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My name is Sheryl Daly and I am the Coordinator for CPAP and this is Jeremy Long. He’s the Associate Director at the BC Arts Council.

I thought maybe we would start off with a little bit of history of the program and let Jeremy speak to that as I’ve only been doing the program for a few years.

Thanks Sheryl. This may be old news to some but others are new, we have some new folks so the CPAP started out under a different name. Arts Resource Touring Subsidy is what it was called it was called originally. A.R.T.S., back the mid-70s, is where the idea first occurred as part of the very first Pacific Contact down at the Vancouver Hotel actually and that program has existed for a long time. It basically hasn’t changed the way it works which is the principal on which the program is based is that we will fund the buyer and not the seller, that way communities theoretically get what they want in their community rather than funding the artists who would directly move in. It’s kind of a different theory than the Canada Council would use where they would fund the artists directly. So that principal of the program has been maintained throughout its history. We added a second element, which is the Key Presenters when a couple of years ago there was a pattern beginning to develop. Back twenty years ago if you were a touring company and I did for many years tour this province with a touring company so, you use to be able to play Prince Rupert, Prince George, Kamloops or Kelowna on a weekend for two nights and in between those you would fill in for four nights where you’d play the smaller centers but we noticed in the middle -80’s was that those key cities were dropping out of the network as they built multiplexes and more commercial presenters came into the mix then the community sponsor, mainly for the larger acts like theatre and dance, fell away so we at that point started to talk about the Key Presenter to try to elevate and change a level of program that might attract a level of participation of those major facilities in those major population centers outside the urban Vancouver and Victoria areas. So that’s how we got to the two levels of the program, which we still have.

Last year we managed to get the Community Presenter side of it back up to $3,000. Our objective had been to get both of them higher over a period of time but of course we all know what has happened with budgets and government so, we don’t have the capacity this year to raise the amount as we did last year but I am happy to say that we will be maintaining it in the coming year. The Council has received a stable budget from the government. Somewhat of a period victory but some reason to celebrate I suppose, so that’s the history of the program.

Back in 96 at the last downsizing of government, we lost three bodies so at that point we moved a number of programs offshore one of which was the Community Presenters over to the BC Touring Council. Ginny Cleary was running it at that point but Sheryl was there still so Sheryl has been with the program for six or seven years so she is probably more expert than I am about the program and anything to do with it so I’ll turn it over to Sheryl. I’m happy to answer any questions about the Council or other programs that maybe able to contribute like ARTS POD may be able to help some of you if you want to talk about that.

Great, well, I just thought what we would do is quickly go through the guidelines and the application itself and then we’ll leave some time for questions that I know some of you probably have and then if we have time in the end I thought I would give you some statistics we’ve collected over the last years. BC Touring Council has been doing the program for the last three years so, we’ve been able to collect our statistics and it’s very interesting to see where things are and how many artists are touring, what kind of genres and that sort of thing.

So basically the Community Presenters Assistance Program is a funding program for BC presenters. The Awards are available to non-profit organizations outside of the GVRD and also the Greater Victoria Area so if you are in those two areas, we actually don’t provide funding for you, it’s really for people outside of those areas. It’s for people who actually sponsor professional touring artists so; we generally don’t fund amateur or people who are doing it as a living.

It is based on the following principals:
(a) Access - the desire to make the performing arts accessible throughout the province;
(b) Community leadership - recognition of the importance of community based program decisions;
(c) Local support - acknowledgement of community financial and service contributions to the program;
(d) Merit - encouragement of artistic quality in all programming.

When you put in your proposed season, in the adjudication, they do look at what kind of artists you are presenting, what kind of quality and the overall program that you are doing.

Jeremy: I should just elaborate on that point for a minute which is that it is a formula based program but there are a number of situations that arise for example if we don’t have enough money in the budget to sustain the formula, it would be up the jury to divide and in that instance they would go to quality and what they consider quality. It’s just one example of why we use a jury to adjudicate these. We have yet to run out of money in a given year but I suspect we may get there this year as there are quite a number of new facilities coming on line as we all know

Sheryl: The more demand on the program, the more these are applied to the adjudication process and last year we did have more requests so there is demand on the program.

