Resources Archive - Page 3 of 15 - Orchestras Canada/Orchestres Canada

Arts & Culture Benchmark

TRG Arts believes in the power of data. It shines a light on opportunities and points us in strategic directions. In 2020, TRG Arts launched the Arts & Culture Benchmark. This free tool provides participating arts organizations with real-time data dashboards that compare their ticket sales and donations to their historical results and aggregate trends of comparative organizations also participating in the Benchmark.

The Benchmark is the largest data set of arts customer patron behaviour in the world. And it is free to join!

Orchestras Canada and TRG Arts hosted a webinar on November 30, 2023 that introduced the Benchmark, and walked the attendees through some of the dashboards, shared industry-wide trends, and described how orchestras can apply the insights for revenue growth.

The webinar also overviewed how orchestras can join the Benchmark. The more Canadian Orchestras in the Benchmark, the greater the insights.

Presenter

Eric Nelson, VP of Global Partnerships at TRG Arts

Eric Nelson, VP of Global Partnerships at TRG Arts, is proud to partner with performing and visual arts organizations of all shapes and sizes to grow patron participation, revenue, and community impact. Before joining TRG Arts, Eric was Director of Marketing & Communications for New York City’s Kaufman Music Center. He was also Vice President of Client Services, New Business, and Marketing for DCM, specializing in marketing and fundraising strategies for non-profit organizations. Eric started his career in the arts leading marketing efforts for the Paul Taylor Dance Company. Eric is honored to be on the steering committee for the League of American Orchestras LGBTQIA+ affinity group.

Submission to the Standing Committee on Finance: 2024 Pre-Budget Consultation

As is our custom, Orchestras Canada recently submitted recommendations to the Federal Standing Committee on Finance as part of that group’s pre-budget consultation process. In our brief, we thank the government of Canada for their support of our sector at the height of the pandemic, summarize the situation, contributions and continuing needs of Canadian orchestras during this time of pandemic recovery, as orchestras need time to re-build audiences and community connections.; and make the case for

Making an annual supplementary investment in the arts through the Canada Council of $40 million in 2024-25, with increases to its total parliamentary appropriation indexed to inflation in subsequent years.
Partnering with Canada’s charities to a. promote tax policy and messaging to reverse the 30-year decline in the number of Canadians reporting charitable gifts on their tax returns, and b. sustain and grow the value of charitable gifts.
Ensuring that the interests of self-employed artists and cultural workers are considered in the design of a modernized Employment Insurance program.

You can read the complete brief here.

Performing Arts Recovery: What do Audiences Want Now?

This free webinar on ticket-buying data was co-presented by Orchestras Canada, CAPACOA, and the Association for Opera in Canada. It featured insights from TRG Arts and AudienceView, and presented the latest research on the ticket buying behaviour and trends and best practices and tips to help you make data-driven decisions that boost your bottom line.

Eric Nelson from TRG brough the input from their work on the recovery of the performing arts post-pandemic. Zander Kyba brought a fresh analysis of ticket buyer data from the AudienceView research team.

The webinar took place on June 22nd at 1:30 pm ET.

Presenters

Eric Nelson, VP of Global Partnerships at TRG Arts

Zander Kyba, Senior Manager, Product Marketing, AudienceView

Zander is a live-event professional who works at AudienceView as their Senior Manager of Product Marketing. Zander is always looking for new and innovative ways to engage, understand, and delight live-event patrons and donors.

Co-moderated by:

Katherine Carleton, Executive Director, Orchestras Canada
Frédéric Julien, Director of Research and Development, CAPACOA
Christina Loewen, Executive Director, Association for Opera in Canada

Meet the SOCAN Foundation – Learn about their Programs

Learn about the SOCAN Foundation programs that could help your organization! On June 20, 2023, Julien Boumard Coallier, the SOCAN Foundation’s Grants Manager discussed what they offer, and focused on the Work Commissioning Assistance Grant.

Presenter: Julien Boumard Coallier, Grants Manager at the SOCAN Foundation

As a graduate in communications studies whose Master’s thesis was on the practices of vinyl, Julien’s passion for music led him to explore every corner of the industry. Whether it’s through his academic research, his work for various cultural and musical media outlets or his stint working for a record label, Julien has honed his professional skills and developed a wide network of contacts. Now active as SOCAN Foundation’s grant program’s manager, this role allows Julien to fully exploit his communication, interpersonal and marketing skills to simplify the granting process, promote music and its creators and implement the organization’s strategic vision.

