Why are arts groups sinking in Waterloo Region?
What on Earth is happening to arts and culture in Waterloo Region?
TheMuseum, a fixture in downtown Kitchener that has provided exhibitions, experiences and social connection since September 2003, when it was known as the Waterloo Regional Children’s Museum, is fighting to stay alive as it receives emergency funds from the city this summer.
In Cambridge, the Fashion History Museum is ready to lock the door and move to another community.
And the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony is still struggling with its bankruptcy issues, nine months after it cancelled the 2023-24 season and laid off all the musicians.
That’s a lot of collapse in a short time, from institutions with decades of success behind them.
How could this be happening, in an economically robust area that’s planning to grow to a million people by 2050?
Without arts and culture, where are we going to find our moments of joy, of insight, of belonging?
“I see this as being critical for the development of our community,” says Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic.
People, from trained professionals to refugee claimants, are looking for an artistic community that speaks to them, where they can share beauty and express their life experiences. And, because of the increased ability to work remotely, people have never had so much choice in where they work, he added. So the region has to be ready.
It’s not just here. The arts are in danger across the country. Major festivals, from the Vancouver Folk Music Festival to the Just For Laughs comedy festival in Toronto and Montreal, have either narrowly escaped the guillotine or have shut down.
It’s been a dangerous brew of fastrising costs due to inflation, coupled with stagnant government funding, and the public returning too slowly to events after the pandemic.
Full disclosure: I am the part-time executive director of the Grand Philharmonic Choir, which performs locally and receives funds from a wide array of sources,
including local municipalities.
People’s habits have changed since the pandemic
“We’re in an economy where people have less discretionary dollars,” says Amanda Kind, a singer-songwriter who was head of marketing at Drayton Entertainment for seven years.
They’re still willing to spend thousands of dollars on a Taylor Swift concert, because they know they will enjoy it. But they’re unwilling to take a chance on an experience they aren’t sure they will like.
“People are not subscribing,” she said.
Yet those committed subscribers are so important for arts groups. Knowing you have a sure thing — a loyal, paying audience who will be there for you for both the crowd-pleasing hits and the edgy, less popular decisions — is what allows artists to take risks, and grow.
Audience commitment matters deeply. At the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, the number of subscribers fell dramatically from 8,000 before the pandemic, to 2,000 in late summer 2023. This was a major part of the reason the symphony ran out of cash and couldn’t continue.
There’s also a ripple effect on lesser-known performers. It might mean finding much cheaper venues, so that you won’t lose your shirt if you don’t fill the room.
Kind says traditional venues are getting very expensive.
“That’s why you’re starting to see the rise of house concerts,” where a person sets up chairs and a staging area in their living room and invites friends to come over. The audience numbers are low, but the sense of intimacy is high.
Other organizations are taking an innovative approach. Emmanuel United Church in Waterloo, for example, is set up for low-cost rentals and easy access to amplification equipment right in the building, she said.
Kind applauded the recent Neighbours’ Day event throughout Kitchener, in which local musicians were paid to perform in driveways and on porches of volunteer hosts throughout the city.
Kind says people also want all their senses engaged at once. Think of a food festival, with music, and an artisanal market to browse through as well.
“People are impatient,” she said. “We’re competing, not with other shows, we’re competing with Netflix and cellphones.”
Funding for the arts is drying up
TheMuseum had 100,000 visitors a year before the pandemic. Now that number has shrunk to 70,000. The first impulse of a group in that kind of trouble is to try to buy time with emergency government funding.
In 2023, I watched the executive director of the K-W Symphony plead with regional council in vain for $100,000 in additional funding, to help the symphony get by until audiences returned.
A year later, TheMuseum was more successful. It received $300,000 in emergency funding from the City of Kitchener but was denied $150,000 by regional council on Wednesday night. The city is meeting weekly with TheMuseum to work on a sustainable funding model for the future.
The region has a robust granting program for arts groups, as well as many other community groups. It has expanded the funds on offer.
But, unlike the individual cities, the regional government is also trying to commit major funds to combat homelessness, which feels at times like a bottomless pit. And, of course, it also has the police budget. And residents angrily point out that the tax increases are more than they can afford.
So if the arts need more, there is sometimes scant sympathy for them around the council table.
The Fashion History Museum in Cambridge, a jewel that the city should be cherishing, is also going through troubles. It qualified for a grant from the Region of Waterloo this year but Cambridge Mayor Jan Liggett tried to delay that payment, because the museum owes money to the City of Cambridge. That suggestion was defeated by regional councillors, 10 to 6, and the grant was approved.
Museum founders Kenn Norman and Jonathan Walford explained that when the city bought the building in 2020, it said it would charge rent but promised to give an annual grant that would cover the rent. Lately, those funds have not materialized. So, the museum is now running a deficit, which prevents it from being successful with other nonmunicipal granting agencies.
There’s a meeting in July with city officials to try to resolve this. If that doesn’t happen, Walford told me Thursday, he has received proposals from other communities outside the region to move the museum there.
“We have to go where the support is, and we are shopping around,” he said.
Meanwhile, federal and provincial funding from agencies such as the Canada Council for the Arts and Ontario Arts Council have stagnated, even as inflation has raised costs by 18 per cent since 2019.
As he faces the possibility that the sessions with the City of Kitchener may result in TheMuseum completely rebranding, or shutting down permanently, CEO David Marskell is thinking about new projects for the new people who are moving here. A Bollywood festival. Or a partnership that teaches children how to create podcasts.
“If you just let the arts dwindle, or shrink or die, how are you going to attract skilled doctors and nurses?” he asks. “Where are the students going?”