Community Knowledge Centre - Toronto Community Foundation

About this organization

Mission

Creative Trust is a collaborative, capacity-building organization that addresses a unique need in Toronto’s cultural community. We are committed to providing programs and learning opportunities that significantly improve the financial standing and sustainability of Toronto’s creative mid-size music, theatre and dance companies. With our outreach initiative, we have also provided small, culturally diverse organizations with access to the learning and collaborative opportunities at the heart of our program. Creative Trust is now focused on two vital areas for the future of the performing arts in Toronto: audience development and facilities renewal.

History of Organization

Since 2003 our $6.3 million Working Capital for the Arts program has made positive changes to the financial health and sustainability of 21 of Toronto’s creative mid-size performing arts companies. Thirty small, culturally diverse organizations were introduced into the program beginning in 2007.

Creative Trust has helped our members establish endowment funds, eliminate deficits, create working capital reserves and improve their governance, planning and management skills. These collaborative initiatives are part of our overall plan to strengthen our members’ capacity to operate efficiently and free up human and capital resources to create the work that will sustain them in future.

Accolades and Accomplishments

Recognized as a model for collaboration in the not-for-profit sector, Creative Trust has had a positive impact, securing the future of some of the most innovative and enterprising performing arts companies in our city. Our most current data confirms that during a period of declining donations and ticket sales, companies participating in the Working Capital for the Arts program increased their combined revenues – from earned income and fundraising – by 16 per cent.

Even through the recent economic downturn, artistic directors, managers and board members say that they are facing the future with increased confidence and vigour. In the words of Opera Atelier’s Co-Artistic Director, Marshall Pynkoski, “The Working Capital program, both financially and administratively has been key to the development of Opera Atelier into a stable organization better able to support the realization of the directors’ unique vision.” Christopher House, Artistic Director of Toronto Dance Theatre, is another participant who speaks about Creative Trust’s impact: “Our ability to react to change has been a most valuable consequence of our association with Creative Trust; we remain enthusiastic supporters and boosters of this fabulous initiative.”

Programs

>Facilities Project: Toronto’s Next Cultural Rennaissance
>Audiences Project

The tremendous success of Creative Trust’s Working Capital for the Arts program has inspired us to develop two major new programs:

1. The Facilities Project is a collaborative effort to advocate and fundraise in order to renew, expand and/or renovate aging performing arts facilities in Toronto. It is critical that we communicate the need to upgrade Toronto’s mid-size performing arts venues, share information and resources, and learn from experts and experienced colleagues.

2. The Audiences Project is a comprehensive, multi-faceted program that addresses audience engagement, audience diversity, access for audience members who are Deaf/hard-of-hearing, blind/low-vision and/or aging, and arts education, primarily for young audiences. Creative Trust is committed to helping to make the visionary work of its members accessible to all potential audience members, thereby investing in inclusivity for audience growth in the future.

Facilities Project: Toronto’s Next Cultural Rennaissance

While our members’ creative work is flourishing, their facilities are in serious decline. We have identified facilities renewal as one of the most urgent priorities facing them in the coming years. Creative Trust is providing support and assistance with planning, fundraising and project management; with meeting the highest possible standards of energy efficiency, environmental sustainability and accessibility; and with maintaining artistic focus and organizational strength throughout a capital project.

Toronto’s first “Cultural Renaissance” was brought about by a groundswell of public and private sponsorship and saw the development of magnificent new homes for large cultural institutions. The next Rennaissance, we believe, belongs to those mid-size arts organizations that not only house, but are the creative engines of cultural growth in Toronto.

Our pilot project consists of a collaborative learning and sharing effort by member companies – including Factory Theatre, Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People, Tafelmusik, Tarragon Theatre, the Theatre Centre and Toronto Dance Theatre, which have feasibility studies and fundraising plans in place. Collectively, our aim is to ensure that these major public spaces are energy efficient and environmentally sustainable, accessible, safe, comfortable and welcoming to audiences, better suited to the needs of the companies that own and perform in them, and more appropriate showcases for the best of Toronto’s creative music, theatre and dance.

