The fine art of surviving
Cultural groups expand their audiences to cut debt. Story by Kate Wallace
Think of New Brunswick export products, and seafood, pulp and paper, potatoes and energy likely come to mind.
Ballet? Not so much.
But a Moncton troupe, the only classical company in the world of its size mounting original shows, is making a reputation at home and abroad with its ambitious productions. The Atlantic Ballet Theatre of Canada isn't just finding success by taking its unique product across North America and Western Europe - it is ensuring its survival by doing so.
The company is part of a growing cadre of New Brunswick arts groups that are as fiscally responsible as they are creatively successful. Some, such as Theatre New Brunswick and Symphony New Brunswick, have been brought back from the brink of financial ruin through fundraising and marketing and, in the case of TNB, a massive restructuring.
Others, such as the Atlantic Ballet Theatre of Canada, have had a solid bottom line since inception.
"We started six years ago from nothing more than an idea," Susan Chalmers-Gauvin, the group's chief executive officer and founder, says.
Last year, the company became the first arts organization to win the Greater Moncton Chamber of Commerce Award in the emerging business category.
Years before it premiered Figaro in May 2002, Chalmers-Gauvin and Igor Dobrovolskiy, the company's founding artistic director, assembled a team of business people to see if a case could be made for a dance troupe in the region.
"We were very mindful of the risks," she says, especially the Atlantic provinces' small population and that the arts is "a very poor sector" here.
One of the first things they realized was that no single city or province in Atlantic Canada could support even a small ballet company.
"If you decide to only serve the province or the region, you have to rely very heavily on the private sector or government support," Chalmers-Gauvin says.
There is a strong case to be made for that support.
"When many people think of the arts, they think of the handout, and a sector that's not making any money."
The numbers don't back that assertion, however.
According to a 2004 report by the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency based on 2002 figures from Statistics Canada, culture contributed $2.1 billion or 3.1 per cent to the region's economy that year, up 42 per cent over 1996. The total number of direct jobs was 34,558. In New Brunswick, the direct economic spinoff in 2002 was $604 million, with 10,614 direct jobs in the sector.
For the Atlantic Ballet Theatre of Canada, establishing itself as a regional company meant access not just to a wider audience but also greater sponsorship opportunities and grants from four provincial governments, along with municipal funding, to support it.
"We realized there is a limit to what we can achieve at the box office in New Brunswick or Atlantic Canada," Chalmers-Gauvin says. While Ballet British Columbia can charge $80 for a ticket, the Atlantic Ballet Theatre can't charge more than around $30 for shows in this region.
The company looked at successful contemporary dance troupes in Quebec, noting where they were touring and what they were charging.
"We realized we had the potential to do exactly that," Chalmers-Gauvin says.
The company went from an average of 12 shows in its first year to 45. Last year, it played to sold-out houses across Canada, Belgium and France. These days, managing its growth is one its greatest challenges.
In its first year, 2001-02, ABTC had an operating budget of $244,453, a figure that has grown to $2.2 million for 2007-08 season.
Over the next five years, it hopes to establish a touring circuit and build sustained box office revenue from its export market.
Chalmers-Gauvin says that a little luck helped the company get off the ground, too.
A new cultural policy at the time meant there was $120,000 in seed money available. And a local firm, Grant Thornton, agreed to provide $200,000 in sponsorship over five years.
"Looking back, I can't believe we had the nerve," she says. "We managed to convince them it was a partnership worth investing in."
As Symphony New Brunswick president Tom Condon says, "If you don't ask, you don't get."
But much of that getting depends on who is asking.
"A lot of it is trust," Condon says in Saint John. "People want to help things that are successful."
When Condon accepted the position of president in 2003, "things were in pretty bad shape," with about $80,000 in debt.
One of the first things Condon wanted to change was the perception that the symphony was floundering, and the only way was to stop cutting programs and budgets, and figuring out ways to get out of debt and increase funding.
"When you are cutting and cutting and cutting, you are probably also cutting trust."
Along with increased appeals to corporate sponsors, Condon approached the province, which had provided an annual grant of $40,000 for years.
Condon told the province the figure should be doubled.
"They said, 'Well, we can't do that in one year, but we can work with you."
A new conductor, Stéphane Laforest, who was hired in 2005, helped a great deal, "working wonders with the orchestra," Condon says. "And, after all, that is what it is all about: the music."
Theatre New Brunswick had been in a similar cycle of going into the red and then getting emergency bailouts, usually from the province.
In 2003, with a deficit of $339,000, the company underwent a massive restructuring to get it out of crisis mode for good.
Both TNB and the symphony received stabilization grants from the New Brunswick Foundation For the Arts, a non-profit group that helps organizations get out of debt. Grant recipients go through an extensive analysis of what they need to do to survive.
"The simple answer was become a company that could afford to run," Leigh Rivenbark, TNB's artistic director, says. "Without that kind of financial stability it is hard to focus on an artistic base."
Now Theatre New Brunswick, like the symphony, is operating in the black.
Rivenbark says one of the most important moves the organization made was to consolidate its operations - administration, wardrobe and prop storage, rehearsal area, carpentry shop - under one roof, in a renovated warehouse in a Fredericton industrial park. Besides cutting its annual rent by something like $60,000, the move created a sense of team spirit.
"We can't do anything alone," Rivenbark says. "That's the magic of theatre: all of these people come together to make it happen."
The restructuring saw TNB cut its administrative staff, reduced its full-time production team to a few key people and cut back on its touring schedule.
"Through that, we eliminated our accumulated deficit."
Now, both Theatre New Brunswick and the symphony have their own foundations to help with fundraising, operational grants or cash flow. And they are both trying to promote the idea that they are provincial organizations, not just to increase funding at the municipal level but to increase their audiences. Master classes, in-school programs and performances in small communities help to develop new markets.
Chalmers-Gauvin says the Atlantic Ballet Theatre experiences the same issue at the provincial level: currently New Brunswick is the only Atlantic province supporting the company, even though it tours all four provinces.
When she approaches Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador for funding, it will be based on the same advice she regularly gave in the more than 20 years she worked as a consultant and manager.
"I spent years telling my non-profit clients, 'You'd better be able to show results. And if you can't show that, you'd better have a plan to show how you're going to get results."
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