I was still a university student when I first exhibited artwork 21 years ago. My professor introduced me to a curator at the Works Art and Design Festival, who arranged an exhibition featuring my photographs alongside work by two other students. I barely understood what I was trying to create back then and resisted calling myself an artist — a title that, being so new to the field, I wasn’t sure I’d earned. In the years since, I’ve produced and collaborated on projects of all kinds, from books to installations. And yet, I still avoid calling myself an artist. Rather, I say I work as one — a distinction meant to remind people that art is work.
It’s not always clear to our audiences how much labour goes into what we create. But let me tell you: it’s a lot. And while a lucky few make a healthy living from art, most do not. Edmonton’s arts sector runs on second jobs, side hustles, fundraisers, donations and public funding — a patchwork that has kept it alive. However, that foundation is beginning to crack, putting the artists and organizations who depend on it at risk.
Now, this might sound like familiar hyperbole. Aren’t the arts always “in trouble?” It’s true: artists and arts organizations could always use more money, would always benefit from spending less time fundraising and justifying their practice. But a confluence of recent circumstances has turned routine underfunding of the arts into something more existential.
The circumstances I’m referring to were recently outlined in the Edmonton Arts Council’s (EAC) economic impact report, which details municipal arts funding and its social and economic effects. As an artist, I promptly read the report upon its release in July, and it’s all business. It uses 2024 financial statements from arts organizations funded by the EAC — a list that includes the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, the Art Gallery of Alberta and Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre — to thoroughly outline how much taxpayers benefit from subsidizing the sector, totaling $14 million per year. While there is a brief mention of more intangible benefits (“social cohesion, civic engagement, and community well-being”) these are unlikely to sway a government trying to fend off consecutive deficits and an alarmingly close debt ceiling. Instead, the report is filled with assertive statistics about art as an economic driver ($68.4 million in value-added GDP) and as an employment generator (over 1,400 local jobs created and funded directly by the EAC). The study aims to persuade its audience — first and foremost the City of Edmonton, which evaluates EAC funding every four years — that the arts are a profitable investment.
In recent years, much of the municipal funding that supports artists and arts organizations has stagnated or been redirected. The City of Edmonton, for instance, last reviewed EAC funding in 2023 but hasn’t raised levels since 2019, despite staggering population growth. For artists, this means more competition for the same pool of money. The impact study notes that in 2024, the increase in grant applications led to “an all-time low in the application success rate for individuals and collectives.” Meanwhile, the province has increased support for the Alberta Foundation for the Arts by $4.5 million for the second consecutive year — a welcome investment, but one that can’t offset the pressure when municipal funding stands still.
Factors like the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation and global trade disputes have made it costlier to be an artist (consider associated expenses like materials, rent and transportation). Such challenges might once have prompted action from the private sector, but a significant amount of corporate giving has shifted in the wake of the pandemic. Earlier this year, for example, TD Bank ended its long-time sponsorship of a series of jazz festivals across Canada, leaving organizers little time to address the deficits. Edmonton Opera Executive Director Robin Whiffen says this shift reflects a national trend that’s challenging fundraising efforts. “We’re having to work twice as hard for the same amount of money,” she told me.
This alone would be enough to hinder growth and development in Edmonton’s arts sector. However, it comes at a time when consumer behaviour is also changing, with some local arts events seeing declining attendance. Not all are struggling — the Fringe Festival just posted record numbers — but overall, audiences are harder to reach and less consistent. The reasons are many: inflation affects patrons as much as artists, and tighter budgets often change how they engage with the arts. An EAC survey conducted in 2024 confirms this, adding that lack of time and insufficient knowledge about local events are also key barriers to participation — a gap that may have widened since the loss of alternative weeklies that were once the go-to guide for local listings. Now we all reach for our smartphones, which offer algorithmically tailored info, much of which has nothing to do with Edmonton.
It’s difficult to ignore the impact of this technological shift, which has given us round-the-clock access to attention-grabbing entertainment, a lot of which — TikTok, for example — is free. As American literary critic Parul Sehgal notes in essays for The New York Times and Sydney Morning Herald, much contemporary literature, music and television has become simpler and shorter to appeal to our waning attention spans. That doesn’t bode well for galleries, playhouses and other traditional venues that require participants to leave the house, silence phones and sustain attention for longer than a scroll.
Identifying the conditions of these funding challenges is merely a diagnosis. Artists and arts organizations must now determine how best to ride it out — or if this shift proves to be permanent, how best to stay afloat.
