Emergency wage measures, support for broadcasting, ticketing assistance to finance empty seats… throughout the pandemic, the government has tried to preserve culture with large subsidies. What cultural businesses are trying to do today is to better use these resources to serve artists. “There is a demand for their remuneration, to have fully paid residencies, from creation to performance,” says Jamie Wright of the Regroupement québécois de la danse . At the Théâtre aux Écuries , the solution to smoothing out financial insecurity is twofold: to place the salaries of the technical teams (normally hired by the artists) and the burden of ticketing on its own shoulders for the entire next year by offering guaranteed fees for performances.

Review the model and finance differently

Beyond the measures proposed to support artists so that they can create and present their works, it is the financing methods that need to be completely reviewed. The business model, which has existed for 35 years, is based on the quantity of tickets sold. “With the pandemic, certain disciplines have hit a wall, faced with the significant void in the regions. We simply do not have the population base to ensure profitability with this model,” notes Josée Roussy, general and artistic director of the Centre de création diffusion de Gaspé . “How can we then attract emerging artists, or those from less popular disciplines, who are nevertheless part of the cultural offering?” According to her, it is time to develop audiences and finance differently in order to give more coherence to the creation-production-distribution chain.

From cultural consumer to cultural citizen

In the current mercantilist system, the artist, subsidized for creation, produces without restraint, which generates a teeming supply. "However, the demand is not necessarily there!" insists the former president of the Réseau des organisers de spectacles de l'Est du Québec (ROSEQ). We have created specialized audiences in silos. We have focused on selling a product that does well instead of sharing more niche artistic visions. We have industrialized the performing arts, she explains. Song and comedy have been popularized throughout the territory, to the detriment of theatre, dance and concert music, confined to the cities of Quebec and Montreal.

According to the experts interviewed to discuss the issues surrounding cultural revival , ensuring a better distribution of the diversity of cultural offerings also involves the democratization of art. For Josée Roussy, also the founder of an emerging company in Montreal and a former director, there are still myths to be debunked in the region.

"To appreciate all forms of art, we must move away from the cultural consumer in theaters and focus on the cultural citizen, the one who, as in Europe, is surrounded in his daily life by sculptures in parks, theater in the street and music at school," concludes Josée Roussy.