Funder Focus: John Brotman and the Ontario Arts Council
September 6, 2005
By Nicole Zummach
This month in our Funder Focus we feature the Ontario Arts Council,
which is an arm's-length agency of the Ontario Ministry of Culture. It offers more than forty funding programs for Ontario-based artists and arts organizations.
CharityVillage
spoke with executive director John Brotman
about the council's responsibility to both artists and the public, its efforts to help build sustainability within arts organizations, and some of the most pressing issues facing the Ontario arts community.
CharityVillage: What does the council, as an arm's-length agency of the government, feel are its responsibilities, not only to Ontario artists but also to the general public?
John Brotman: We have a dual mandate. The first part of our mandate is to support the work of professional artists and arts organizations throughout the province. And the second part of our mandate is to ensure that the work of professional artists and arts organizations that we support is shared and distributed to the general public throughout the province.
CV: How does being affiliated with government affect how the council conducts its business and handles grants and awards?
JB: Because we are arm's-length, it means that the decisions we make in terms of who gets grants and what our granting programs are, are made based on a system of peer review and approved internally and by our board. Our board is appointed by the provincial government of the day, but there is often overlap because, as the government changes, some board members' terms are not up. So our boards are often a mixture of who was the government and who will be the government. While we try to align what we do with what the government's priorities are, our decisions are always informed by the concerns and issues of the arts sector.
CV: What are some of the concerns of Ontario's arts sector right now?
JB: There is a huge amount of activity everywhere in the province, and given the nature of the not-for-profit sector, earned revenue is never enough to sustain an arts organization. And of course, individual artists do not have any earned revenue, especially when they are planning or creating work. So the issue is always how to find enough financial support while companies are growing to help them sustain themselves.
CV: Is this why you decided to provide operating grants, unlike many other funders who do not offer this type of support?
JB: That is exactly right. In fact, we are the only provincial funder in Ontario that gives grants to individuals; that's the first thing that needs to be said. Secondly, in terms of arts organizations, we provide operating funding. Once an organization has started up, we are able to provide support to them while they are growing. It's also very important for those arts organizations that are doing really good work everywhere in the province to be able to count on money from year to year. That allows them to continue their growth - both artistic and capacity growth. They need money that allows them to take artistic risks as well.
CV: In your opinion, do you think more funders should consider offering operating grants?
JB: I think right now we have a pretty good mix. There is us and the Canada Council, as well as various municipal departments of culture that do offer operating support. Then there are other organizations that offer program support. I don't think we need more organizations to overlap mandates; I think what we need to ensure is that there is sufficient funding for each of us to do the things that are in our mandate.
CV: One area of concern among a number arts organizations right now is how to sustain and attract professional management in the arts. How does the council support professional development within arts organizations?
JB: Well, aside from the operating grants that we give to organizations, we also have a program called Compass. Compass is a technical assistance program that provides capacity building support for arts organizations everywhere in the province. Earlier this year, we organized a conference called Regeneration that was aimed specifically at arts managers and arts administrators. So these are a couple of the ways we support professional development.
CV: Is there something that arts organizations can or should be doing to attract and retain younger people and bring them into the sector more fully?
JB: There are a number of things that arts organizations can do, though it doesn't mean they have the resources or the time. For example, there are arts administration departments and faculties at universities and colleges throughout the province. They all have young people who are training to be arts administrators and they need as much practical experience as possible. So there are internships and co-ops that could be offered by arts organizations if they have the time and resources to provide a good experience for the young administrators. The other thing - and this is easier said than done - is for arts organizations to find resources internally to make sure that their good people stay with them. And I say this is easier said than done because very few arts organizations do have strategic resources to do that.
CV: Is there something that needs to change across the board to help these organizations become more sustainable so they have the resources to function optimally?
JB: Yes, I do. I think that arts councils at the federal, provincial, and municipal level need more resources from their governments. We are not as well resourced as countries in Europe, for example. Nor do we have those huge private foundations and huge private sponsors that they have is the United States. Because we are in the middle, we need sufficient funding from governments.