Webinar on the Integrated Media Agreement for Canada (IMAC)

The Integrated Media Agreement for Canada (IMAC) enables and encourages orchestras to create promotional content. This content is generally for distribution on the orchestras’ own platforms, with additional provisions in place for third party distributions.

On February 21, 2023, Richard Sandals covered the promotional provisions of the IMAC in a free webinar, with a particular focus on assisting orchestras in making use of those provisions in their marketing and development activities. You can access a recording of the webinar below, as well as the written guide to the promotional provisions. The guide also includes the relevant sections of the IMAC at the end.

A headshot of Richard Sandals holding a trumpet

Richard Sandals is the Associate Director of the Symphonic Services Division (SSD) of the Canadian Federation of Musicians (CFM). SSD assists locals and orchestra committees in negotiating and administering Collective Agreements and oversees CFM symphonic electronic media agreements.

BIPOC Voices: Repertoire Reports

Association for Opera in Canada and Orchestras Canada are excited to partner with BIPOC Voices on their latest successfully funded project, the Canadian Orchestral and Opera Repertoire Reports.

What is it?

The Repertoire Reports will comprise a baseline and longitudinal study of changes and trends in orchestral and operatic program vis a vis works by female-presenting, trans, non-binary, and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) composers. BIPOC Voices is also collaborating with the Institute for Composer Diversity on this timely research.

Rich Coburn held a short webinar on February 7th, introducing the project in more detail and explaining the simple steps you can take to support the project and improve the resulting reports.

What can you do?

The Data Collection Phase of the reports kicked off this February. We invite you to be a part of creating the first ever Canada-wide reports on how works by how underrepresented composers are programmed, and how that is changing.

How your data will be used

There will be two resulting reports; one on our opera companies and one on our orchestras. These reports will measure how underrepresented composers have been programmed across multiple seasons. This anonymized data will be used to measure progress in future seasons.

Submission to the Ontario Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs : February 2023

On behalf of Ontario’s orchestras, Orchestras Canada submitted a brief to the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs’ 2023 pre-budget consultations. We recommended that the province of Ontario:

1- Help us bring our audiences back. A short-term program, inspired by a tested and successful model from Quebec (part of the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec’s Plan de Relance), could offer live arts groups a life-line as they work to bring audiences back

2- Leverage Ontario’s existing and excellent arts investment structures and expertise. Specifically, we requested that the Province of Ontario sustain the Ontario Arts Council’s funding at $65 million for 2023-24

3- Step up investment in cultural infrastructure.

4- Work with the arts and culture sector to envision and deliver on a new role for Ontario’s artists and arts organizations in education.

You can read the full brief here.

Submission to the Department of Finance Canada: Pre-Budget Consultations 2023

Orchestras Canada recently submitted recommendations to the Federal Department of Finance as part of that group’s pre-budget consultation process. In our brief, we thank the government of Canada for their leadership and enhanced support during the COVID-19 pandemic; summarize the situation, contributions and needs of Canadian orchestras during this time of pandemic recovery; and make a case for:

Investing in supplementary federal support to performing arts groups – identified as one of the hardest hit sectors – experiencing a slower-than-expected rebound from pandemic closures.

Undertaking, commissioning and funding comprehensive arts and culture sector research, to inform federal policy and funding frameworks and strengthen sector decision- making.

Ensuring that the interests of self-employed artists and cultural workers are considered in the design of a modernized Employment Insurance program.

Developing a cross-departmental Federal strategy for equitable, long-term social and economic resilience in every community across Canada, including arts and culture as a key contributor.

You can read the complete brief here.

Comparative Report 2021-22

Summary Reports by Budget Size and Regions

Each year for almost half a century, Orchestras Canada has been collecting financial and audience information from member orchestras and producing an annual comparative Report. The detailed Report is shared with participating orchestras and used by OC for advocacy purposes. The 2021-22 Comparative Report contains information from 73 orchestras. It includes all member orchestras with budgets over $1.5 million, and almost all other orchestras which historically have had budgets over $50,000.

