What’s going on in Toronto’s arts scene? Inside the crisis closing festivals and arts organizations left, right and centre

The non-profit organization announced on March 11 it was months away from “closing permanently” due to financial challenges. To avoid that fate, it planned to pause programming in June and restructure operations, including optimizing its existing space in downtown Toronto to reopen in January 2025. But to do so, it needed to raise some $75,000 from donors almost immediately. 

“I had no idea what I was going to do,” said Catoni, recalling the moment she heard about the closure. She felt as if everything was out of her control. “It all depended at that point if they were going to raise the money that they needed.”

Ultimately, the saga turned into a good news story. On April 5, Open Studio shared it had not only met, but surpassed, its fundraising goal and avoided permanent closure. 

That outcome, however, is a rare exception to the norm. In recent months, scores of arts organizations and artist spaces in Toronto have been forced to permanently shutter or drastically cut programming, the result of financial headwinds and operational hurdles that were induced by the pandemic but have spiralled into a wider crisis across the sector, leading to a reckoning — among artists, patrons and public officials — about the viability and future of the once-thriving industry.   

“Artists and arts organizations are already really stretched in terms of resources.,” said Kelly Langgard, director and CEO of both the Toronto Arts Council (TAC) and Toronto Arts Foundation. “And if it gets much worse, I think that, for me, is untenable and unthinkable.”

Organizations across the sector, large and small, have felt the lingering economic impacts of the pandemic, which forced artists to halt their work almost overnight in 2020. 

One of the first and most significant shakeups to the industry came in August 2023, when Artscape announced it was being placed into receivership and going to “wind-down” the management of its spaces. The organization, an important provider of affordable spaces and housing for artists in the city for some three decades, said it took on debt over the years and was stretched even further during the pandemic, when event spaces shuttered. 

“While Artscape had begun to see success in rebuilding event venue space revenues, stabilizing operations and gaining grant funding for impact programs, the level of debt payments was not sustainable,” it said.

In many ways, the folding of Artscape became a harbinger of what was to come throughout the fall and winter, as other organizations shared similar announcements about their operational challenges. It all came as financial assistance and government grants, meant to support artists and companies through the pandemic recovery, wound up, though sustainable revenue and audience attendance had yet to return. 

Kelsey Jacobson, an assistant professor of drama at Queen’s University, whose research focuses on audience and spectatorship studies, said many arts organizations, which planned for a two or three-year recovery, didn’t see the financial returns that they were anticipating.

“The pandemic has had extremely long-term effects and there hasn’t been this kind of bounce back in terms of the live performing arts,” she said. “Things are happening in small changes and kind of shifting in waves.”

Because of the number of arts organizations in the industry and their disparate disciplines, it’s difficult to quantify how many have ceased operations due to the pandemic. However, looking at specific sectors within the industry offers a glimpse at the scale of the crisis. The Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts, which advocates on behalf of theatre, opera and dance companies in the city, shared it lost some 46 per cent of its members during the pandemic, down from 164 companies to 89 by January 2023, according to a document shared with the city’s budget committee. 

Festivals in Toronto have been especially hard hit. Toronto Fringe Festival, which has launched shows including “Kim’s Convenience” and “The Drowsy Chaperone,” announced in January that this summer’s iteration will see a nearly one-quarter reduction in programming compared to last year due to low attendance and a loss of financial support from a provincial grants fund. Meanwhile, the comedy festival Just for Laughs announced last month it was cancelling the Toronto edition of its festival in September after seeking financial protection from creditors. The Contact Festival — one of the largest photography festivals in the world — also shared it lost its lead sponsor, Scotiabank, which it said would likely result in a scaling back of operations. And last summer, the Toronto International Film Festival also lost its lead sponsor, Bell.

Though the financial impacts stemming from the pandemic are impacting the sector unevenly, Jacobson said festivals are particularly at risk because of how they’re structured. 

“Festivals rely on lumpy earned revenue because they happen just at the one point in the year,” she said. “Audiences sort of found different diversions during the pandemic other than the live arts and these sort of in-person events. So if something’s only happening once a year, it’s harder to rebuild that audience loyalty because it simply hasn’t occurred very often.”

Major funding bodies like the TAC continue to fund arts organizations in the city, but Langgard acknowledged there’s a gap between what funders can provide and what the sector needs. In 2024, the TAC received nearly $26 million through the city’s budget, said Langgard, a figure which remained unchanged from the previous fiscal year. 

It’s difficult to compare the pandemic to previous so-called “black-swan events” that have detrimentally affected the arts sector, said Jacobson, because few historical events have equalled the pandemic’s scale and time frame. 

Langgard added that while evolution in the arts sector is always normal — and there will always be organizations that come and go — the number of companies and art spaces that have shuttered through the pandemic will leave a lasting impact. She pushed back against the idea that new organizations will fill the gap left behind by those that have shuttered. 

In today’s environment “it’s so much harder to rebuild from the ground up,” she said. “And who’s going to do that work? I think perhaps we take it for granted that arts organizations will just always find a way to keep on going.”

The financial turbulence in the sector comes amid a broader upheaval, as arts programmers reckon with questions of workplace leadership, diversity and inclusion. In March, Canada’s largest documentary film festival Hot Docs was rocked by the mass resignation of 10 employees after they raised allegations of “grave mismanagement” against the organization’s former artistic director, who also stepped down. 

More recently, arts programmers have also grappled with how to respond to the Israel-Hamas war following calls for action from fellow artists and workers in the industry. Major festivals and prizes, including Hot Docs and the Giller Prize, have been the target of protests over their sponsorship ties with Scotiabank, which invests in the Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems. Demonstrators have called on the organizations to demand that Scotiabank “dump” the company. 

Nikki Shaffeeullah, director of programming at the arts mentoring and innovation incubator Generator, believes that despite the hurdles the industry is facing, organizations should continue to strive to innovate and push forward with daring ideas. 

“I hope that the trend will not be towards more conservatism, in all senses of it, including in curatorial and programmatic decisions,” said Shaffeeullah, who’s also an artist and producer. She added that important strides have been made in recent years to increase accessibility in the arts and improve worker compensation — efforts she hopes will not slow given the current fiscal environment. 

For Catoni, however, the current realities of the art sector are making it more challenging for people like herself to live and work in the city. “Being an artist, it means that you’re here because you really want it, so most will find a way to do their art in the end,” she said. “But I know that people are struggling and they’re considering moving to other cities.”

Catoni herself works full-time as an architect in addition to the work she does as a printmaker. But the cost of living in Toronto and the state of the arts landscape have also prompted her to consider moving out of the city. 

Essentially, the current climate should prompt Torontonians and public officials to carefully consider the value of arts in the city, said Langgard.

“As a society, we have to decide that the arts matter enough to invest in,” she concluded. “We need commitment at all levels, from government and the private sector to everybody who wants to live in a city that is more than just a collection of buildings. We have to come together and find some solutions.”

With files from Marco Chown Oved