Festivals already getting funding support: Watson
‘They’re getting the most amount of money they’ve ever received’
A “momentum fund” for the city’s arts, heritage and cultural community may lessen the “hangover” of 2017’s Canada 150th anniversary celebrations for Ottawa’s cashstrapped festival community.
Diane Deans, chair of community and protective services committee, said council is “sympathetic” to the concerns raised by the Ottawa Festivals in advance of Wednesday’s budget.
“We’ve been in consultation with a number of groups within the arts and heritage community — Ottawa Festivals among them — and these strategic funds are designed to create momentum.
“They’re worried about the hangover after 2017 and how that will impact them.”
Mayor Jim Watson countered Ottawa Festivals’ claim that council had “turned their backs” on the festival community, saying, “They’re getting the most amount of money they’ve ever received in the history of festival funding.
“They’re getting an additional 1.5 per cent. They’re also getting an additional $250,000 from the Ottawa 2017 budget. I’m very excited about the festivals and the important role they will be playing in our 2017 celebrations, but for them to characterize (that) they’re not getting any new money is not true. They’re getting a significant amount of tax dollars to support their programs.”
Watson said there will be a juried system so the festival organization can decide where to spend the money. But while the momentum fund will make money available to its members, Festivals Ottawa executive director Carol Anne Piccinin said the group has been calling for an increase in base funding, which will in turn lead to further investments at the provincial and federal levels.
“Lack of operating dollars that comes through cultural base funding means real and big impediments to hiring quality support staff, staff development, and succession planning,” said Ottawa Jazz Festival executive director Catherine O’Grady. “Without operating support maintaining pace with at least inflation, festivals cannot be competitive for talent.
“Costs rise everywhere; increases to ticket prices for the public is impossible. We all know that no arts organization is able to charge the audience anywhere near what the value of the artistic experience really is, so without subsidy, the organization — staff, marketing budgets, programming budgets — is compromised all the way down the line.”
Ottawa Festivals contends funding levels have fallen well short of expectations that were laid out in the committee’s six-year strategic plan — developed and approved in 2012 — that called for nearly $5 million in total arts, heritage and cultural investments.
“There was a strategy in place, and inside that strategy there are a number of items we’ve been working on — some of them we were able to fund, some of them we were not,” said Deans. “There’s no point in having a plan if you’re not going to fund it properly, and we need to make sure we’re moving forward on the plan, and we do realize that money is tight.”
But those within the festival community find that a bitter pill to swallow, given the tourism and marketing opportunity that awaits in 2017, and given the fact council was able to find ample tax dollars for the Celebrations Ottawa fund.
Deans suggested those in the festival community are concerned not only with rising costs in 2017 — like the rising premium for hotel rooms for out-of-town performers — but with the intensified competition for sponsorship dollars.
Watson also noted increases in funding for smaller civic events that may not fall under the festival umbrella.
“(They) might be small gatherings, whether it’s a Canada Day celebration in Greely or a parade in Carp for the Carp Fair,” Watson said.
“What we’ve tried to do is recognize there are going to be a lot of big events, primarily in the downtown, but supplement that with funding for community-based ventures, whether they’re small festivals or small arts or sports organizations.”