September always feels more like the beginning of a year than New Year’s Eve here. We have wrapped up our summer season, and seen so many of our youth staff back to school or to new Post Secondary or other adventures, and are deep in planning both for our fall programs and for next year. This year, perhaps more than any other, we are thinking about the future.
We always think about how who we are and how we are, together matters. But we are also thinking about how what legacy we want to leave, matters. Both at Ross Creek and Two Planks, and also as people who live in Canada right now.
We are so thrilled when we watch the kids and youth at camp exploring their creativity together. When they have the chance to be children at play, with creative prompts and new skill development and also out in the environment – gobbling up all the berries and even the broccoli in the garden. When they become more resilient through being in a creative space together and managing their in-person, human interactions and expectations of each other.
We are so moved when the people whose families have been here since time immemorial and newcomers share cultural experiences and find meaning in being here together.
We are honoured when people take time from their other lives to come up this road and gather together to share in a cultural moment that might describe a little more about what it means to be human.
We are, however, worried about the future in new ways. Ross Creek and Two Planks are both funded through various means that work together and generally keep us going, though with little room to manoeuvre. Two Planks is funded through the Canada Council for the Arts, and both Ross Creek and Two Planks have some general operating funding through the Province. The rest of our income is made up of private donations and earned revenue (ticket sales, camp registrations, residencies, etc).
In return, we spend ALL of our income in the community. Last year, on a budget of $1.5 million, we spent $869,000 on employment, through salaries and wages, including many youth, and direct payment to artists and creators. The rest went to all the things that make it possible to operate, most often spent within a 100 km radius.
But we need to become more resilient. Our donations have fallen this year, and our earned revenue is not keeping pace to offset those changes, or to offset the changes in the costs of art materials, food, repairs and all the other things that go into making all of our work a reality. We work hard to ensure that our programs are equitable, to keep costs low, and ensure there are bursaries so that a family’s income doesn’t determine their ability to participate.
Further, funding for the Canada Council for the Arts, which makes up a significant portion of the Two Planks budget, is in jeopardy. It is venture capital for the arts, investing in work that because of our country’s size and population wouldn’t be possible otherwise. It is what started our organization, 34 years ago – a small seed that has now grown to the work you see on our outdoor stages. Canadian Heritage, where we hope to gain some funding this fall for further upgrades to make us more climate resilient and more accessible, is also under threat of cuts. Ross Creek was created through investment from Heritage.
The federal government is proposing cuts because the world is unprecedented, but in the non profit cultural world, we are on the front lines of those changes. There has been no significant federal investment in culture since before COVID, and the inflationary pressures on organizations like ours mean that we have slid backward.
The arts matter. What we do matters. Arts and culture make meaning out of the world, tell us where we come from, who we are now, and can help us determine, for ourselves as a country, what our future can be.
Ross Creek and Two Planks need your help. We don’t normally do a direct and urgent request for donations but we need to ensure that we can weather any storms and that means building our resilience now – that includes non-designated donations (wherever most needed), and specific donations that allow us to ensure access to programs for the benefit of all our community. You can direct your donation wherever means the most to you, or you can leave it to us to determine the best way to invest in our community through our work.
If you can donate, please do so today. It matters. Whatever you can contribute is very helpful as we map out the next five years, ensuring access, building capacity, building our mitigation plans for climate change and accessibility, and looking at long term plans for Ross Creek and Two Planks to be here in a generation.
We need your help to advocate for the arts in Canada.
Please sign the letter.
We are proud to join the non-partisan Canadian Arts Coalition to fight for the arts at a time when Canada needs it most. We believe it is important for arts’ sake as well as for the impact it can have on the mental, physical, and social well-being of people in Canada, for its importance as an economic generator for our communities, and also because it is how we reflect who we are, both to people across Canada and around the world.
The Federal Government had promised to invest in Canada’s cultural institutions during the election campaign, but now is asking those same funders to look at a devastating 15% cut to their budgets. On this Labour day, it is also important to note that 850,000 Canadians are cultural workers, and most of them live in financial precarity.
While they are looking at cuts, the reality is that the Federal government will be making investments across Canada and we need to ensure that they know one of the investments they must make is in Arts and Culture.
In difficult times, we need to ensure artists show us the future we can make together in Canada. And we need to ensure that it isn’t just artists asking for this support but those who come to our shows, to our programs, who have kids in camp, or who volunteer.
We need your voices.
We urge you to join our letter campaign. It takes only a few seconds to make the case for smart new investment in Arts and Culture in Canada this year. We don’t have time to wait. Lack of investment and/or cuts could have an immediate impact on our organisation, and a generational impact on culture in Canada.
We hope that moments like the one you or your family experience when you come to Ross Creek or Two Planks show the importance of humans gathering, being creative, and expressing ourselves in ways that reflect our essential humanity, all in a shared moment.
Here is one email we received at the close of our theatre season:
Thank you for all the work, talent, effort, sweat and energy. Productions like this are so unique and so much needed, it’s hope for the world, for talent, for beauty, for theatre, for humanity. It shows the relevance of storytelling, of people coming together. It shows how important it is to keep fighting for high quality, for the arts, for community, for nature. Thank you so, so much.
Please add your voice. It matters.
There are so many people to thank for their contribution to what was an artistically and programmatically wonderful summer. None of it would be possible without the staff, the artists, the volunteers, the sponsors, the audiences, the donors, the camp families who support their kids’ creativity. It takes a village. And we are so grateful.
With love, and inexpressible gratitude,
Chris and Ken
