Programs

Creative Trust’s Working Capital for the Arts program has been making positive changes to the sustainability of Toronto’s creative mid-size music, theatre and dance companies since 2003.

Working Capital for the Arts is a multi-year program to help 21 performing arts companies develop skills and achieve financial balance. Participating companies, whose annual revenues are between $400,000 and $4 million, were chosen based on their strong artistic achievements and community support.

Working Capital for the Arts combines funding to create financial stability; assistance to help participants improve the ways their organizations work; and seminars and workshops to develop management, fundraising, audience development and other skills.

Companies that meet the programs basic requirement of eliminating any accumulated deficit and breaking even every year afterwards, receive

• Deficit Reduction Matching Grants (of the 21 companies admitted to the program nine had accumulated deficits and were eligible for this type of funding), and
• Working Capital Awards (to a cumulative total of 15% of annual revenues, payable over four years)

Each company is expected to work to make itself stronger and more sustainable with Creative Trust’s assistance and support. This includes intensive individual sessions with Lead Associates, George Thorn and Nello McDaniel, whose framework for healthy organizations underpins our work in this area, and Technical Assistance Director Jane Marsland. Creative Trust provides advice and coaching to each company as it develops an individual Work Plan setting out annual organizational goals.

One-on-one coaching and assistance is complemented with roundtables, workshops and seminars that address common needs for skills in board relations and governance; financial management; human relations; fundraising; audience development and marketing; and more. Participants become part of a learning network where experience, knowledge and skills are shared and developed.

Results:

Our results, which are evaluated annually, clearly support the impact of the program on our sector’s capacity and sustainability.

Of the 21 organizations who began this project, 17 achieved a break-even or surplus bottom line on their 2006 operations; seven had completely eliminated their accumulated deficits.

At the end of their 2008 fiscal years, companies in the program posted total working capital of $2.9 million, or 11.3% of combined 2004 revenues, a strong improvement over the opening 2004 negative total of $200,000. Combined total revenues had climbed to $29.1 million – an increase of 15.5% since the start of the Working Capital for the Arts program.

As of December 2010, 16 companies have successfully completed the Working Capital program. By the time the program draws to a close in December 2011, we anticipate that all companies will be in financial balance and have a working capital reserve fund, making them significantly more financially and organizationally stable than before the program began.

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The Outreach Program, begun in 2005, expands the reach of Creative Trust’s activities to include over 30 small and culturally diverse companies.

Outreach companies were selected based on their artistic vitality, community impact, efforts to develop and stimulate a diverse, engaged audience, and capacity to build their organizational skills, strength and sustainability. They have annual budgets under $400,000 and operate with small staffs and limited resources: their artistic vitality far exceeds their underlying administrative support.

The Outreach Program provides support by

• Facilitating the sharing of resources, encouraging partnerships and mentoring, and providing a framework for continuing co-operation
• Providing assistance in articulating and making effective use of artistic missions through small, supportive peer roundtables
• Providing workshops and seminars on planning, financial and board management and other topics
• Assisting them to develop new audiences and revenues

Through a partnership with the Equity Office of the Canada Council for the Arts, clients of the Toronto Stand Firm Program (an initiative to support culturally diverse arts organizations) have been active participants in the Outreach Program and all Creative Trust’s learning activities.

In 2008 we also opened up the Program to include Associate companies, mostly but not all from the performing arts, who are interested in attending Creative Trust workshops and seminars, participating in our Audiences Project, and sharing and collaborating with colleagues.

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The Creative Trust collectively raised almost $710,000 for endowment purposes between November 1999 and March 2002, in its inaugural Endowment Campaign. The bulk of the fundraising was completed in the first year. With matching money from the Ontario Government’s Arts Endowment Fund Program, the 23 member companies received more than $1.4 million in endowment.

Endowment Campaign members represented a wide cross-section of arts disciplines, including theatre, opera, dance and music. They were located from Thunder Bay to St. Catherines, from Blyth to Gananoque, Ontario, although most were based in Toronto. Their operating budgets ranged from $100,000 to $3 million.

Each Creative Trust member received a significant contribution towards a permanent endowment fund, providing a degree of financial stability that the majority of companies had not before experienced. Companies accessed new donors, made contacts with funders, and raised their profile both individually and as a group. Even more importantly, Creative Trust engendered among its participants a renewed sense of community and faith in collaborative initiatives. The resulting energy and optimism had a major impact on how these companies chose to respond to the challenges they faced.

Each company’s endowment is held and administered by the Ontario Arts Council Foundation, where they will be invested in perpetuity.

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The Engaging Audiences program is a two-year initiative to engage Creative Trust members in an in-depth approach to understanding community engagement and audience development.

The first phase of the program was a day-long seminar with Alan Brown of WoflBrown, who presented promising new audience engagement practices and research on audience preferences. Lynne Connor joined us on Skype to discuss her essay “In and Out of the Dark: A Theory of Audience Behavior from Sophocles to Spoken Word”, and, participants took part in roundtables on new or emerging engagement practices. The day ended with a facilitated brainstorming session devoted to conceptualizing new approaches to audience engagement.

