Oilsands arts funding dries up
City groups caught by surprise as Syncrude 'narrows focus' to health, education
Todd Babiak, The Edmonton Journal
There is a photograph, on the Nextfest website, of the Roxy Theatre marquis. On the marquis, bright in the June sunlight, are the words: "The Syncrude Next Generation Arts Festival."
No more.
Syncrude has stopped sponsoring arts and cultural events in Edmonton.
"This is a sudden blow and surprising from our point of view," says Bradley Moss, artistic director of Theatre Network and the founder of Nextfest. "We achieved something really unique in our country that is now being emulated in smaller forms in Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver."
Nextfest is a popular showcase for young playwrights, performers, musicians and visual artists, and one of the official entries into Edmonton's summer festival season. Syncrude was the founding sponsor.
In 2007, other recipients of Syncrude arts and culture sponsorships were the Citadel Theatre and the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.
The company's logo remains on the Citadel website as a "Corporate Partner" and on the major sponsor section of the ESO site as the "Title Sponsor" of the Education Concert Series -- Syncrude Symphonic Encounters for students in grades 7 to 12, a $12,000 investment.
"It's really unfortunate and disheartening," says Marc Carnes, director of development at the ESO. "We've had a long history with Syncrude, and a great relationship. We really didn't see this coming."
Moss says Nextfest, a smaller and therefore more vulnerable event, is scrambling to find a new financial partner for 2008. He says he wasn't given advance notice by the oilsands giant. It's sad, he says, "that we are not even in a position to say thanks for all that (they have) done."
Syncrude spent $4.3 million on its Community Investment Program in 2007, in Edmonton and Fort McMurray. About five per cent of that money went to arts and culture, says spokesman Alain Moore. "We have a new focus as we go forward," says Moore.
The company will redirect its Edmonton expenditures to health and education. "We wanted to basically narrow our focus and increase our impact on a few key areas rather than casting a wider net."
The second goal of "The Spirit of Alberta," the cultural policy released by Premier Ed Stelmach shortly before the election call, is to "encourage greater private charitable giving to non-profit organizations." It's a wise goal. The disconnect between weak cultural funding by the provincial government since the end of the Lougheed era and scant tax advantages to corporations that choose to support the arts has been devastating to the province's cultural sector. In Europe, the state invests in culture. In the U.S., the state invests some and corporations and philanthropists invest a lot, to shelter profits and improve their communities.
The provincial government, which has hardly been a leader in this sector, can't force corporations to invest in arts and culture. Financial details concerning Stelmach's Community Spirit Program will be released with the 2008 budget, if the Conservatives win the election.
Of course, this isn't an economic issue for Syncrude. Despite the fuss around the new royalty regime, profits in the oilsands rose 18 per cent to a record $23 billion this year.
And it's only getting better. According to the Conference Board of Canada, higher royalties will have precisely no adverse effect on investment.
For Syncrude, this is a marketing issue and a social issue. The company has never been an exemplary supporter of arts and culture, but under former CEO Eric Newell, arts mattered. Community support, however meagre, should matter. Thirty years ago, Alberta taxpayers saved Syncrude from collapse, and public grants, loans, tax concessions and a generous -- and scandalous -- royalty regime have made the organization a spectacularly profitable enterprise.
Moore says this decision is final. Syncrude, a coalition of large investors like the Canadian Oil Sands Trust, Conoco-Phillips and Imperial Oil, will continue modestly supporting arts and culture in its hometown, Fort McMurray.
"Quality of life is the big issue here," Moore says.
Meanwhile, one of the Syncrude investors, for the first time in its history, has decided to increase its investment in Edmonton's cultural scene in a big way just as Syncrude exits. On Feb. 29, the Calgary-based Imperial Oil Foundation will announce a $300,000 donation to the Art Gallery of Alberta for educational programming.
Health and education are laudable goals. More and more researchers are suggesting that art and culture, and a vibrant urban environment, are essential to community health and education. Imperial Oil seems to understand the connection.
Syncrude, not so much.
© The Edmonton Journal 2008