So the programs that do receive support are:

• present primarily recognized, Canadian, professional artists, (priority will be given to those programs which emphasize B.C. artists);
• present a diversity of artistic disciplines, again when the demand on the program is greater, they look at what kind of programming are you doing? Are you doing just one particular genre? If that’s so, you might want to think about diversifying that.
• encourage cooperation among presenters in the same geographic area
• present primarily arts events intended for an adult audiences so, if you are just doing a concert series for children, you will not be eligible for support.

There are two categories of support, the Key Presenter Category and the Community Presenter Category. You cannot apply in both categories in one year.

The application deadline as you can see on your form this year is July 2nd, usually June 30th but because of the holiday it will be July 2nd this year and for those of you who have applied to the program, we will be sending you out forms again. You have applications but we’ll also mail you a copy in case you go home and don’t have one and we’ll also have them on our web site, our own web site and the BC Arts Council web site so you have access to those. If you find that you need an application, you can always contact the office and again, when you’ve completed your application, you’ll send it to the BC Touring Council not to the BC Arts Council.

So I’ll get into more of the specific eligibility criteria for both of the categories. These apply actually to both categories that you have to be a

• community based arts organization which most of you are and the development of the arts must be your primary objective
• you must have been a registered non-profit society for a minimum of one year and you must be able to provide an audit or independently prepared financial statement for your most recently concluded fiscal year
• your proposed program budget, you have to identify that you have a diverse revenue and that you are not just getting money from BC Arts Council in order to do your series either fundraising or getting local support from your municipality or gaining revenues so they can see you are doing other fund raising
• you have to complete a final report for any previous funding you have received and that’s quite important because you won’t get your money until you actually fill it out (Tracy knows this). Quite often if someone leaves and they forget to do a final report, we have to come and say that you need to submit that before so, if you know that someone may be leaving, it’s a good idea to get them to complete the final report before they go.
• you have to demonstrate a need for the financial assistance. If you are doing very well and showing a surplus accumulated over the years, maybe you [Jeremy] could speak a little more to that than I could.

Jeremy: I know it’s unusual to think be at that position where financially you didn’t need support but it has happened. Trail Concert Series for many years, anybody familiar with the concert series there? It ran hugely successfully for about 15 to 20 years and they finally added a second night to every concert. They were selling out a 700-800 seat on subscriptions for their first night, they added a second night and they dropped out of the program for a number of years. They didn’t need help to do it but they’re back now. You know it’s possible that some folks may get to the level of not needing it and if you don’t need, don’t ask because there is now rules about demonstrating some need.

It’s a complex formula. It’s in the guidelines but basically unallocated surpluses which means you are sitting on an operating or working capital reserve which is not dedicated to a piano fund, a building fund or a CIP fund, any of those things, if you are sitting on an amount of cash that exceeds 50% of your budget up the first $50,000 i.e. $25,000 and 25% of everything after that so, on a $100,000 budget, you could be holding a surplus of $37,500 is the way the formula works. Over that, you don’t need our money. Now you may also have $10,000 sitting in the piano fund and $20,000 sitting in the building fund, that’s fine but undesignated working capital reserves.

Sheryl: Okay. Your application has to be for programming that has not yet occurred so a proposed season and also organizations who receive Professional Operating Assistance from the BC Arts Council are not eligible.

Where there is more than one application in a geographic area, you’re encouraged to either apply together. What I normally do is I try and find out in a community if there is, and if I know of other presenters, I’ll try and contact them and find out what they are planning to do an application and also make them aware, if you are in the same city or area, that they’ll be putting in an application. It’s just for your benefit to know and what happens with two of you applying from the same city, we will put up and adjudicate both and if both are successful, they’ll spilt the award.

If you haven’t previously applied to the program, it’s a good idea to give me a call and I’ll just make sure that you are eligible for the program before you fill out the application itself and I also just like to know who is applying for the year to get a sense of anyone new coming on board.

