SFU cites fundraising challenges for its decision to end its SFU Woodward's Cultural Programs
Vice-president says internal funding dried up, while 149 Arts Society director says it was hamstrung in its efforts to raise funds
SFU Woodward’s campus.
A PICTURE IS BEGINNING to emerge of the factors that led to the closure of SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs (SFUW), which was announced earlier this week.
Joanne Curry, SFU’s vice-president of external relations, told Stir by phone that without a consistent funding source, such as an endowment, the program had always faced budgetary stress. “The challenge with the Woodward’s Cultural Programs is they never really had an ongoing budget for original productions, and for this kind of work,” she said, adding the team had gotten “creative” to access internal SFU funding—funding that has become more scarce as the institution faces a $49 million deficit.
“There were some opportunities, like our 50th [anniversary, in 2015], but basically that funding has dried up,” she added. “We got to a stage of needing to have a sustainable path forward. And it was deemed that we weren’t able to continue with that stream of activity—the programming, commissioning, and presenting of new performances.” That activity has included copresenting the premiere of Electric Company Theatre artist Jonathon Young’s An Undeveloped Sound at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, hosting Halifax’s 2b theatre company’s cross-country musical Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, copresenting Wells Hill by Vancouver’s Action at a Distance with DanceHouse, and hundreds of other shows over the past 15 years.
However, the director of 149 Arts Society, the nonprofit board which oversaw SFUW, told Stir that the university’s involvement in the board had made fundraising more difficult. In a phone call, Linda Johnston said that “there were disappointments right from the beginning.” She went on: “The way the board got structured, it became almost impossible for them to fundraise. The initial agreement…was that a certain amount of money every year would be there to cover the staff, but they [the program] would have to do fundraising. They’d have to do their ticketing and marketing and all that. Except that every time they wanted to do things like that, then the university insisted on having approvals for what it looked like and all the rest of it….The university wanted to know what they were doing, because, of course, they don’t want to be both asking the same donor for the money. So that got complicated.”
Johnston explained that she had been asked to join the board after having helped SFU access federal funding to build SFU's Goldcorp Centre for the Arts—which housed SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs—when she was director of Heritage Canada for B.C. and Yukon. “Normally, the position that we took with the federal arts funding is that we did not fund universities,” she explained, of Canadian Heritage. “But they talked to me about the vision they had, and I said the only way we probably can agree to putting some funding in is if a separate society was set up that would bring together the university and the community, and be involved in not just internal work—not just work where you basically became a presenter of whoever showed up in town. So they agreed to that.”
Johnston questioned whether the venues in the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts—which include the Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre, the Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema, and the Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre—will remain accessible and affordable to local arts organizations after the ending of SFUW. “Will you get to do your five-day film festival there as a rental? Will the rate be something you can afford? If you are the Korean Film Festival or the LGBTQ Film Festival, do they have enough resources to pay the rent there? All these small film festivals that are really important don’t necessarily have a lot of money for rental,” she said.
Terry Hunter.
Terry Hunter, executive director of Vancouver Moving Theatre, a longtime partner of SFUW, also voiced concerns that the venues will be out of reach for many organizations. “I really question whether anybody's going to be able to afford going in there, and how they’re going to sustain that with staff,” he told Stir. “It's such a sad reduction in what they're doing. I understand the situation that they’re under with cutbacks, but this, to my mind, is being penny wise and pound foolish.
“All that goodwill and the partnerships that they've developed, it’s all gone,” he continued. “And they’re saying the theatre is available on a rental basis—I have to say, that's kind of a sad joke….I think Milton Wong would be rolling in his grave. You know, he put all that money into that building because he wanted that space to be an engaged space with the community, to serve as a place for evolution of development of arts in the city, and to serve as a place for the university to connect to and engage with the larger community. And that's all gone.”
Curry said that its partner organizations have paid rental fees in the past. “There tended to always be some sort of financial obligation. It depends on the partnership, whether they're a new arts and culture organization. But a lot of them did pay for the venue,” she said. “And what we're looking at now is what's the sustainable model going forward for use of the venue….We're going to continue to work with organizations, because we want to have a very lively venue.”
She added that SFU would have more to say in September about the model for moving forward, and that the university was reaching out to the individual organizations to see what would work.
Vancouver Moving Theatre has had a long history with SFUW, co-producing the annual holiday tradition Bah Humbug! performance, in partnership with Full Circle: First Nations Performance, which ran for 10 years from 2009 to 2019. Even so, Hunter said he had not been given advance notice about the decision to end the Cultural Programs. “I knew that the whole process was being assessed,” he said. “But it never crossed my mind that they would go to the extreme of cutting the entire program.”
Curry confirmed that SFUW’s partners “weren’t given advance notice”, adding that the university had tried to host a conversation late last year about the future of the program. “We did reach out and attempt to do a round table with them and invited them to discussions. And…several of them provided comments. We were just looking for, ‘What is the sustainable model?’ So we did get input from a small number, but they weren't available to come together to give further input.”
She said the university wanted to continue its relationship with the local arts community, even as it ceases producing, presenting, and commissioning new work. “We have no plans to reduce availability and will continue to work, with both our existing relationships, but also new relationships, to have them access venues,” she said, noting that one staff person—Janice Beley, producer of cultural programs with SFUW—is remaining.
“I did not want this to be seen as backing away from the arts and culture sector, because we are absolutely not," Curry added. "We know that this continues to be a challenging time.…We will continue to build relationships and partner with arts and culture organizations going forward.” 
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