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Does Windsor need to fund the Arts more? · Kvetch & Release

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  Hey, good morning everyone. Hope you are all doing well. John Lydkey
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  here on AM eight hundred CKLW Arts funding it is something that we talk about
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  often and for good reason. The arts drives our community forward, It creates
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  culture, It is a connection for all of us to be able to quite
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  frankly, come around. But one thing that we talk about is a lack
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  thereof funding in the city, or a lack of meaningful sustainable funding in a
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  way that can help drive not only the arts community but the arts industry as
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  a whole. And we've got some different grant programs of course in the city.
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  There's the Windsor Endowment for the Arts, there's the Arts, Culture and
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  Heritage Fund. There are different pockets that people can tap into. But one
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  local theater producer and arts entrepreneur says that Windsor needs more arts funding. Taking
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  it to a recent I'm actually in the Windsor Star wanting to speak with him
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  about his thoughts about this why it is necessary right now Martin will let joins
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  me here on AM eight hundred. How you doing, Hi, John,
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  Thanks for having me on. Hey, thanks so much for joining me here.
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  Tell us a little bit about what prompted you to write your column here
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  about wins they're needing more arts funding. Well, it's the little math game
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  that I've been playing with myself for a while now, where I, you
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  know, compare the costs of different programs in this city and some of the
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  spends that we make, and you know, I think creating context for the
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  numbers is important because even people who are good at math, once we start
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  throwing around these numbers, you know, twelve million here, twelve million there,
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  we don't really have a good intuitive sense of exactly how big those numbers
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  are. So, you know, like the the arts the which the Arts,
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  Culture and Heritage Fund this year gave out about one hundred and twenty thousand
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  dollars. The call of the new streetcar box down by the River is twelve
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  million dollars, So you know, like one hundred and twenty thousand minutes is
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  three months. You know, twelve million minutes is twenty three years. We're
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  talking about, you know, big scales of numbers here, and I think
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  a lot of people don't have a real intuitive sense of how those work.
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  So I've been kind of putting these little you know, number games together in
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  the same way that you would put together like a blue whale weighs the same
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  as five school buses, because it makes it a little easier to comprehend,
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  for sure. So let's go through a few of those little math games that
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  you've been playing, but more like I know that you mentioned let's say Bright
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  Lights for example, Yeah, Bright Lights. When they first started up Bright
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  Lights, I was I was pretty opposed to it. I've come around in
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  the years since since it's employed a number of local artists, a special the
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  musicians. But you know, even Bright Lights the three million dollars startup cost
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  is the art the sorry I'm a little to the Art, Culture and Heritage
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  Fund is you know, six point four percent of the startup cost of Bright
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  Lights in every year, like the Bright Lights Festival costs fifteen years worth of
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  these grants. So it's kind of you know, difficult for me when the
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  city says that they're you know, promoting culture, that they're doing everything they
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  can. We never have any money to spend on culture, or from my
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  point of view, the most important type of spending is not just handing out
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  cash to artists, but actually developing infrastructure, meaning venues like the Capitol Theater
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  used to be a city venue. Apparently we and afford to keep that open,
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  so we leased it to the symphony, who now struggle to keep it
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  open. The Jackson Park Banshell has been sitting empty for twenty years because we
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  with you know, quotes around it can't afford to upgrade, it, can't
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  afford to keep it open. But then we have twelve million dollars to drop
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  on this project, and then another project comes up, and we have a
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  sudden, magical twelve million dollars that appears out of nowhere to drop on that
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  project. And then oh no, this project over here that was supposed to
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  cost seven million dollars is now going to cost twelve million dollars. So we
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  got to make that magic money appear from somewhere. And when it comes to
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  these legacy projects that are just you know, big lumps of concrete that we
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  can go down and cut a ribbon on, and then after we cut the
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  ribbon, we don't like to maintain them or pay to staff them or anything.
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  But we always have money for those projects, and we never have money
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  for the things that actually drive the economy of the core in this city,
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  which is arts well. And this is what culture and this is what you
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  talk about in the piece, your argument specifically that year round, day to
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  day arts as a regular industry drives far more stability and economic activity in the
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  core than any of those other legacy projects that you were listing. What do
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  you see when you envision you know, the ideal arts community and windsor what
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  does that support look like. Well, when i've I used to be a
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  touring musician and I played all across Europe and all across North America, a
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  little bit in Asia, and one thing that I noticed was that most of
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  the venues were either owned wholly by the municipality or some other level of government
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  were or we're classic famous venues that were now run in partnership with local governments.
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  So the local governments, you know, take over the management and the
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  facility, They take over insuring the facility, all these things that are easier
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  and cheaper to do when you can bring to bear the economies of scale of
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  government. So theoretically it should be a lot cheaper for say a city government
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  that already has a big, huge insurance regime to ensure a venue, a
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  lot cheaper than it would be for an individual owner operator to ensure that venue.
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  So to me, the best use of city funds is in developing and
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  supporting the infrastructure, because arts doesn't happen in a vacuum. Arts has to
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  happen in a space. It takes space, and it takes time and time
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  in that space. So if the space doesn't exist, the art can't exist
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  because there's nowhere for the audience to come and consume it. Do you feel
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  as if the way the city operates when it comes to the arts and funding
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  it, promoting it, supporting it, celebrating it. Do you feel as
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  if it's collaborative from the city or do you feel as if it's sort of
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  like a top down approach. I think it's sort of paternalistic. Actually,
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  it sort of feels like a pad on the head. Okay, it's this
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  little bit of money that gets spread around and sometimes to me, my company
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  operates outside the grant system, so we don't take grants, and that kind
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  of frees me up to speak more freely about things. Honestly, a lot
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  of times it feels a little bit like quiet money. A lot of the
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  resistance to some of these crazy spends from this city administration come from the arts
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  community. You know, we see how the economy actually works downtown. That
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  when say windsor Light or Act has a show that you're drawing a thousand people
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  into the Core every night for two weeks. All of those people you know,
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  go out to eat before the show, they go out for drinks after
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  the show. People who come down to steep bands in bars, they buy
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  drinks. All of that employees, servers and inmploys, cooks and employs,
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  the management of those places, all of those all that ancillary business. Right.
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  Whereas these legacy projects like for example, the streetcar down at the River,
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  I'm not sure where the return on investment is. I know they're planning
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  to rent it out to people, but I'm not sure for what. It
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  doesn't seem conducive to any sort of event that I would rent a space for.
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  It looks like a cocktail venue kind of plays for me. You know,
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  you get some red and white wines, hang out for a bit,
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  maybe a meet and greet and chat, but not a not an arts venue
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  for sure. It's not big enough. It doesn't look good at least no
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  and renting that out for one, you know, once or twice a week,
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  it's got pre three or four dozen people I don't see the return on
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  investment in that spending of twelve million dollars, which doesn't count the maintenance or
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  staffing or any of the four going costs that are associated with a facility like
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  this. Right, we're only talking about the build number. We're not talking
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  about the ongoing costs. And especially once you cost in all of that going
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  forward, then it makes no sense to me from a business standpoint, how
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  the city can say that there's a better return on in that twelve million dollars
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  of investment. Doing it this way, then there would be on face spreading
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  twelve million dollars around to the venues in the core. With twelve million dollars,
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  you could develop new venues in the co