This series of conversations Donna Kennedy-Glans, author and former Alberta Cabinet Minister, featuring newsmakers and intriguing personalities.
Festival after festival across Canada is approaching the edge of a financial cliff. The Edmonton Fringe Festival and Toronto's Hot Docs are reporting huge shortfalls and dire circumstances without an injection of funds. Just for Laughs was forced to cancel festivals in Toronto and Montreal. In a post-pandemic world, festivals are vulnerable; many are caught in a financial crisis of rising inflation and shrinking government generosity.
And yet there are festivals that have found ways to overcome these obstacles—most notably the Stratford Festival, Canada's largest non-profit theater company. At its recent general meeting, the festival reported a financial surplus for the 2023 season of $404,000; attendance was up 35 percent over last year, including a 30 percent increase in ticket sales to first-time festivalgoers.
“Public investment in the arts has been declining for years, and many of these failures have been going on for years,” argues Dan Matheson, the five-term former mayor of Stratford, Ont., when I contact him to find out what the Stratford Festival is doing differently.
Dan served on the Stratford Festival board of directors for 20 years, retiring in 2023; he currently serves on the board of the Confederation Arts Center in Charlottetown, PEI. This guy has played a leadership role in bringing community, government and the arts together in Stratford, and there is no complacency in his approach. Failing organizations didn't do a thorough review, set a long-term vision, and didn't turn things around, is Dan's harsh assessment.
“They had an idea and they had 30 years of one-year experience behind them. They do the same thing over and over again. Charlottetown was bad; they've been making Anne of Green Gables for almost 50 years,” Dan groans. “I say this all the time in Stratford,” he continues, “if I have to sit through another premiere of Tempest, Henry VIII or Romeo and Juliet…” he pauses, then bursts out laughing.
That's why the Stratford Festival now only performs four or five Shakespeare plays instead of eight or nine, Dan explains. And, just to point out, the festival is hiring creative playwrights, including the brilliant and incomparable Brad Fraser from Edmonton; his poignant adaptation of Richard II at the Tom Patterson Theater did well last season.
“You know, Stratford dodged the financial bullet a few times,” Dan explains, “and in the late '90s, early 2000s, we had some strong board leaders… corporate people who came in and said, 'Look, you don't have art if you don't have business.' Recognizing this reality, a donation program was created to support the festival, which now costs $100 million.
Today, the Stratford Festival reports that approximately five percent of its annual budget comes from annual payments from an endowment fund; five percent from the Ontario and federal governments combined (no municipal government funding). Ninety percent of revenue comes from ticket sales and donations.
“We just finished building the new Tom Patterson Theater,” shares Dan, offering a clear example of the festival’s long-term thinking. “I was on the building committee and we took a piece of city land and sold it to a theater, not without some controversy, and you know there are people who hate me for it in the community because it was along the river. But in the end we built an amazing theater that cost $70 million, and after we raised $110 million, all the extra money went into the foundation. So the money was put into that building to run it.”
Since 2022, Dan has been out of politics – among other things, he owns a public company and sits on the board of directors of Hampton Financial, a public company listed on the TSX. During his tenure as mayor of Stratford, he helped secure the city's economic future with a strategic plan that paved the way for high-speed Internet in every home; the University of Waterloo's opening of the School of Digital Media at its Stratford campus; and the city's leading role in the autonomous and connected vehicle business.
“A lot of people told us they would never do it (autonomous car testing) in Stratford,” Dan says, “they would want to do it in Windsor, Oshawa, Oakville, wherever the assemblers are.” But he made a deal.
Dan approaches the world of nonprofits with the same clear-headed logic and discipline. He is not afraid to speak out sooner or later for the rationalization of non-profit organizations. And he expects festivals to be run with a business mindset: “I just think there's not a lot of that foresight and long-term thinking because we've never had many of these festival boards up to the level of sophistication in management, financial management and business. We've populated them with art fans, people who have a passion, but no one deals with the other side of it, which is the business side. So they've been able to create a shortage and then some of them get bailed out… and we've got it all.” these one-time payments.”
I find myself nodding in agreement as Dan tells stories of organizations that have achieved dismal financial results and even squandered their remaining surplus, all in an attempt to encourage donations. Dan is especially excited about promoters shrouding themselves in the mantle of “we're doing this for our community” while collecting significant management fees and sponsorships to run the so-called non-profit organization.
The Stratford Festival board does a good job of regularly updating the vision, “starting with what our demographics look like now, what they will look like in the future and what people want to see,” and this helps inform the business plan, Dan explains. He's frustrated that governments don't always force nonprofits to dig into the underlying data or justify their decisions, “playing on the soft side rather than the harder, more important business strategy.” And sometimes, we agree, it is easier (or politically expedient) for governments to throw money at failing organizations.
Having served on the board of directors of non-profit organizations large and small, including the Banff Centre, I understand what Dan is talking about. But there is a line to be drawn between festivals like the Stratford Festival, which are economic drivers and employers, and lesser community-building opportunities, and he understands that too.
And there is no doubt that business-oriented management has made the Stratford Festival viable since its inception in 1953. But we can't forget: without creative, risk-taking artists, playwrights and designers who can “ignite the human imagination through the art of live theatre”, as the Stratford Festival's mandate states, there would be no business.
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