Program Impact

There is no doubt that improved facilities will mean more accessible and comfortable venues, better able to showcase our City’s finest works and meet the needs of aging theatre-goers as well as those with disabilities. The world’s other major theatre cities – Chicago, New York and London – take pride in their theatre districts and individual facilities. We want to ensure that the quality of Toronto’s performance spaces live up to the standards for excellence of the work performed in them. City-owned buildings such as those leased by Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People and the Theatre Centre, are part of Toronto’s cultural heritage and their preservation/renewal and continued stewardship is an investment that will benefit all of us.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

“The arts help fuel innovation and creativity, critical components in a successful city. The arts help us commemorate our past, understand our present, and imagine our future.” (Toronto’s Vital Signs®, 2009)

For the past 40 years, Toronto’s mid-size performing arts companies have fueled music, dance and theatre work applauded here and around the world. They deserve safe and spaces in which to develop and present their original work. Their audiences deserve accessible and comfortable performance venues. These facilities, once built, expanded or renovated, will make visible Toronto’s commitment to be a truly creative city. Creative Trust companies are passionately proud of their accomplishments and their city; they want to be proud of their cultural spaces – spaces that reflect the quality of work they produce and the creative city they live in.

Participant Vignette

Ken Gass is the renowned Artistic Director of Factory Theatre and a committed partner and collaborator in our Facilities Project. At a recent presentation to the City’s Economic Development Committee, Ken made the following comments: “Companies like Factory, which is going to celebrate its 40th anniversary, have been an important part of Toronto’s cultural scene. It is not an option to allow venues like ours to continue to deteriorate.” Factory Theatre and other companies of similar longevity and renown are looking for new strategies and are hoping for participation and support from the municipality and from arts lovers and supporters.

Audiences Project

The Audiences Project is a multi-faceted, comprehensive program that includes up to 50 Creative Trust member companies in an in-depth, collaborative approach to community engagement, audience development and learning. Drawing on the most successful and best informed practices from our own city and around the world, the Audiences Project will help performing arts companies in Toronto build strong and committed audiences and ensure that the public and visitors – including young people, people of diverse backgrounds and people with disabilities – continue to receive (or discover) the benefits of participating in the creative performing arts.

Creative Trust’s Audiences Project is the next logical step in assuring our member companies’ long-term stability and sustainability. We are addressing challenges in the current performing arts environment and looking to the future by launching strategic, audience-focused initiatives on five major fronts: Engaging Audiences, Arts Education, Audience Accessibility, Diversifying Audiences and Technology and Techniques

Funding and Program Partners

The Ontario government through the Ministry of Culture has generously supported the inception of this program (2008) and this program is delivered in partnership with TD Financial Group and the Ontario Arts Council.

Program Impact

The Audiences Project is a program of measurable and broad impact, focussed on identifying best practices and helping the city’s performing arts companies to improve results in audience development and retention. We are monitoring and tracking the effectiveness of our efforts; generating aggregated information on audience motivation and engagement preferences; and studying, for the first time, the quality and impact of arts education programs. We are committed to opening doors to people of diverse backgrounds and with impaired sight and hearing; and to documenting and disseminating our findings and results, sharing them widely with other arts communities in Toronto, across Canada and North America.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

“The arts help fuel innovation and creativity, critical components in a successful city. The arts help us commemorate our past, understand our present, and imagine our future.” (Toronto’s Vital Signs®, 2009)

The arts are an essential component of our economic and cultural well-being. Creative Trust companies are of fundamental importance to the cultural infrastructure of Toronto and are at the heart of artistic creation in Canada. They represent the varied cultural make-up of our city and annually give over 2,000 performances to audiences of almost 600,000 people.

Beyond the economic argument for investing in the Audiences Project, we also believe – particularly with regard to access for youth, diverse and disabled audience members – that this is the right direction in which to guide our members. We and our partners will do so in a spirit of collaboration, respect and equity.

Participant Vignette

Our Performing Arts Access program, one of five components of the Audiences Project, has recently brought in Deborah Lewis, the internationally renowned audio description expert, to train eight Audio Describers who will make it possible, for the first time, for Blind and low-vision individuals to fully participate in the experience of attending Toronto’s foremost creative theatres including Tarragon, Factory, and others. Pilot projects begin this Fall.