Monahan asks Wynne for share of arts grants
Event needs support from all levels of government, festival boss says
With some high-profile members of the festival community engaged in a war of words with Mayor Jim Watson over 2017 festival funding levels, Bluesfest executive director Mark Monahan is appealing directly to Premier Kathleen Wynne for a share of arts funding grants.
Monahan made his pitch in a Feb. 21 letter addressed to Wynne, as the premier is touring several communities and doling out arts grants along the way, including a recent stop at a Brantford art gallery where Wynne announced $200,000 for the local arts community.
During a September stop in Ottawa at the National Gallery of Canada, Wynne announced $37 million in funding for Canada and Ontario’s 150th anniversary, with those provincial dollars dedicated to infrastructure, youth programs and various community celebrations.
City of Ottawa funding has been a sore point between Watson and Jazzfest executive director Catherine O’Grady, who penned a recent op-ed in the Citizen criticizing city hall as lagging “significantly behind” in festival operating funding. Watson countered by questioning her facts and maintaining the last city budget contains “record spending” for festivals.
Monahan insists his relationship with the city is positive, and “we’re always trying to figure out what role the event and the city play and how we can benefit each other.”
Bluesfest “has grown so big that we require a significant amount of city services, and that’s where the relationship is most important — in executing the event as smoothly as possible with all the various city departments involved.”
But as Monahan underscored in his letter to Wynne, with festivals serving as “a significant economic generator,” it’s vital all levels of government are at the table.
“All levels of government feed off each other — they all want to see that other levels of government are making an investment,” Monahan said. “We need everyone recognizing the importance of making this sort of investment.”
Monahan’s letter credited prior provincial funding that allowed Bluesfest to grow to Ontario’s largest music festival — with annual audiences exceeding 300,000, with about 40,000 of those visiting the “destination festival” from outside the province — and touted Bluesfest’s record for returning on those investments.
Tourists spent more than $20 million in Ottawa and Ontario during last year’s Bluesfest, and according to third-party firm Acuity Research Group, the 2016 festival resulted in a $31.2-million GDP economic impact on the city and province, creating 395 full-timeequivalent jobs across various related sectors and contributing $12 million in tax revenue to all levels of government.
Monahan said one of the festival’s first provincial grants, which supported a pivotal 1999 edition, when the festival first moved to LeBreton Flats, allowed the fledgling Bluesfest to expand for the first time to the multistage event it is today.
“Much of funding from the province is given to encourage new programming for the festival — it’s to take a bit of a gamble on trying new things,” said Monahan, recalling how that 1999 grant allowed Bluesfest to add the “Louisiana Stage,” its first side stage dedicated to acts procured from scouting the legendary New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, with the likes of Dr. John lending a “southern flavour” to that festival.
“That changed the whole nature of the festival and made it into more of a multi-genre event, and over the years we used much of the funding from the province to proliferate that notion, with multiple stages, different genres of music and having a much broader appeal,” Monahan said.
Monahan said while recent provincial funding has gone to programming, it has also aided in less obvious ways, with “innovative ways to execute the event,” like investments in technology that, according to Monahan, allow the festival to attract further sponsorships.
Public funding from all levels of government currently accounts for less than 10 per cent of Bluesfest’s total budget.
“We’d love for it to be more, but we also have significant private (and sponsor) funding and, of course, our patrons,” said Monahan, while lobbying for government support for his smaller partners in the festival community.
“Although we’re a sizable event, there’s a number of other smaller local events that are significant already, but can definitely grow if they’re supported. We were much smaller years ago, and we benefited from this (funding) and it allowed us to grow to the size we are,” Monahan said.
We need everyone recognizing the importance of making this sort of investment.