Ontario Arts Council:
The OAC has been severely affected by provincial budget cuts: 28.6% was chopped from their budget, which necessitated a staff reduction from 91 people to 59 people, and a reduction in salaries of 7% across the board. Ontario Premier Mike Harris' golden rule rings true: do more with less.

I spoke with Bryce Canberra, Visual Arts Officer at the OAC. When I asked Bryce how cuts to the OAC were administered, I found out a few not-so-evident tidbits coupled with the standard procedural response regarding peer advisors. Basically, advisors make recommendations and the officer makes the final decision regarding cuts. The underlying principle behind the cuts in the Visual Arts section of the OAC was to safeguard the whole artist-run network: thus, organizations with the smallest budgets were reduced the least. These smaller clients happen to be the regional centres, which means that larger Toronto-based organizations tend to have the highest cuts--the three Toronto-based artist-run centres surveyed sustained cuts that eliminated a sizable portion of their overall operating budgets (see the charts).

In order to keep optimism in the mix, Bryce was quick to point out that the very nature of artist-run centres is resiliency and resourcefulness. He observed that it was the artist-run centres that had braced themselves best for the cuts, which gave them a survival edge over the public galleries. The down side of this, though, is that arts organizations (not just artist-run centres) tend to turn inward in the face of severe funding cuts-- internalizing rather than reaching out, comparing and sharing, cooperating and solving problems with a community focus.

The arts councils' changing role of management counselling is becoming part of the client/funder relationship. The OAC will at some point in the future host a forum on this issue. The TAC already has. This is tricky business, as arm's-length agencies' hands are proverbially tied when it comes to the role of advocacy.

Metro Toronto Cultural Affairs Division:
Last year Metro Toronto Cultural Affairs Division took a 10% budget cut, which set them back to below 1987 grants budget levels. Cumulatively, between 1993 and 1996, the cuts have chopped over one-fifth of the near 6 million dollars that the Metro arts funder divvies up between their clients. To deal with these cuts, Metro made a 20% reduction to the administration budget. This has led to a number of changes within the granting agency. For example, when former Music Officer Elaine Baxter-Trahair left Metro, her workload was redistributed among the remaining officers.

Deborah Larry is the grants officer responsible for visual arts and galleries within the Cultural Affairs Division of Metropolitan Toronto. The ever-elusive answer to the literally "million dollar question" of how the cuts were administered is not too surprising: the cuts were apportioned through the peer assessment advisory board. The advisory board is responsible for assessing artistic quality indicators, whereas the staff assesses indicators such as number of people reached, administrative stability, and financial management. However, there are also factors such as Metro's 10% maximum contribution level guidelines, which oblige cuts to organizations whose budgets have shrunk.

Toronto Arts Council:
The silver lining to this oppressive cloud is the not-so-little municipal funding body that thought it could. The Toronto Arts Council has managed to side-step the funding slaughter. Last year it towed the line at 0% decrease (or increase, depending on which way you look at it). This year, expectations are similar. In light of the impending amalgamation of all Metro municipalities into one megacity, at the time of writing, it is too early to tell whether or not the TAC will be the model adopted for the megacity arts policy.

Grants officer Beth Reynolds shared information with me regarding the strategy of the peer committees: committee members moved funding allocations around in order to deal with "greater needs." These greater needs refer to the fall-out from the slashing enacted by other levels of public funding. None of the artist-run centres in my survey was cut by the TAC. Some other artist-run centres actually received minimal increases.

The Canada Council:
Michel Gaboury is the grants officer responsible for grants to artist-run centres at the Canada Council. The good news here is that the "blue book" (a.k.a. Council's strategic plan, published in March 1995) clearly indicated that the visual arts and media arts were to receive more attention from Council, based on the fact that these disciplines make a significant contribution to the dissemination of Canadian works of art in Canada.

In actual fact, the cuts to the artist-run centres in my survey are the result of an increased number of clients accommodated by this national granting program, and not any trickle-down effect of general cuts. The artist-run centre program at Council boasts a budget of 2.1 million dollars, a level that it has maintained since 1990 and forecasts maintaining into the next fiscal year. Indeed, of the three artist-run centres surveyed, they carry away the lion's share of the pot, with only one artist-run centre in Montreal receiving a higher amount of the total grants budget, well above the average grant of $26,000 for 1996.

