By Lisa Richardson
Under the Olympic spotlight, government coffers are creaking
open.
Whistler’s arts sector, accustomed to scrounging for spare
change under the floormats, looking for what was left once the dogs and bikes
and lattes were taken care of, is suddenly flush.
The RMOW spent over $1.6 million on cultural services in 2005.
That’s the equivalent of 30 per cent of the annual operating budgets for
Whistler’s cultural organizations, which according to a recent cultural scan
conducted for the municipality is pegged in excess of $4.8 million.
Another $30 million has been committed within the last decade
to the construction of cultural facilities, from Millennium Place to the art
room at the high school, to current projects like the library and the
Lil’wat/Squamish Cultural Centre.
On top of the $1.6 million, Whistler’s hotel tax fuels the
Community Enrichment program, which allocated $200,000 in municipal grants to
community groups in 2006, benefiting the Forum for Dialogue, the Children’s
Chorus, Peak Performance Dance Force, the Whistler Theatre Project, and the
Whistler Writers Group.
The RMOW’s 2006-2010 financial plan also shows allocations from
the hotel tax fund to the Whistler Film Festival ($50,000), 2010 Celebrations
($50,000), Events Whistler ($62,000 in 2006, increasing to $162,000 annually),
the Whistler Arts Council ($100,000) and events support ($140,000).
My dodgy calculator reckons on an $11.2 million injection of
capital into Whistler’s arts sector this year from the municipality.
Add in provincial distributions from the Arts Now legacies
fund, Bell Canada stepping up to sponsor the February Celebration 2010 event,
VANOC’s Paralympics launch concert, the first pan-corridor forum of the Sea to
Sky Cultural Alliance funded by member municipalities and the province, and the
newly established $200,000 Arts Endowment Fund overseen by the Community
Foundation of Whistler, and the calculator print-out reads Ka-ching. Ka-ching.
If the municipality’s efforts in putting together a Cultural
Capital of Canada bid come to fruition, Heritage Canada will inject another
$500,000 in funding in 2009.
If ever there was a time to find decent paying work in the
arts, you’re looking at it.
Events Whistler hired Greg Albrecht in May to increase the
quality of events programming throughout the resort. His mandate is to increase
Whistler’s international profile by bringing in third party productions, and to
assist ongoing events to be more efficient in their programming, human
resources and sponsorship.
The municipality has also recently committed funds over three
years for the Office of Cultural Coordination, to be implemented by the
Whistler Arts Council, with a mandate to leverage 2010 opportunities to grow
the sector towards greater sustainability beyond 2010.
Looking for strategic funding opportunities is the job
description for municipally-funded consultant, John McCormick, who works with
Whistler’s Community Enrichment partners, to help them navigate the hairy world
of grants and sponsorships.
The Arty Party, my friends, is underway.
And from municipal hall to the Whistler Arts Council to Events
Whistler, the vision is firmly on 2020. The Olympics are being viewed as the
lever that will launch Whistler’s cultural programming beyond the 2010
goalposts, and out of the stadium entirely.
As McCormick understates, “There’s a lot of activity happing in
the arts, culture and heritage sector fuelled by the Olympics. There is
definitely a little bounce going on there.”
But what happens to the arts funding when the Olympic lights
blink out? And the province is dealing with cost overruns, debt, a sagging
economy and an unruly electorate grumbling at a host of white elephant projects
that cannot possibly sustain themselves? Can anyone say luge track?
The arts sector could be left reeling with one helluva
hangover, and not enough money to even buy Advil for its volunteers.
Doti Niedermayer, executive director of the Whistler Arts
Council, has seen her operating budget double over the past year, but she’s
still thinking about the rainy days ahead.
“There is a lot of funding associated with the Olympics.
There’s some great money for capacity building. But the only event we started
that was based purely on the Olympics was Celebration 2010 and we’re working on
securing multi-year sponsorships to enable that to be longer term. We have to
make sure that whatever funding we apply for, we set aside some for longer-term
legacies. Because longer-term, the funding opportunities have to come from
outside Whistler. That’s the reality.”
The Olympics is no economic panacea, despite what Gordon
Campbell might say. It’s a vein of government and corporate funding that’s
easier to tap right now. And in Whistler, it’s being used to build
organizational capacity and develop the cultural product, all the better to
attract longer-term corporate sponsors.
With the notable exception of the World Ski and Snowboard
Festival, which runs on at least 95 per cent corporate sponsorship and the rest
in ticket-sales, Whistler’s arts scene doesn’t count corporate money in any
sizable way in its budgets.
But the sector is feeling bullish that private monies are just
around the corner. “As the quality goes up, and the programming is targeted and
able to draw large groups of people, the sponsorship will follow,” says
McCormick, citing the Whistler Theatre Project as a program likely to see
corporate support expand after its inaugural success this summer.
Bell Canada came on board as key sponsor of Celebration 2010
last year, using the event to host client functions. The Whistler Arts Council,
traditionally an event programming organization, has begun to play fundraising
hardball, putting together sales kits, learning to value their events, and
substantiate that value.
“What is the Art Walk worth?” asks Niedermayer. “You need
substantiated evidence when you’re going after a sponsor for their dollars, to
show exactly what that event is worth. Because when you start going after a
sponsor, you start having to deliver on their expectations, and those
expectations are very different from government.”
