$15M for Niagara's Shaw Festival in federal budget will help with education, outreach activities: director

After some tough years for theatre in Canada, the director of Niagara's Shaw Festival is excited about new federal funding for the industry. 

Canada's 2024 federal budget, announced Tuesday, includes $15 million in funding this year for the Shaw Festival Theatre in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont. A section on festivals and performing arts includes $23 million over three years, starting this fiscal year, for the Toronto International Film Festival, as well festivals in British Columbia and Quebec.

The budget states that festivals and performing arts "help artists develop and grow, attract tourists, and make life more enjoyable for Canadians."

Tim Jennings, the executive director of the Shaw Festival, told CBC Hamilton his team advocated for funding for months. It will go toward a campaign they call All.Together.Now, which Jennings describes as being about how theatre can reconnect people.

Since the pandemic began, "social muscles have atrophied," he said. "We think the cure for that is going out and interacting with people and we think theatre is particularly good at that."

COVID-19 also negatively affected the theare's finances, he said. A pandemic insurance policy helped keep 600 people employed, but in 2023, inflation and wildfires contributed to "quite a serious deficit."

Jennings said the new federal funding will likely go to "deepening" the festival's education and outreach activities, and helping maintain and expand its facilities, noting the organization's annual budget is usually about $40 million — about five per cent of which normally comes from government. 

Last year, the festival did about 850 performances and nearly 4,500 education and outreach events, he said, including programming for seniors and research into how art can improve aging. That work requires staffing, physical space and accommodations for artists, he said. 

"[The funding is] a great signal from the government that culture is important to the economy and important to the character of Canada."

Other items in the budget specifically targeting the Hamilton and Niagara regions include allocations under the federal Housing Accelerator for Hamilton, Burlington and St. Catharines.