When I asked Michel whether or not Council's consultative committees (juries) took into account the ravages of the provincial cuts in Ontario, he commented that regional disparities are not taken into consideration at this time; however, he said that this may change in the future as criteria for evaluation change.

Survey Results: Artistrun Centres

Mercer Union, Toronto:
Mercer Union presents seven shows per year and exhibits in three venues, for a total exhibition count of twenty-one. The Board and staff at Mercer have made a commitment not to compromise programming or administration as a result of budget cuts. This means that all the shows must go on; however, a permanent part-time staff position has been eliminated.

Like many other arts organizations, the Board at Mercer has not really focused on fundraising. After all, this is an artists' collective, and it is the rare artist who is both money making mogul and independent creative artist. Mercer decided not to do any one all out major fundraising event. Instead, the rubble from the cuts is being cleared away piece by piece through more in kind donations of what would normally be expenses (like donation of printing), and vamping up the membership drive.

A Space Gallery, Toronto:
Like Mercer, A Space Gallery is committed to sustaining its pre- cuts level of programming and administrative staff. However, A Space has opted for quite a different route than its peer organizations, and has embraced the whole roller-coaster world of one-off special events fundraising. Their 25th anniversary celebrations, held in 1996, lent themselves well to this strategy.

A Space Gallery Director, Bill Huffman, maintains that they have very little flexibility in terms of cutting costs, but asserts that you can fundraise as much as you want "at the risk of everyone's sanity." Bill has been encouraging the Board to restructure. He believes it is time for radical changes: cafe, bookstores, galleries, performance venues, all in an attempt to generate income--in order to survive. He maintains that it is possible to have both a more comprehensive business sense and creative integrity at the same time.

YYZ Artists' Outlet, Toronto:
YYZ has historically programmed two spaces with nine shows each, for a total of eighteen shows per year. This year, 1996/97, there will be sixteen shows. The reduction is due to wage staggering and provision for a change of location (ostensibly a cost-saving measure).

The cuts at YYZ Artists' Outlet run $34,000 deep, but this has not hampered the organization's plans for expansion of activities. YYZ has gone ahead and put itself on the World Wide Web, and plans to continue its affiliates, YYZ Books, a small publishing company, and YYZ TV. With respect to program and/or administrative changes due to the cuts, YYZ has never had an official third staff person, but has been piecing together dribs and drabs of special funding, and consequently constantly having to retrain new assistants. All part-time assistants will lose their positions as of January 1997.

The bottom-line effect of the cuts is, not surprisingly, less art being shown at the gallery.

Points to Ponder
Conundrum: individual creative artists' works are a priority with all arms'-length funding bodies, yet by taking away chunks of funding, galleries and artist-run centres are being forced to cut exhibitions in order to keep their doors open. The end result is that artists shoulder the burden of the cuts.

The end result of cutting galleries, artist-run centres, and collectives will inevitably be that less art gets out there, unless arts organizations can somehow manage to fill the income gap. The problem is that we are all struggling at the same time, coming up with similar solutions, and saturating our potential donors.

I would like to dispel the myth that the private sector could or should pick up the slack when public-sector funding is slashed. The fact is that the private sector in Toronto, and in Canada in general, already gives proportionally higher amounts to the arts than the private sector in the United States. As well, if the private sector is going to step in, it is going to step into the most mainstream arts organizations, and the relatively fringe artist-run centres will be passed over. There are not many private corporations whose politics are in line with artist-run centres, so maybe there are not even many perfect private sponsors out there.

Another down side of this whole phenomenon is that we will most likely loose a whole generation's worth of progress in terms of professionalism, standards, and payment of artists' fees. On an optimistic note, however, there will always be artist-run centres and collectives because there will always be artists who just want to show their art.

Heidi McKenzie is a Toronto-based freelance cultural analyst and writer. She is currently the Administratior for Canada's Year of Asia Pacific, a Steering Member of the Lectureship in Pluralism in the Arts, a Steering Group member of ARTSVOTE, and a member of the Mercer Union Writers' Arsenal.