The highlight of phase two was the Audience Engagement Survey – a comprehensive look at the audience engagement preferences of 20 Creative Trust, developed by Alan Brown with Research Associate Kelly Hill of Hill Strategies Research. Responses by 3,200 individuals provided in-depth information for each participating company, as well as an overview of Toronto audiences.

Phase three, still ongoing, is comprised of audience interviewing workshops with Alan Brown and two days of intensive individual interviews with audience members. In the debriefing session following the interviews, organizations discuss what they learned about their audiences’ values and motivations and how they like to engage with art – and how they will apply these insights.

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The Performing Arts Education Overview, to be released in the Fall of 2011, will provide clear and accurate data regarding the range, reach and impact of arts education programs and activities by arts organizations in Toronto. Creative Trust and the Professional Arts Organizations Network for Education (PAONE), with Hill Strategies Research, are working in partnership on this study, which is the first of its kind it Canada.

Through research, an on-line survey of 50 music, theatre and dance companies, and arts professional and stakeholder interviews, our goal is to create an understanding of best practices, increase knowledge of the extent and methods by which performing arts organizations contribute to arts education, and lay a foundation of support for companies to continue developing programs and activities that lead to successful community engagement.

The PAEO is intended to be a pilot project, developing information and methodologies that can be widely shared with arts organizations throughout Ontario and beyond.

The PAEO is made possible through support from the Ontario Ministry of Culture through their Cultural Strategic Investment Fund.

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The Sun Life Financial Performing Arts Access Program is a two-year pilot program by Creative Trust and Picasso PRO to help create ongoing access through Audio Description [AD] for Blind/Low-Vision Audiences and American Sign Language [ASL] Interpretation for Deaf/Hard of Hearing audiences. The process assists performing arts companies to launch and integrate services properly into their organizational cultures and programming. Toronto’s Deaf and disability communities are large, diverse, active, and growing. Access will enable these communities to participate more fully in Toronto’s cultural life. Accessible programming in turn enables theatres to develop new audiences who allow Toronto to retain its place on a world stage which increasingly reflects the values of diversity and inclusion.

In March 2010 The Performing Arts Access Program brought expert trainer Deborah Lewis, from Arts Access Alliance in California, to Toronto to train a core group of eight Audio Describers: Peter Cavell, Krista Dalby, Jane Field, Kat Germain, Kat Leonard, Elizabeth Saunders, Rebecca Singh and Aaron Talbot.

Durelle Harford McAllister and Wanda Fitzgerald continue to provide expert audience feedback and guidance from the Blind/low-vision perspectives.

The Performing Arts Access Program is the only program in Ontario offering Live Audio Description [AD] for the performing arts, and will soon launch its American Sign Language component.

The program was made possible by the visionary support of Sun Life Financial which has made accessibility one of its priorities, and the Ontario Trillium Foundation.

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Creative Trust hosted a keynote address by Donna Walker Kuhne of Walker International Communications, in partnership with Harbourfront Centre, and a hands-on workshop on Communicating and Building Bridges to Diverse Audiences. In the fall of 2011 we plan to offer additional roundtables and focused workshops with Donna Walker Kuhne, to analyze challenges and provide strategies to guide member organizations toward relationships with diverse audiences that fully reflect the demographic make-up of Toronto and Canada.

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One way we can contribute to the success of our members’ capital fundraising is by advising government and funders of the specific needs and challenges of Toronto companies undertaking capital projects; and by researching and cultivating prospective new sources of revenue.

Creative Trust has been advocating for the rehabilitation of Toronto’s small and mid size performing arts venues to the City of Toronto, the Province of Ontario, the Government of Canada, arms-length and individual funders and the media.

In June 2009, we collaborated on an Infrastructure Stimulus Fund Application with seven Toronto performing arts organizations with shovel ready capital and renovation projects. The total project costs were $16.7 million. While these applications were unsuccessful, they established the range and seriousness of the need, and have stimulated new interest and assistance.

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Toronto’s Green Theatres is a project in the works. Its purpose is to help our members meet the highest possible standards for environmental sustainability, energy efficiency and accessibility in their facilities: mid-size theatres, shops and rehearsal and office spaces. Toronto’s Green Theatres is an essential component of the Facilities Project, and will rely on our collective muscle for its success.

The project was launched in the spring of 2011 with energy efficiency audits of seven Toronto facilities taking place over the summer. These will yield recommendations for individual and collaborative work, including group sourcing and purchasing, and will allow individual companies to access a range of energy efficiency support and incentive programs.

Toronto’s Green Theatres is the first sector initiative of its kind; we hope that our results will stimulate and set the standard for a community-wide commitment to reduce the carbon footprints of all Toronto’s theatres and public arts spaces.

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