The Star takes a deeper dive on the financial struggles facing organizations and festivals, including the Shaw Festival and Hot Docs:
From theatre companies to summer festivals, arts organizations across the city are scaling back amid intense financial pressures.
www.thestar.com
The pandemic was a driving force here in as much as most organizations took on debt to survive those years and now have to service said debt.
Additionally costs have also risen, a few are discussed in The Star's piece, notably higher policing bills, but other costs as well.
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Those items aside. I would suggest a couple of alternative strategies.
1) Not so much the neighbourhood festivals, but places like TIFF and Hot Docs, should rely more on endowment revenue. Its no mean trick to get the kind of donations to make that workable in Toronto, such donations for culture are rare.
But they are so helpful. Even a modest, well managed, 10M endowment spins off $400,000 a year, that can probably pay for most of your year-round management team (well not at TIFF, but I digress), it just provides stable revenue not subject to the whims of attendance, sponsorship or grants.
2) For the various neighbourhood fests in Toronto; I think there is an issue of them just blending into one another. The extent of having similar traveling lemonade stands, Bell booths or the like diminishes interest.
Lets take Taste-of-the-Danforth, arguably the most successful fest its type. Its a bit less Greek than it used to be (some variety is good, but you need a unique point of view); but sponsors aside, its a bit too resto-focused.
I would argue they need to find ways to highlight Greek music (contemporary not just folk); and Greek Cinema, and get the grocers in the area to highlight Greek Foods you can cook at home (and sample).
Interactivity is also good, how about free cooking lessons/demos for Greek food.
They also need to be more creative on ways to mitigate weather issues. That's a challenge for a street fest which you do want to be outdoors, but you have to mitigate the risk of a rainy weekend.
I also think they could get sponsorship from the Greek Tourism people by linking the experiences in Toronto with one's you could have if you visited Greece.
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You can apply the above to almost any 'Taste of' fest in Toronto.
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Long term planning is key, trying to do festivals with a short time horizon, essentially from scratch each year, requires a lot of volunteers and a lot of effort.. Getting multi-year plans and sponsorships in place helps. This is somewhere the City could help. Both by direct funding and by creating templates.
www.cp24.com
so I haven't been going to as many.