Can Canada's cultural festivals survive without corporate title sponsors?

Canadian arts organizations have long relied on big companies to be their title sponsors: the Toronto International Film Festival had Bell, Luminato had L'Oréal, and the CONTACT Photography Festival had Scotiabank.

These corporate sponsors are increasingly pulling out — but is anyone else stepping up to fill the gap?

On the show today, Darcy Killeen, the CEO of CONTACT, tells host Elamin Abdelmahmoud about what it was like to lose their lead sponsor, and arts reporter Josh O'Kane explains what's at stake for the arts in this country amidst a shifting funding landscape.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

LISTEN | Today's episode on YouTube:

Elamin: How common is Darcy's story right now — the idea of running a festival, hundreds of artists, a million-plus visitors, and then still facing cuts from a major sponsor?

Josh: Darcy is definitely not alone in this. The biggest example would be Bell leaving the Toronto International Film Festival about six months ago, after 28 years. Their official statement when they announced that was that they wanted to "invest in other opportunities that are core to our business." Now, it's hard to say exactly what that means.

Elamin: How big was that sponsorship? It was millions of dollars a year, but I don't remember the exact number. Do you remember?

Josh: I don't know the exact number, but it does cost a lot of money to put your name on a building, which they did at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.

Elamin: That's right.

Josh: You know, it's hard to say where that money's going. There is the Bell Let's Talk initiative. But companies, often in different ways, parse sponsorship versus corporate philanthropy versus corporate initiatives. It's hard to parse exactly why those decisions are made or where they're going. But the real story is that corporate sponsorships change all the time. Thirty or 40 years ago, these sort of big title sponsorships … might have been directed by members of the board or the executive, but it gradually became more and more the responsibility of corporate marketing departments. They're looking for brand alignment or return on their investment — and what that looks like changes over time.

Elamin: Darcy, what's your sense of why this is happening right now?

Darcy: Well, you know, for our relationship with the bank, just that one alone we had a 15 year run, and that is a tremendous run in the world of corporate sponsorship. CONTACT has had corporate sponsors our entire life, and the duration is usually 3 to 5. But I think in the grander picture of all of this, I think we're seeing a shift out of culture … leaving culture entirely and going more towards, like, cause-related and issues like healthcare, education, children, world aid, these critical causes. And you can't fault these organizations; these are very important causes. They're switching their mandate…. I think the shift is that culture is now philanthropic, and sponsorship is going towards other areas. And I really see that shift.

Elamin: Josh, I don't want to ignore the long history of the relationship between commerce and art here, and how that history has been maybe, like, shifting in the last few years…. What's your sense of corporations sort of hedging risk, if you will — the idea of, "If we put our name on top of this festival, it opens us up to protest. It opens us up to people who will use the platform of this festival to be critical of us as an institution"? And maybe a part of this being, like, risk management. Do you see that being a part of this?

Josh: That is something that you're seeing — a lot of grassroots opposition happening. We saw that onstage at the Gillers. We saw that at the rally yesterday, outside the Hot Docs announcement. That isn't necessarily what I am hearing playing into the sponsorship of the arts. When I spoke with Scotiabank for the story, when I spoke with Darcy about what's happening with CONTACT, their major issue was that they were sort of focusing on a program called ScotiaRISE, which is, as Darcy was saying, focusing on basically making the economic ladder easier to climb for new Canadians and people who are in more difficult economic circumstances.

What we are seeing in terms of how companies are thinking about this is, again, it's a focus on social issues and data. Sports sponsorships have, like, doubled over the past decade, according to the Canadian Sponsorship Landscape Study, because companies like MLSE that own the Raptors and the Leafs can give you so much data based on who's in the arena, who's watching the commercials. And then you're also seeing, again, more cause-related things that companies can, I think, have a bit more control over. ScotiaRISE, as an example, would be one of them…. And so there is a big push towards that for that sort of pot of money that every company sees differently.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jess Low.