CV: In 2004-2005, the council funded 1,327 individual artists and 784 organizations for a total of $35.5 million. Do you have specific funding priorities set out for the coming year?
JB: We see it as a priority to strengthen key arts organizations throughout Ontario, which of course depends on more funding. Another priority is funding to all the regions of Ontario so that funding does not simply stay in the large cities. We also feel there are priorities around funding to Francophone artists, to culturally diverse communities, and to Aboriginal artists as well. We spend a fair bit of time and energy on outreach because we want to see more applicants from the different regions. And once the applications come in, we want to see them be successful so they can get funding.
CV: You offer about 50 different grant programs and awards. What are some of the newest additions?
JB: We introduced five new programs in the past year. There is the Word of Mouth program, which supports the creation and production of work in the literary oral tradition that is intended for public performance or sound recording - also known as spoken word. We've also introduced a new Theatre Creators' Reserve program, a recommender program that assists theatre creators in the development of new work. The recommenders are the theatre organizations that receive operating grants from us. We introduced a travel assistance program that contributes to the travel costs of representatives from professional arts organizations who wish to meet with hosting organizations to plan future programming and touring. We also introduced two new French programs. Avance médias (Media Arts Currents) is a project program that provides support to individuals and collectives in the development or production of new work in French-language media arts. And the fifth new program we introduced is Jets de théâtre (Theatre Tracks), which provides project support to artists and artist collectives for exploration and production projects in French-language theatre.
CV: Two of your five new programs are geared toward the French language. Are you looking to increase your support of Francophone artists?
JB: I should say that all of our programs are fully available to Francophone artists, unless of course they are English language programs, such as English theatre or English literature. But you are right, we are trying to increase our support to Francophone artists and these programs address that.
CV: The council has been around for more than 40 years. How does it keep itself vital and relevant to artists and arts organization?
JB: We always respond to the amount of activity in a particular sector. So for example, Word of Mouth obviously responds to the growth in that kind of activity. When we do introduce a new program it's always to respond to our sense of what's happening in the arts community. I think it's fair to say that we are pretty plugged in to the professional arts community in Ontario - both individuals and organizations - through our juries and advisory panels. As well, we constantly do soundings where we meet with representatives from each sector to hear from the community itself. That helps us design new programs and evaluate how well our current programs are doing. That's really how we stay in touch.
CV: How has the Ontario arts scene evolved in the past decade?
JB: Firstly, I would say there has been huge growth in the province. The Ontario arts scene just continues to grow, and our programs and the volume of requests continue to grow. In the arts world itself, we are seeing more multi-disciplinary activity. Our programs are responding, as well, to popular culture. So they tend not to be elitist programs necessarily.
CV: You are coming toward the end of a three-year strategic plan. Looking to the future, where do you see the council headed in the next few years?
JB: In this current year we are going to do a report on this current plan and report on the progress over the past three years. We will then immediately start a new strategic planning process, consulting with the province and the arts community to see what new directions we might strike up. It's a constant challenge to distribute our resources equitably. When you consider that the success rate for an individual applying to the OAC is about one in five, we are not able to fund some very good work simply because we don't have the resources to do so. The other thing is that we want to increase the percentage of an organization's operating budget. Currently, our average is about 6% or 7% of their budget and we want to increase that to 10%. But we don't have the money yet so we have to make arguments for that. The priorities I mentioned before are still very current to us, but we want to make sure we stay responsive to the evolving population in Ontario because that doesn't stand still. We want to be sure that we are responsive to the art forms that may be unfamiliar to us as the population evolves.
John Brotman joined the Ontario Arts Council in 1989 as Music Officer, and was appointed to the position of Executive Director in April 2001. Previously, he worked for the Canada Council and Jeunesses Musicales du Canada. For more information about the Ontario Arts Council, visit www.arts.on.ca or click here to view their strategic plan.
