Great Northern Arts Festival is in peril
Lack of funding has organizers worried about annual event's continued viability
Stewart Burnett
Northern News Services
Thursday, April 20, 2017
INUVIK
The annual general meeting for the Great Northern Arts Society resembled something of a third-quarter locker room rally for a sports team on the ropes.
Jennifer Rafferty, chair of the Great Northern Arts Society board, left, and Marie Horstead, executive director, speak in front of city council Wednesday, April 12. - Stewart Burnett/NNSL photo
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With funding drying up, everything was on the table for the annual Great Northern Arts Festival: cutting security, limiting catering, scaling back the numbers of artists or days, no longer paying contractors and even suspending this year's event to build a more solid base for the future.
"To say that the past year has been challenging would be a gross understatement," said Jennifer Rafferty, chair of the board, at the AGM held Tuesday, April 11.
"Between a significant corporate funding shortfall, the rising cost to do business in our Arctic town and the competition for fundraising dollars, the Great Northern Arts Society has weathered a difficult year."
Last year's festival was smaller than in years past, she said, and that trend will probably continue.
"My hope is that we will have a smaller, more streamlined festival which is reflective of our current situation but also continues to inspire, heal and excite our audience just as it has in the past," said Rafferty.
The lack of available funding in Inuvik has made itself felt in terms of lowered corporate sponsorships and a lack of high-spenders at the society's annual arts auction and fundraiser.
Executive Director Marie Horstead said the organization needs about $50,000 more than it has to put together a slightly more constrained version of the festival.
Supporting the artists
"People are under the impression that we still receive this abundance of corporate sponsorship, and so people's ideas, I think, don't reflect our current economic state at all," said Horstead.
"Our corporate contributions are down very significantly."
The organization's mandate is about supporting the artists, she continued.
"I just am kind of at a standstill on how we can trim enough and then up the cash income to continue executing the festival without some, I think, very significant changes in the future."
She said she feels poorly in a sense she has not been able to solicit more corporate contributions, but she also understands that is a common theme around Inuvik.
The organization pays about $60,000 to contractors to help run the festival.
Tony Devlin, co-chair of the board, said those contractors used to be volunteers and perhaps it was time to go back to that.
He said the organization needs to be completely focused on fundraising during the off-season.
"I'm very concerned when I'm hearing talk around the table about scaling back this festival," said Devlin.
"This festival is scaled back, compared to when I was there, and I had scaled it back."
He's not sure how much more can be cut.
"We are a tiny, small event to what we once were," said Devlin.
The festival is currently scheduled to run in mid-July for its 29th annual year, with the theme of "True North."
The sentiment around the room during the two-hour meeting was every avenue to find money had to be pursued.
"I think we need to be public about the fact that we need help," said Horstead.