I spoke with administrators from a range of local arts organizations — including the Citadel Theatre, Freewill Shakespeare Festival, Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre and Edmonton Jazz Festival Society — and their stories overlapped in striking ways, particularly regarding budgets and fundraising. All emphasized the importance of keeping the arts affordable and accessible, but each acknowledged that a shifting fiscal landscape has forced them to be creative in achieving and sustaining these goals. Sometimes “creative” means experimenting with new productions, fundraising streams or ticketing models; other times, it simply means scaling back their offerings.
Take, for instance, the Freewill Shakespeare Festival. For most of its 36-year history, the festival has produced two distinct works of Shakespeare each summer, typically in Hawrelak Park. However, in 2024 and 2025, organizers reduced the season to a single play. COVID-19 and a major rehabilitation project in Hawrelak Park, which forced a relocation to Louise McKinney Park, are contributing factors, but the main cause is declining attendance. Artistic Director David Horak notes that they began to notice softening ticket sales years before the pandemic.
Earlier this year, the festival launched a fundraising campaign alarmingly titled “Save the Freewill Shakespeare Festival.” The goal is to raise $150,000 to sustain the festival for at least 10 years, according to Horak. A review of public donations on the festival’s crowdsourcing page reveals who wants to keep it going: private citizens willing to donate $50, $100 and sometimes even $1,000. Notably absent are large corporate donors for whom such contributions would be an easy lift.
Freewill Shakespeare is not alone in turning to crowdfunding. The Grindstone Comedy Theatre, a local venue known for improv, standup comedy, burlesque and musical theatre, is running a similar initiative called “Save the Grindstone.” Their goal: a modest $40,000.
This year, the Edmonton Fringe Festival also launched a crowdsourcing campaign, cleverly inviting guests to “adopt a porta-potty” for $250, which allowed donors to name their adopted toilets. The campaign, featuring taglines like “Show you give a sh*t about Fringe!,” inspired many pun-filled porta-potty names.
While crowdfunding effectively creates community awareness and emotional and financial investment in the arts, it raises questions about long-term sustainability. Can citizens afford to keep our arts institutions afloat at $100 a pop, year after year? I suspect not. If governments and corporate donors further retreat from arts funding, it’s unlikely that crowdfunding initiatives alone could fill the gap. Such campaigns are intended as bandages, not solutions for the underlying problem.
In 2024, Workshop West, a local theatre dedicated to producing and presenting Canadian stories, often by emerging playwrights, implemented pay-what-you-will pricing. Initially envisioned to make attendance more accessible, the pilot project has proven to be a financial boon for the 47-year-old company. Season subscribers have more than doubled, and shows are running at around 70 per cent capacity, up from very low numbers, according to Artistic Producer Heather Inglis.
Ticket sales constitute only a small portion of Workshop West’s budget, which relies heavily on public funding from three levels of government. However, the increased revenue has given the organization room to breathe and the opportunity to reinvest in the business. Moreover, says Inglis, the company is finally attracting younger audiences, something virtually all theatres struggle to achieve.
An initiative from the Edmonton Opera, offering free admission to any of their productions for anyone under 21, has also yielded positive results. In the first year, 3,000 children and young adults attended its shows. It has attracted the attention of students exploring opera on their own and parents who no longer have to weigh the cost of childcare and purchasing additional tickets when deciding to attend the opera. Similarly, the Edmonton Chamber Music Society now offers anyone under 30 tickets at nearly half the price of a regular adult ticket, and still significantly less than senior pricing.
All of these programs aim to build new audiences, expand access as arts education disappears and ultimately help people connect with the arts. There is some indication that it is working. However, for most arts institutions, attendance fees comprise a small portion of their annual budgets. If public funding continues to stagnate and corporate funding fades, it’s unclear whether existing arts organizations could make up the difference without downsizing.
It would be one thing if the arts sector faced challenges in isolation. However, funding is declining at a time when other public sectors, like education and health care, are also strained. In moments like these, when resources feel scarce, solutions are often framed in zero-sum terms, with the thinking being: if we spend in one area, we must cut in another.
In a local news article from 2007, then-mayor Stephen Mandel addressed the backlash he faced for increasing arts funding while city roads were in disrepair. He pointed out how little we support artists, adding, “I’ve never once gone out to admire a sidewalk or road.” While I understand his intent, Mandel’s response highlights how easy it is to adopt the zero-sum mentality between “core” and “noncore” services, pitting one against the other. It also reflects how quickly we take longstanding public goods — like sidewalks, public education and arts and culture — for granted. These things often fade into the background until they’re broken or gone. But sidewalks, when thoughtfully designed and well-maintained, are a thing of beauty. Our arts community is no different: it may not feel novel, but its enduring presence is vital to the city.
Infrastructure, education and the arts are separate sectors on paper. In practice, they’re vital organs, all part of one body. If we ignore the health of the arts sector, the entire city will suffer, and the negative effects will not be easily reversed.
This article appears in the October 2025 issue of Edify