About the Key Presenter

I see many of your faces here. The Key Presenter criteria, you have to manage an arts facility with a minimum of 300 seats in order to be eligible. You have to maintain paid professional management so it can’t be somebody who is just volunteering their time at a theatre and you have to present a diverse program of not less than 10 events.

You have to demonstrate through previous activity that you are able to do a program of comparable scale and you have to adhere to the principal that artists must be paid for their work at recognized professional rates and this did come up before where somebody who applied was really paying on the low end of the scale and with the Community Presenters grant we encouraged them to increase the amount they were paying to the artists.

Your eligible expenses as a Key Presenter include [artist] fees, marketing costs and other production expenses incurred in the presentation of your artists. It’s a little bit different for the community presenters so, I’ll talk about that when we get there.

Ineligible expenses include your facility and staffing, front of house, concession, fees or expenses for non-professional artists and commercial or general entertainment attractions and maybe we should talk a little bit about that, just in that if you have somebody who is of the mainstream, sort of rock, pop music in your programming, it’s not that they will turn you down but if they see that you are only presenting those type of artists, who are very popular and who are heard on mainstream radio who quite often play at Skyreach Place [Kelowna] or those kinds of things, a whole program of that would likely not be funded however, if you have one or two artists that are more of a popular genre, that’s not a problem, they usually would allow that.

Jeremy: Yes, it’s not intended to restrict. I mean obviously it’s great if you can bring in Rita McNeill and make some money and that subsidizes everything else you want to do then great on a ten concert series or fifteen concerts but if that’s all you are doing, if you are only doing rock n’ roll or commercial acts, then it shouldn’t be part of the program but if you are doing a little bit of that to help the rest along, that’s one of the areas we leave up to the jury to decide and to make sure in those Key facilities that there is a balance of programming, that we’re not just doing the one thing that doesn’t need us.

Sheryl: The maximum assistance, your awards should not exceed 50% of your eligible costs. The level of awards is determined by an independent committee. So you can ask for the $5,000 for the Key Presenter. It will be determined how much you get by a committee.

The Community Presenter Assistance, the other category is Community Presenter and the maximum award is $3,000. The eligibility for that is that you have to present three separate events and again they like you have a nice diverse program. You of course have to demonstrate your activity, that you’ve done something the year before that is comparable. That you again adhere to the principal that artists are paid for their work at recognized professional rates.

Actually the Community Presenters Award is really to go towards the artists’ fees unlike the Key Presenter where you could use it to go towards marketing costs. It is specifically for your fees.

Jeremy: That’s actually the major difference between the two. Obviously the money is not that much greater, $5,000 vs. $3,000. We like the $5,000 fee much more for the Key Presenters actually but the main difference is how the money is applied. You have to use it for artists fees that’s how we calculate your formula at the Community Presenters side. It’s based on the artists fees that you’re paying whereas the Key Presenters side, when we had a series of meetings back in the mid-90’s when we created the component, what the Key Presenters said to us is what we really need is marketing money, subscription brochure money, that kind of thing so that’s really what that $5,000 is intended to do. It’s not about renting the hall or paying the fees, it’s really about marketing your series so there is the basic difference.

Sheryl: All right so your assistance for your artists fees, I thought I’d just point that out on page 4 where you are putting who you’re presenting for your proposed season. There is an eligibility [percentage] at the very end of the column, a percentage that you’ll fill out. For Community Presenters, it’s 50% of their artistic fees for BC artists to a maximum of $1,500. It’s 30% for all other Canadian artists so anybody from Alberta, Ontario, you calculate 30% you are eligible.

Jeremy: That’s a change and some of you may remember that we were allowing Alberta artists to be charged at the same rate as BC artists for a number of years. That was based on a pending agreement with Alberta, which we moved over and to and agreed to do and did for a number of years but they never did with their program so we just finally dropped out of it.

Sheryl: Non-Canadian artists are not eligible for funding so please keep in mind when filling this [page 4] out especially if they are one of your three artists as a Community Presenter and especially on the bottom line. If you are only presenting three artists and one of them happens to be a US artist that really is important when you go to figure out how much you are eligible for from the program. If you are only eligible for $2,000, you can only ask for $2,000. You can’t ask for the full amount.

