At the very end of every fiscal year, there is always talk of budgets, and lately those budget talks have included cuts to local cultural agencies.
The Estevan Arts Council (EAC), Estevan Art Gallery and Museum (EAGM), Souris Valley Museum (SVM) and Souris Valley Theatre (SVT) all suffered a reduction in the grants they received from the City of Estevan.
The cuts were revealed when the budget was released late last year. The city cited lower revenues this year, stemming from reductions in municipal operating grants from the provincial government, as well as the government’s decision to reduce the grants in lieu of taxation to municipalities.
“This year is going to be a great year for us despite the cuts we have had, but we are going to be open year-round and we are still trying our best to provide programs and services for the community,” said Mark Veneziano, the director-curator of the SVM.
“As of right now we are still going to be operating as usual but we won’t be able to expand as much as we wanted to for next winter because there is a lack of funding.”
The museum is going to lose their summer students who were integral to providing extra help during the museum’s busy season.
“We are going to have scale back much of what we wanted to do for 2019,” said Veneziano.
The museum has opted to best deal with these cuts by looking for grants from the federal government. The museum has been cut 20 per cent and they must now find their own methods of offsetting those losses.
“Our staff has not decreased throughout this process; we still are running regular winter employment of one full-time position and one part-time position and overall we will be operating as usual with some limitations,” said Veneziano.
The arts council has also been cut from $45,000 to $40,000, and they will also be applying for grants and trying to find ways to raise extra money to make up for their loss of revenue.
“The biggest thing we are looking at is other sources of funding, meaning we are looking to provincial and federal grants to make up for the shortfall in our budget due to the cuts,” said Melanie Memory, the administrator and accountant for the EAC.
“We have been handed a 10 per cent cut to our overall budget and there is a lot of stress associated with relying on non-guaranteed grant money for operating costs,” she added.
The EAC is only receiving a 10 per cent cut. When Memory was asked about that amount, she said, “The Art Council is very small; it only has one paid employee and the costs associated with the council are always going up. As such a 20 per cent cut could result in the council not being able function and could also mean a layoff of our only paid employee.”
“The most unfortunate thing is we have had to increase our fees like our art camp, for example. It was originally $75 last year per child and we’ve had to increase it to $90 this year.”
Memory noted that getting grants is very difficult because the applications are complex and they get harder every year to qualify for. The most difficult thing about the grants is the stiff competition. Additionally, once an application is sent off, a jury looks them over and may send them back for additional information.
“Business for the Arts has been a great way to raise money for what we do. The way it basically works is however much money each group raises themselves, the government will match that amount in the form of a donation,” said Memory.
The EAGM has been cut 20 per cent as well; they have laid off curator Sarah Durham, and Amber Andersen, the current museum director, will now go back to being the director-curator of the museum, a role she held from 2011 to 2013. They have also lost their summer students, which provided them with a lot of help because they do so much educational programming and extra help is always needed in the summer months.
“The city covers 90 per cent of our wags and utilities, and because of that, if we lose 20 per cent of our funding, then we will have to lay someone off due to the large amount of wages that are covered by the city,” said Andersen.
“As I have mentioned before I don’t feel like the city wanted to do this, they are certainly having budget issues as well and these cuts are also mostly coming down from a provincial level,” she added.
With the loss of their summer students and their curator, there is a reduction in staffing that Andersen pointed to being about 33 per cent. The result of this is the current employees of the museum are going to have to take on more responsibility.
This has also amounted to a reduction in programming and exhibits. This is because artists charge a fixed rate for their art to be shown publicly. That rate is always going up and inflation makes it higher, which means less art at the EAGM.
The SVT has also been cut 20 per cent. They have lost their summer students and are looking to grants and cross promotion with businesses to make up for the shortfall in funding.
General manager Lyn Vilcu said that despite the cuts, what they offer to the community isn’t expected to change.
“We are not full into our season yet so how these cuts are going to affect us is not entirely known at this time,” said Vilcu. “We are going to have staffing issues, more than likely we will have to more with less people, the lack of summer students mainly being an issue.”
Vilcu noted there would be issues with their youth camp, because their summer students mostly ran that camp.