The 2021-22 Summaries are compiled using information from the Report. They provide an overview of the Canadian orchestra industry for the 2021-22 season, organized budget size and by regions. Percentages are calculated in two ways: 1) based on the aggregate totals, and 2) “averages-of-percentages” using the individually calculated percentages for each of the participating orchestras. This approach is useful when considering relatively small samples of organizations of disparate sizes and scopes, especially by region.

We continue to report “Cost per audience contact” (CPAC) calculations in the Summaries. In these unprecedented times, the value of this calculation is questionable; even eyebrow-raising. That said: the CPAC is a tool which individual organizations may find useful for assessing business efficiency in their own organization, and we are reporting it to stay consistent with past practice.

Summaries of Summaries-2018-19 to 2021-22by Budget Size and Regions

COVID-19’s dramatic impact on orchestras began in March 2020 with the shutting down of performance venues. Within weeks, many orchestras began pivoting to various forms of online presentation. Not surprisingly, the 2019-20 financial and attendance numbers came in radically below results from the previous (2018-19) season.

2020-21 was fully COVID-affected season. Budgets receded further. The vast majority of orchestras pivoted to online activity almost exclusively. The 2018-19 aggregate live audience of 2,843,000 collapsed to 53,000 in 2020-21: a drop of 98%!

2021-22 indicated significant recovery. The minuscule live audience of 2020-21 rebounded to 1,061,664-still a long way from the pre-COVID 2018-19 audience of almost 3 million.

While these Summaries of Summaries are packed with information, we hesitate to over-analyze. The 2022-23 seasons are already at, or past, their mid points. We already know that numbers for 2022-23 will be significantly different from 2021-22. We look forward to reporting fully on this season in the coming months. We will continue to produce Summaries of Summaries, looking forward to some stability from season to season.

Online activity: In 2018-19, online content sharing by orchestras was a rarity. This changed substantially in 2019-20. In 2020-21 (the season of closed concert halls), online activity blossomed. Excepting a very few small orchestras, every organization had online audiences. In 2021-22, as concert halls re-opened, we saw a reduction in online activity. We will continue to monitor this in 2022-23 and beyond.

As snapshots over time, the Summaries of Summaries are fascinating. In all the years that we have been preparing the Comparative Report and summaries, we never expected to see numbers like this. We commend the Summaries and Summary of Summaries to you for vigorous discussion in your organization.

General disclaimer

We produce these Summaries using straightforward information and commonly accepted definitions, avoiding subjective judgments as much as possible. The accuracy of the Summaries is dependent primarily on the accuracy of information provided by the 73 participating orchestras, followed by accurate transfer of information to master spreadsheets. If significant errors are noticed, we would appreciate knowing.

Respectfully submitted
C Stephen Smith (Statistician, Orchestras Canada)
February 2023

Performing Arts in Canada: What Are Audiences Telling Us?

Performing arts groups are working to find a new equilibrium in this post-pandemic era, balancing a joyous return to live performance with challenging economic realities. Yet audiences are still not beating a path to our doors. Is it just a matter of time, or do we need to make significant changes to re-connect with existing audiences – and build connections with new ones?

On November 25, 2022, we invited experts who have tracked arts and culture consumer attitudes and perspectives since very early in the pandemic to share insights on ever-evolving patron attitudes, and how we might best respond to what patrons are telling us.

This is the second of a 2-webinar series. For resources from the first webinar, titled “Performing Arts in Canada: Where are the audiences”, click here.

Presenters

Alan Brown, Managing Principal, Wolf Brown
Emilie Bossard, Nanos Research Group
Elise Boileau, Evidence and Insight Researcher, and Oliver Mantell, Director of Evidence and Insight, The Audience Agency
Host: Dr. Taiwo Afolabi, Canada Research Chair in Socially Engaged Theatre; Director, Centre for Socially Engaged Theatre (C-SET), Assistant Professor, University of Regina

Resources

???? Recording
English Recording
French Recording

???? Slide decks
• Elise Boileau and Oliver Mantell, The Audience Agency slide deck:
English slides
French slides

• Emilie Bossard, Nanos Research Group slide deck:
English slides
French slides

• Alan Brown, Wolf Brown slide deck:
English slides
French slides

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