Your award that you receive again can be less than what you asked for. Even if you are eligible for $3,000 and the committee for some reason decides that you aren’t eligible for the full amount, you may only receive what they allocate to you.

Any annual or accumulated surplus must comply with the BC Societies Act and Revenue Canada Guidelines and it should be allocated to the fulfillment of the Societies mandate in subsequent years.

So, I thought we’d just talk a little bit about the application form itself. I know many of you have filled it out. There’s a couple of changes this year. What you’ll notice on the front page is that at the bottom of the page we’re now asking you to give us your Society number, everybody, just so we have it on file absolutely. In some cases what we’ll do is we’ll check to see and make sure that you are actually reporting as a Society, just if we’re not sure, if something has happened to your organization and if you feel so inclined to send us a copy of your report, that’s great too.

Your charitable tax number. We also like to have that so we know whether or not you are eligible for corporate support, that sort of thing. So that is something that’s new this year.

Jeremy: I should just elaborate about the Societies Act, you have to be in good standing, not just registered but in good standing. I hope you all know that you have to file your Annual Reports. We actually found one case last year we’d been funding someone for 16 years who had been dropped off the Societies Act 16 years earlier for not filing their Annual Report and they didn’t know it either.

Sheryl: At some point I might ask you for a copy. It’s a good idea to have a copy. I had somebody last year that didn’t keep a copy so I asked them to get one and send it on. Keep one in your office.

Jeremy: Particularly if you are a volunteer driven organization that you keep copies of everything because you may not be the person doing it next year.

Sheryl: Of course you’ll notice that on the form itself, the phone and fax from last year has changed so it’s a good idea to keep this. I’ll make sure everyone has my new phone and fax numbers and of course, the BC Touring Council’s address has changed so if you are using an old form, you may be using an out of date one.

On page 2, I’ve actually separated out this [questionnaire] you’ll see. Quite often what happened with the questionnaire, and this is a really important part of the application. It gives us such an insight into your season, with your audience, with your communities. This is a chance to tell us what’s going on and we really learn a lot of valuable information from the questionnaire so not filling it out really doesn’t give us a sense of you know, how did it go last year, what were your challenges, who is your audience? are they changing? are there big changes in your audience? Anything you want to add about your community. How is the economic situation affecting your audience? Those things especially with the adjudication committee, really gives us a sense of what is going on. Quite often I have to get back and get you fill this out as it used to be on top of the statistics. It was probably just something people overlooked quite often so we separated that out.

And you’ll notice on the statistics page that what we’ve added this year is, at the very bottom [of the page], we’ve added ticket statistics. Basically we want to know what you charge for a single ticket and we want to know what you charge for series or some people have membership or seasons pass, that sort of thing. This will probably just save us from having to calculate it at the meeting. Basically what are you charging per ticket and then we get a sense of whether your budget is on target so that’s also a new thing.

Just in the budget, very small changes but I’ve added things like ticket printing. This was something that everybody had to make a special line for so what…

Jeremy: You could use that line for surcharges too. If you are on one of those electronic systems where you pay a two-dollar or five dollar surcharge to someone in Calgary.

Sheryl: If you find something that isn’t listed here, each year I try and go through the applications. I see what people have had to scratch out or scratch in somewhere and I try to add it to the budget so you don’t have to make a special column but there are “other” in miscellaneous expenses so you have an opportunity if there is something we don’t have here and you have an expense or revenue then you can add that as well.

I might also mention that these [application forms] are done in Excel and they can definitely be sent to you and what I can do is I can actually customize it. I take your numbers from the year before and I can plonk them in to the 99/00 Actuals so if you want that you can just send me a note saying that I’d like to get the Excel spreadsheets and I can send that to you. It makes it a lot easier and it’s a lot more accurate than just using a calculator would be.

Question: Can you send the attendance [statistics] spreadsheet as well?

Sheryl: I can yes. I can send Statistics, the program budget. The only thing I cannot send is actually the front cover and the reason for that is that we need your original signatures and that’s also the reason we don’t do this [Final Report Form]. We could do this [Final Report Form] however you’d still need to have it printed off and signed. It’s really important.