Corporate expectations are that you will deliver them their
target market through events that reflect the values they want to associate
with.
“They do it to show they’re good corporate citizens,” says
Niedermayer. “That they’re not just in the community but at the events
supporting the community and that makes them better than the competitor, who’s
not.”
Presence at community events, like the Children’s Art Festival,
enables the corporate world to get behind the filters we have established as
consumers to screen out advertising. After a while, to survive the 3,000
marketing messages we’re subjected to a day, we tune out the banners, we block
the pop-ups, we fast-forward through the TV commercials. We’re playing an
endless game of cat-and-mouse with marketers, forcing them to continue to
innovate in order to grab our attention.
“Right now, the buzzword in marketing and branding,” says
Events Whistler’s Albrecht, “is interactivity. How do you activate your brand?”
Corporate funders and sponsors don’t get enough return on their
investment for just hanging a banner. They want to leverage and expand upon a
tribe’s core values. The solution: marry the goals of an event like the
Children’s Arts Festival with sponsors looking to serve the same demographic
and the same outcome.
“Then we can take that event to the next level,” says Albrecht.
“There’s a whole bunch of Whistler events ready for the next stage. To create
an event that’s brand new, to get traction on it, takes two to five years, and
a lot of expense and human resources and effort. There are already a lot of
events happening in Whistler that have traction. External promoters and guests
need to be made aware of those, so we can use them to increase the exposure of
Whistler internationally.”
The Olympic opportunity is fuelling a time-sensitive session of
creative brainstorming. “There are all sorts of interesting ideas floating around
about arts, culture and heritage, or entertainment opportunities right now,”
says McCormick. “Because that’s the business Whistler is in. Entertainment. And
Whistler is just one big stage.”
The question, then, as every creative soul steps forth with an
idea and a request for alms, is how to prioritize and focus the resources. Ted
Battiston from the Whistler 2020 team has shepherded 16 task forces through the
process of brainstorming, and then prioritizing the community’s annual actions.
He argues that the prioritizing in the arts and culture sector comes by
starting where there’s already traction.
“I think the discussion starts with what products are nearly
export-ready, the events that are underachieving and not quite optimized, but
with a bit of money, you can really help them. They already have that more
authentic feel, the grassroots support, some momentum.”
The thing to remind ourselves, in a town chronically suffering
short-term memory loss, is that Whistler is only 30 years old. The arts and culture
sector, as a segment in the economy, is positively baby-faced. The Whistler
Arts Council has only had a full-time executive director since 2003. Whistler
Film Festival is only six years old. Millennium Place turned five this year.
The poster child for successful, self-sustaining festivals, WSSF, is only 10.
Says McCormick: “In terms of how long it takes for small business to grow, you
usually need two to five years to get started. So the sector is growing at a
very substantial rate. And the truism is that it grows as quickly as the
funding. If you can throw a fair amount of money at the sector, and be
strategic, it will work.”
What we’re leveraging is something as intangible as the Olympic
momentum and the Whistler brand. And there’s no way to put an accurate figure
on what those are worth, because they’re all about perception.
Niedermayer warns that the Whistler cultural scene needs to
keep some perspective about what they have to offer corporate sponsors. While
the World Ski and Snowboard Festival has measurable economic impact — a
core youth demographic, and an injection of $27 million over 10 days —
most of Whistler’s other festivals offer less value to a sponsor.
“We tend to think because we’re in Whistler that we’re special
and we can charge $100,000 for a sponsorship,” says Niedermayer.
But if a sponsor can turn around and invest in the Toronto Film
Festival or the Vancouver Writers Festival, where they’re going to get more
bang for their buck, Whistler is not even on their shortlist.
“You have to be realistic when you’re hitting people up. Start
small.”
Build momentum.
Then measure it.
Battiston draws parallels with the mountain-biking community’s
efforts at quantifying the contribution mountain biking makes to the economy
— something that has seen such a critical mass of momentum built over the
last few years as to become a bedrock Whistler value. But the Whistler Off Road
Cycling Association had to work hard and strategically to promote this
awareness.
“Having a measurable economic impact gives such power to back
up what you say. Once we had the data to show that mountain biking drove
visits, we had a stick to leverage that into a positive feedback cycle. It
brings more money, more door receipts, more corporate sponsors, when you can
show you’re getting the audience. You can still get government funding. In
fact, you’ll be better-positioned to access it. The bigger role you play into
the engine of the town, the more the feedback cycle works.”
Niedermayer agrees: “The more funders you have, the more funders
you can get. It’s about credibility. Part of WAC’s strategy right now is to
work towards sponsorship and multi-year deals, not just for 2009 and 2010, but
for three-five year terms, so in 2011 we’re not screwed. Whistler’s credibility
is still growing. It’s growing quickly — it’s grown a lot since I came
here in 2003. But there’s so much more that can happen.”
What will 2011 look like in Whistler? It’s too soon to tell,
but if there’s power in a collective vision, we’re well on our way to creating
a dynamic, creative community.
“Whistler is trying very hard to make sure it doesn’t get
overwhelmed by the Games,” says McCormick. “There’s a real recognition that the
Games is just a step towards achieving the 2020 goals. The Olympic bid was what
drove, in a large way, the 2020 plan. And now, Whistler has this great upstream
planning tool that’s fabulous, because we know where we want to go.”
To a party, anyone? Every day, for the rest of your life?