(File photo/paNOW Staff)

By Alison Sandstrom

COVID-19

Sask. Arts Alliance hopes their sector will be next to receive provincial funding after hockey announcement

Jan 24, 2021 | 8:00 AM

The Saskatchewan Arts Alliance says the provincial government’s announcement of $4 million for junior hockey teams and leagues has made them hopeful there could be money coming for the arts too.

“It’s good for us to know the government is responding to sectors that are hurting right now,” Marnie Gladwell, executive director of the Saskatchewan Arts Alliance, told paNOW. “It’s energized us to hope that they can also do the same for our sector.”

Gladwell said sports, arts and culture sectors will likely be some of the last to recover from the pandemic, making government support particularly important.

According to the most recent data from Statistics Canada, one in four arts workers in the country have lost their job during the pandemic.

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Musicians who paNOW spoke to locally said they’re adapting to reach their audiences virtually, but some have still taken a financial hit.

Donny Parenteau said he’s focused on online teaching through his music school during the pandemic in the face of cancelled shows.

“I’ve had to learn to readjust my career,” Parenteau said. “That was how I was able to survive.”

He explained he believes if the government has money available to put into the arts, it would be best given to organizations like Sask Music, who could set up a special fund that artists could apply to during the pandemic.

“To possibly get a little bit of money to put on on a show for Saskatchewan,” he continued. “And do it as a streaming thing.”

Ticket revenue and reaching audiences

Actress Adreanna Boucher explained she supports herself with a fulltime job outside of theatre, but for people she knows who rely on arts income to live, “it’s been pretty awful for them.”

“It would be fantastic to see some funding come from the province to support the arts,” she said. “Because the arts rely on ticket sales and it’s great we can have 30 people in the audience, but that doesn’t pay the bills… the cost of a production doesn’t go down just because there’s 30 people in the audience.”

Aside from the financial impact of the pandemic, Michel Boutin, executive director of The Indigenous Peoples Artist Collective, said the inability to gather in-person and conduct workshops has been the hardest part of the pandemic for his collective.

“Where our problem lies is how do we communicate with who we usually communicate with,” he said. “The digital format doesn’t really work for us all that well because we try to target youth and specific audiences with a lot of our work. It’s kind of a hands on community thing, and we simply can’t go.”

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alison.sandstrom@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @alisandstrom