We can’t send you an award until you actually have both signatures so when you send it in make sure that we’ve got your, first of all tell us who filled out the application. Just in case I have questions and I know some people automatically put the name of the person who is in charge but if you’ve done the application, it’s a good idea to say you’ve done it so I can talk to you directly and of course you put your two signatures here preferably one from the Chair or Treasurer and another Board of Director.

Jeremy: So how would you send those electronically, as a disk or attached as an email.

Sheryl: I would send them attached as an email because I don’t use disks.

Jeremy: The other thing is if you go to our web site I’m not sure about yours but they’ll be two versions up, one will be an Excel version, the other will be a downloadable PDF Form. The PDF Format will download into a useable format that you can put on your computer now. This is a new form of PDF that they’ve got right but if you are downloading the Excel version, you’ve got to download it in the 8 and 12 point font otherwise the formatting just goes to heck right that’s the problem with Excel formats. We will have on-line capacity within two years to fill out on line, which we’ll get there.

On our web site [BCTC] it will probably be done in the next week or so because we’d like to have a day off after this so.

Actually what I wanted to mention is just so you are aware is that I take these applications and I process them into a database so if there is something that is an attachment, it’s quite often difficult if you’ve taken the budget and added a whole extra sheet to it and put all kinds of different categories, it can be difficult for us to transfer all of that over to a database and I just thought I’d mention that so you are aware, that’s what we do. We put it into a booklet for the committee so it streamlines everything into a nice easy format for them to look through.

If they were looking for applications, it would be somewhat difficult and again if you are going to use categories that aren’t on the budget, use the “other” and explain what it is. I often get things under other with an amount that doesn’t explain what it is.

So, I just thought I’d make you aware that we do that.

The applications themselves come with the Final Report form and that it’s double sided and again you need to send this in. It gives us a great sense of how your last season went. We ask you when it happened, who was the artist and how many people did you have at each event so, and you’ll have to also fill this out [page 2 final report] which is your actual budget for last year.

The applications are evaluated on individual merit.

You have to send all of your supporting materials in with your application: your financial statement, the application signed. If you want to send a board list that would be great as well but make sure everything is filled out properly so there’s no delay.

Jeremy: Can I also ask that if you are booking an artist in your series that may be an artist from your region or an artist we may not know about, might not be listed, might not be a normal touring artist, send the bio along just so the jury might have an idea who that artist is and that they qualify.

Question: Does that also apply to groups or choirs?

Jeremy: Yes but bear in mind as Sheryl said earlier that only professional artists are eligible. The definition of professional artist that we use that’s common use at Canada Council is four points to it. The artist is finished basic training not necessarily institutional training but has finished the basic training of their art form, has contributed, done some work for a period of time, has the recognition of peers as a professional artist and would, if it were financially feasible work full time at it. I mean everybody is aware that in many regions or in many art forms, it’s not feasible to work full time at it. You still have to drive taxis and wait tables and stuff like that.

Those are the four basic principals. Most choirs do not pay their singers. 99% of choirs are not paid. In many instances you’ll see the Music Director and the Accompanist are paid, it’s a kind of a grey area. There are some choirs that are accepted as professional, most choirs are not.

Question: Will we be able to submit the name of the proposed performer before we fill out the [application] to know if they apply or not.

Jeremy: You should always run it by Sheryl or anybody in our office, sure, just to check and see that there’s recognition there.

Sheryl: Especially with a choir, I know that in recent years there has been the BC Boys Choir and the Calgary Boys Choir here so if you are planning to book them, keep that in mind. Give us a call and we’ll talk about what you would be eligible for.

Jeremy: Currently the only recognized professional choirs are The Bach Choir, the Cantata Singers and the Vancouver Chamber Choir. Now there’s perfectly legitimate arguments for why not Phoenix? Why not the gay choir? Why not the Boy’s Choir in cases where they are just as good, ah, it’s a point in debate at the present time. Let’s just leave it that.

