A few months later, that resource is now a reality: the Quebec Drama Database was introduced on social media on July 15th, and includes a downloadable pdf of the Venue list, which includes both member & non-member spaces, and a breakdown of their type, address, who to contact, the size/capacity, their accessibility details, going rates, ticketing conditions and website info. While Cat admits that, “QDF cannot tackle the Mongolian task of making sure everybody is personally supplied with a venue,” this incredible resource can “make sure that our membership has access to the information that they need to be able to just look at one comprehensive list and see what's available to them.”
Another innovative conversation around the lack of spaces that I shared with both Cat and Valmary was about repurposing pre-existing spaces. We’ve all seen the countless boarded up buildings on St. Denis and St. Laurent, graffitied over and seemingly unbothered for years now - in fact, there’s an actual abandoned theatre in St. Henri that’s been in disuse since the early 2000s - what would it take to convert those into arts spaces? The reality is quite complex. “There's the purchase of the building itself,” explains Cat, referencing the Théâtre Cartier at 3990 Notre-Dame West, “then you would need to put in new theater seating. But we have no idea what the technical grid looks like, what the lighting grid looks like, what the state of the stage is, what the state of the stage floor, curtains or walls are like. Are we going to need to paint? What does the lobby look like? This place would need major renovations; you're looking at a multi-million dollar project And that's after you've bought the place. And then after that, you're going to have to pay to upkeep the space - you’re going to pay for heating, for electricity - like it's just so much money that would have to be invested into a theater like that.”
That being said, it’s not something that she rules out completely. “It could be interesting to look into,” she admits, “and the amount of empty spaces currently here in the city was certainly brought up and has been brought up in many channels of dialogue.” In fact, they tell me that the theatre in question has been looked at several times by collaborative groups of people who’ve expressed interest in the past, and even a group of theatre companies attempting to go in on that space together, but to no avail.
That’s where enhanced collaboration with other interest groups could come into play, according to Valmary. A prime example of a synergy between interest groups and the re-utilization of buildings is with the Catholic Church here in Quebec. “They are trying to find a future for faith-based buildings,” he says. “Renovating churches costs a lot, so not a lot of them will be saved, but some of them could be of use to the community, and some of them could be of use to the arts world.” A literal example of this kind of innovation at work is the Saint Jax Church, which is part of the Anglican Diocese of Montreal, and now rents their space for community and arts events. Not only does this collaboration work to ensure the longevity of both a cultural heritage site and the artistic community, it doesn’t involve building anything new: Valmary put it, “the most eco-friendly building there is is one that's already there.”
What about helping arts organizations scale up their projects and models to increase the availability of creative spaces? That’s something currently being done by CAM’s Project d’accompagnement par les groupes de ressources techniques (GRT), a project they’ve been experimenting with for the past three years. GRTs are essentially social real estate developers, their core expertise being building social housing, and they’ve been around for the past 40 years. According to Valmary, there are four in Montreal, so it seemed like a great idea to pair them with arts organizations. “The GRTs knew nothing about the arts, and the arts organizations knew nothing about real estate,” he says. “And the arts organizations were in a constant failure cycle because they were reaching out to partners and there were not enough partners to partner with to get their project developed - so we got them together.”
Over the past three years, this initiative has garnered a number of successes: COOP Madaam, les Ateliers Belleville, Collectif Lutherie Montreal, OBORO, Nyata Nyata, and Studio 303 are just a few examples of projects they were able to get from a zero stage, or stage two, or three, to completion, all because they got some help from people who knew about real estate development. Mr. Valmary admits its not a perfect project, but it “showed us that we can create innovation in that field to speed up the processes, and then they can access much larger pockets of funding.” Les Ateliers Bellevilles, for example, is a huge space, over 25,000 square feet, and it hosts a number of visual arts and other organizations, which just goes to show what can be done if you give capacity and autonomy for people to do that.
A NEW WAY FORWARD
The future of the arts is still uncertain. Despite proposals for collaborative innovation like the ones listed above, the powers that be can still cling to old ways if it's profitable for them, or stymie new initiatives to halt progress. Even though she was optimistic at the dialogue she’s seen happen with CAM, Cat is cautious of new proposals being taken on quickly. “There are so many factors that I think are dependent on what we will see in the next few years, what we will see in the next decade, you know: things take time,” they say. “We will obviously need to look at what is achievable in the short term, in the long term plan and in the very long term. It's not like CAM can wave a wand and make things happen. There are so many other factors to consider - at the municipal government level, the provincial government level, perhaps even the federal government that would need to be involved to make such a notable policy change that affects both the public and private sector.”
But there is hope in initiatives and advocacy that breaks the mold of conventional wisdom and past projects. Valmary tells me of innovative things coming down the pipeline, like the ‘initiative communautaire du Grand Montreal’, which could help solve the issue of “the immediate availability of capital” by bringing in philanthropy to help public funding at the early stage to make sure innovation happens. “It’s an interesting model because of the different financial tools [being utilized] and it's a collaboration of different sectors,” he says.
Even looking to other countries for inspiration to help innovate is a step in the right direction. Land trusts, which are typically used to protect nature and the environment, are quite popular in the UK: Valmary says that over there, “Bloomberg Philanthropy has been highly involved in building land trusts for protecting and securing the building through their usage,” making it so that “it's locked and you cannot do anything but use that building for [the agreed upon] use.” Apparently this model has seen some success in Quebec City, and I think it could be a knockout here.
Of course, even Valmary concedes that the viability of new and innovative proposals isn’t always a given: that’s the very nature of experimentation. “The stuff that we've been doing with the GRT is an example of that,” he says. “The question is, is it replicable? Can you scale it up? And we don’t know.” But what is known is that there's a number of issues that we all agree on, issues that cross public sector lines, and that we can - and should - advocate for those issues together. “When the resources are limited - and resources will always be limited,” he continues, “what the arts world can do is advocate. Advocate for a number of small priorities together - not for just the theater world of the dance world or the music world, but for the arts as a whole - and use the conduit that they have, like an arts council, to disperse those funds. Governments change, and the economic situation changes all the time, so it should always be on top of everyone's mind. Everyone needs to be involved in that.”
To Cat, it’s clear that while things on our phones and in the news seem insurmountable, with political rhetoric and division threatening to stop anything before it even starts, you have to push past that. “I think what we see in the political sphere and I think what we see in the community is different,” they say. “What I see in our community is people working together. And that's what resonates with me.” To those looking to support the arts and its initiatives, aside from your usual message to support local companies, artists or musicians by donating or volunteering for productions, she shares a message of taking a step back and gaining a wider perspective on the interconnected nature of advocacy. “Be conscious about where you're investing your money, conscious about where you're spending your money. And if ever there are opportunities to help elevate the voices of people that are advocating on behalf of the community, elevate those voices; advocate for those voices; even share your own voice! Expressing to people who are decision makers how important the arts and culture scene is to you, expressing how important these venues are to you; it goes a long way, you know?”
There’s an old saying that goes, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” While I fully believe that to be true - reflecting on the past and our actions is completely invaluable to learning from mistakes in order to create a different, and possibly better, future - in the case of the arts, the future seems less predicated on our remembering the past but destroying it completely: breaking down antiquated notions about work, individualism, and the public sector, lifting out from the molten fragments the core value of artistic labour, and using innovative ideas to forge the new identity of arts advocacy.
Photo by Roxanne Turcotte