Roger Gaudet, Head of the Theatre Section of the Canada Council for the Arts, recently released a draft document regarding a proposed revision to the Theatre Section’s Operating Grants to Professional Theatre Organizations program, and provides the rationale for the changes.
This document (provided in both official languages) has been sent to all of the theatre companies currently supported by the program, as well as to theatre organizations that are potentially eligible to the program. The Theatre Section undertook a cross-Canada consultation tour to meet with theatre artists from theatre companies in the major urban centres to gather their feedback and questions on the proposed changes. The Section also held two conference call meetings (one in each official language) for theatre artists outside of the urban centres.
While these community consultations were extremely valuable in getting feedback and explaining the proposal, the Theatre Section will continue to gather feedback on the proposed revision from the community, through letters and e-mails until the end of 2011.
Early in the new year the Section will be presenting the feedback to an Advisory Committee of theatre peers and discussing a final version of the revised program, scheduled to be launched in March of 2013.
The document has two parts: in PART 1, the recent history of the program is laid out along with objectives set for the program revision. This includes constants that the Section wishes to maintain, along with future goals it wishes to attain. The context within which the program is to function is explained.
In PART 2, the proposed program revisions structures is described: the components, the objectives of each component, the eligibility criteria and the assessment criteria. This is the part with which the theatre community will deal directly, accompanied by guidelines and an application form, once the program is up and running in 2013. The structure of the components and the detail of the criteria and objectives will underline the steps the Theatre Section is taking to achieve its objectives for the program revision.
Read the entire document here: CPAF – Theatre Revisions
Canadian Public Arts Funders (CPAF) members, or their officers involved in theatre programs, are welcome to contact Roger Gaudet directly at 1-800-263-5588, ext. 5480, or via email at roger.gaudet@canadacouncil.ca if they have any questions regarding this proposed revision.