Sheryl: So, just about your financial statement and I know this has been asked before, your fiscal year. It’s great for us to know when it is and sometimes you can’t send your financial statement in right away because your fiscal year end is June 30th or September 30th but if you have something you can send like a Balance Sheet that would give us a sense of…just in the meantime just until you get your independently prepared. It’s helpful for us to look at during the meeting. So I have actually added that to the application. See list your fiscal year end just so we’re aware of that and if you have your financial statement forthcoming, it’s a good idea to send it in when you have it in our files cause again, it will delay your award payment.

Um..I’ve already talked about that so…

Again I just want to go over that your awards can’t be distributed until you have your Final Report and your application has been signed.

As far as your proposed season goes, I always appreciate if you say that it’s all tentative just letting me know when things have been confirmed.

Some people take confirmed as being contracted which if you have a contract then it’s definitely confirmed. You’ll see here [application] where we say “tentative or confirmed”. If it’s tentative, let us know and when it does become confirmed just send an email saying I have confirmed these people, they are in fact, coming.

The adjudication process is merit based; it’s independently assessed, it’s the primary means of evaluation. How we chose the jury: we basically have a presenter (a community presenter), an artist or artist manager or agent.

Jeremy: and a community presenter

Sheryl: So we have three people who adjudicate the applications. Jeremy and I sit in as well as Joanna, our Executive Director.

Jeremy: non-voting

Sheryl: non-voting yes. When you send in your application form to the office you will receive acknowledgement so you know that it has been received. We actually review it for completeness and accuracy and I will sometimes follow up with you if I find something that is way off in your budget, then it gives us time before the meeting to sort things out.

The evaluation criteria, you’re considered for artistic quality and balance of programming, again if you are just doing one genre, they sort of look at what else could they be doing, the level of other arts presentations in your community, and this is becoming more obvious. Some of the centers that are really growing such as Kelowna, they are having two or three presenters in the area so we’ll look at what the others are doing in the area when adjudicating. If they are filling a need by presenting a certain genre, that’s also taken into consideration. For instance if there is a classical music series, somebody else is doing all folk or world music, those things are all looked at and generally we also know what’s happening in the community. Jeremy is our great resource for that.

We also look at your geographic location and the financial feasibility of your program, the proposed program. So if you are planning to pay an artist $20,000 that is something that would stand out. How are they going to afford this? What does their budget look like?

Demonstrated financial accountability, the extent of public support, certainly looking at both earned and private sector and revenues and attendance at previous performances.

Sheryl: Sorry I keep seeing your hand.

Question: What is the feasibility in terms of someone who might be presenting classical and somebody else folk? Is there a hierarchy of what is more deserving?

Sheryl: No, it’s just taken into consideration so if you are filling, again there is a need or an audience for classical music, they just like to know what other presenters in your community are doing. Obviously you are not both going to present classical music, you’ll be taking each other’s audience so…

Jeremy: When the program started there was only one sponsor in each town pretty much. Now of course as evolution has happened thirty years later, you may have two or three or four or five. Who’s asking us for money? If the people who are asking us for money only do jazz well, is everything else being taken care of. That’s the question the jury asked. If everything else is not being taken care of, then why are you only doing Jazz right, there should be a balance of programming.

Comment: Sometimes the audience for jazz might be greater than that for classical but maybe if everybody just did what was popular then we’d have an absent audience.

Jeremy: We’re not trying to do just what is popular. The program calls for a balance of programming in each community from the days when there was only one. If there’s no balance there, then we look to see if that balance is being fulfilled elsewhere in the community. It’s not a question of which is more popular or hierarchical.

Question: Can I just to follow up on that, you’d only be aware of this if other groups had made applications? So it might be in our community, it is, that we do have other groups and therefore we’re basically classical and jazz. You might not be aware of those other presenters.

Jeremy: We might or we might not. I mean we fund other things in communities besides the concert series. We may be funding your arts council; we may be funding your theatre group, your symphony, art gallery, museum. We get that information so or we may not know, that’s true also so if you’re only doing jazz or classical in your community then tell us why.

Again that questionnaire will give us that insight as to why you are only doing a certain genre. Use that as your selling “why you need that funding for that particular series”.

