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Feasting at the Arty Party

Lisa Richardson does the favourable math for Whistler's arts scene but wonders what happens after 2010?
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"We have to make that whatever funding we apply for we set aside some for longer-term legacies." Whistler Arts Council's Doti Niedermayer on playing it safe with funding. Photo by Maureen Provencal

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?



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