Item - 2017.ED25.2

The Economic Development Committee:

1.   Directed the General Manager of Economic Development and Culture to report back to the Economic Development Committee in 2018 on future priorities for cultural funding and on the implementation of improved measurement and evaluation processes.

Peter Lyman, Senior Partner, Nordicity and Negin Zebarjad, Manager, Nordicity gave a presentation on Evaluation of the Impact of Increases to City of Toronto Cultural Grants from 2012 to 2016.

The purpose of this report is to respond to City Council’s directions to report back on the impact of the increased investment in cultural grant programs from 2012 to 2016. In 2017, Economic Development and Culture Division commissioned Nordicity to conduct an independent review of the data provided by the Toronto Arts Council and the recipients of funding from the Major Cultural Organizations program, the Local Arts Service Organizations program and the Culture Build Investment program. Nordicity assessed the outputs and outcomes achieved with increased grants funding. 

The evidence presented in the attached report is clear that the aggregate impact of the new funding met City objectives: to promote arts activity across the city and outside the downtown core; to increase opportunities for young and emerging artists; to develop and leverage partnerships; to support community arts activities; to increase the capacity of small and medium-sized arts organizations; and to improve cultural spaces. Overall findings noted that despite a significant decline in revenues from other public sources between 2012 -2016, the City’s increased investment contributed to a substantial increase of earned revenues and revenue from private sources by recipient organizations. Aggregated data revealed that each incremental dollar of municipal support was matched by over eight dollars in new earned revenues and private support for funded organizations over the period of the study. In summarizing the impact of the increase to cultural grants, Nordicity states in the report: "This increase had significant positive impacts on recipients and supported notable progress toward achieving the City's overall strategic and policy objectives."

Among the key conclusions of the Nordicity report are:

-  there was a marked expansion of grants funding beyond the downtown core, although there remains a high density of support in the core;

-  efforts at collaboration between arts organizations are increasing;

-  arts opportunities for young and emerging artists, especially in the area of community arts, are increasing;

-  there is an increase in the administrative capacity for small and medium-sized arts organizations; and,

-  there is a growing effectiveness of incentives to improve access to suitable cultural spaces through both space sharing incentives and direct capital funding, although the overall size of the challenge is increasing.  
 

Nordicity recommended that to maximize the impact of the City's investment in cultural grants moving forward, the City should consider new directions in funding, including:

-  more targeted investments in key sustainability risks for the arts sector, including addressing diversity, supporting collaboration and knowledge-sharing across the sector, addressing the space challenge, and promoting international exchange and engagement; and,

- improve the City's measurement and evaluation of its investments in the cultural sector so as to continue to articulate and tract the impacts of its investments in culture, primarily addressing the data limitations faced during the process of this study.