But again BC Touring Council does have a great resource. We try to get in touch with as many presenters so we aware of what’s going on in their communities and BC Arts Council with their knowledge basically we generally know. There are times when you find out something else is happening but if you know of something then mention it in your application.

The Conditions of assistance are that you must acknowledge that you have received funding in your printed materials and you can go onto to the BC Arts Council [website] at anytime and download the logo and I also send them out with your award so…just make sure those things, the logos are on your posters, your brochures and that sort of thing.

And again, approved awards won’t be paid until written confirmation of your program events are received.

And that’s it. So I’ll take any questions that you have now. Does anybody have anything they want to ask?

Question: When would you get the funds if you were approved?

Sheryl: Generally they arrive in the fall. We send you out a letter in early September [an acknowledgement letter…er…um…] a notification letter of how of the adjudication process went. You will receive a letter saying that you will receive up to a certain amount and then the awards are sent out generally in early October so I know some of your seasons have started by that time.

Comment: Our brochures would be printed.

Sheryl: And your brochures would be printed so if you want to ask.

Jeremy: The adjudication is in August so the only reason it is later is that most of them are conditional at that point in that as far as the events haven’t been confirmed. We can send out cheques with the letter of notification if it’s all confirmed at the time of the application so the notification goes out. It generally takes until the end of September to get the confirmation back on the program, that’s why it’s October but if your program is all set and fixed, you can have a cheque with your notification.

Sheryl: The truth is that Jeremy goes on vacation and I can’t get anything from the office.

Jeremy: The month of August is bad.

[Comment]: I’m in a difficult situation here because the school district hasn’t come down with a budget and basically my whole season relies on what the school district is going to do for us in the way of funding because we are partially funded by them and I may not know this until September or early October as to whether I’m going to bring in any shows this year so it would probably leave me right out of the mix then by the time that comes around.

Jeremy: No I would make an application assuming what is your best-case scenario. If there is collaboration with the school districts and your series is dependent upon obviously many districts are going to be in the same situation this year until things settle out so, I would make the application in what you vision to be the best case scenario and we’ll take it from there.

Comment: There’s going to be a lot of best-case scenarios going on.

Comment: I’ve only been at this for two months and somebody told me that if we hire a local artist who lives in the area, they are not, we can’t pay them out of the funding we get from you. Is that true? Is that correct?

Jeremy: Technically the artist is supposed to be on tour

Sheryl: And professional so if they are doing it as a hobby then again, they wouldn’t be eligible for funding

If you are a Key Presenter and you have one local artist in your series, again they look at your overall program. They want to see what are you doing. Perhaps again explain why you are doing it in your questionnaire. What we’re doing this year is, we’re presenting a local artist to get our local people who support them out.

Comment: She tours, not a problem.

Sheryl: Oh good!

Jeremy: There is no against booking regional artists at all. They just have to meet the criteria, be on tour and be professional. Yeah, we encourage it.

Question: What if for example members of the group, two of them are from BC and the other one lives overseas? Would you sort of make it two thirds if we were approved?

Jeremy: Where do they do their business from?

Comment: Out of BC

Jeremy: Then they’re BC

Comment: Even if one of them doesn’t reside

Jeremy: It’s where they do their business from in the case of a group. In the case of an individual artist, it’s where they file their income tax.

Sheryl: That’s a good point because I often people who..you should really find out where the artist is from. Because then your eligibility percentage will be accurate. In some cases somebody thought it was a BC artist and were eligible for 50% when in fact they were only eligible for 30% and their maximum award was less than $3,000 so if you don’t know, call me. I probably find out for you or we have a great resource, our arts on tour web site and I’d be happy to help you find out where they are from.

Jeremy: There’s a lot of artist directories on line now. You should be able to search and find most.

Sheryl: There’s an artsontour.com web site from the BC Touring Council where you can go find an artist and where they’re from so, that you know for sure.

Anymore questions? No. I just thought I’d share with you a few statistics with you just about the percentage of artists and the disciplines that are being booked in the province.

So last year we had 45% of BC artists that were touring, the year before it was 47 [%] and in 1999-2000 it was 49% so it’s roughly stayed the same. Almost half of the artists that are touring and getting funding through the presenter program are from BC.

Interestingly last year 73% [touring artists] were music, all types of music, 12% was theatre and 5% was dance and then we had 10% variety which includes comedy and other genres that are not [included]… storytelling and those kinds of things that are not classified.

Jeremy: But not dogs

Sheryl: No dogs and pony shows no.

Jeremy: Oh well we actually had someone put there’s in. There’s a dog act out of Calgary that does a number of shows around the Columbia-Kootenay – it’s not eligible.

Your average number of performances per application was 7. Some of you, the community presenters, are presenting more than 3 shows. I think Kitimat was doing more than anybody at 11 shows so although they’re not a Key Presenter they are presenting quite a number and the total artist fees last year was $909,000 so quite a lot.

Total number of performances throughout the province we found out was 325. We had 47 applications last year for funding, the year before we had 50 so we had fewer but because the increased amount for the community presenters up to $3,000, the demand on the program was higher last year.

The number of volunteers we had was 1724. That’s quite a number of people volunteering around the province.

The total attendance to all performances we had from the Final Reports is 137, 905 so, I thought you might be interested to know that.

Anymore questions? Yes.

Question: If we get a grant, is it called a grant, then is it applied directly to a certain concert or to the whole series.

Jeremy: It’s applied to the concerts you asked for.

Comment: Oh I see when we’re

Jeremy: On the community presenter side, the award is given against the fees for the artists you’re hiring so you’re identifying specific artists that you are asking subsidy for.

Sheryl: Anymore?

Jeremy: Can I ask also just to make sure that many folks do more than 3 but they only put 3 in their application cause that’s all they need to qualify. Please give us your whole series just so that we have the data. It’s relevant and important to us making the case.

Question: Even the dog acts

Jeremy: Even the dog acts, we want to know.

Question: Do you want to know the other programs that we run that are not part of the concert series as well?

Jeremy: Sure.

Sheryl: And yes we have actually from your particular [organization] we have known about your festival and competition and that sort of thing so yeah it’s a great idea if you are doing other things with the arts council or society that’s doing other programming.

Jeremy: If you’re an arts council we probably know because you’re probably applying to us as an arts council so but if you are a concert society and you’re doing other things or helping out in other areas, yeah we’d love to know that.

Sheryl: Again the information is also really valuable to BCTC um…because then we find out what’s happening in different communities. A lot of people include some of the challenges and actually the Volunteer Management workshop at Pacific Contact, the pre-conference workshop came out of the Community Presenters Assistance Program applications. Some people included information that they’re running out of volunteers, they needed some help with that area so, it does give us sort of an idea of what needs there are out there, what things are happening, the trends, economic situations of communities, so it’s really valuable to us as well.

So there is a session following this one and it’s the Arts Presentation Canada through Canadian Heritage so, I think we’ll wrap up here so they can get set up.

Jeremy: I’ll just say that are there any other questions about other aspects of the Council that you want to ask about? Anybody?

Question: Why isn’t children’s performances funded?

Jeremy: Children’s performances if they are part of an overall balance is fine.

Sheryl: They’re okay.

Jeremy: If you’ve got one or two in your 10 series that’s fine. What longstanding one is not purely children’s series because generally they have tended to pay for themselves so it’s a fairly renewal resource market and as someone put it the other day, there will also be five-year olds for the singer/songwriters, right? So there’s less need there but also it’s um..it tended to dominate in certain communities if there was a children’s series and an adult series and we were only doing one. The idea was to try and get them together to do a mixed series, a family series rather than…

Question: We did a kid’s show earlier this season this year and donated the profits from that back to the local kids choir, would you still want me to put that information to the application, you know we didn’t basically make a penny off it because we donated all the profits.

Sheryl: Yes because it demonstrates you are doing activity even if it’s not used for the Community Presenters Assistance Program. It would be great to know yeah.

Anymore questions?

Thank you very much for coming and again if you want to contact me at any point, I’m always available for you so..thanks.

Clapping…