Toronto's Culture Production Boom

[afransen]

I think you can use windows snipping tool or similar to take screenshots.

 

[rdaner]

Dark Slope Studios has opened on Pharmacy just south of Eglinton East. I think that there may be a few other studios out that way.

Dark Slope | Virtual Production Focused Studio

Place website meta description here

www.darkslope.com

 

[Northern Light]

A good podcast by Bill Brioux talking with a former Corus executive on how the industry is changing with a focus on the recent events of Rogers poaching rights to HGTV and Food etc.

THIS WEEK’S PODCAST: Food fight at Corus/Rogers result of removal of genre protection – brioux.tv

brioux.tv

 

[Northern Light]

Something different; the U.S. version of 'Top Chef' will film its next series entirely in Canada.

‘Top Chef’ Heads to Canada for Season 22

Here's something to cheer aboot: Bravo's next season of "Top Chef" will be set in Canada.

variety.com

Toronto will definitely be a player, however, where the show normally sticks to one city/area until the finale, I'm under the impression the show will actually tour the country a bit; federal dollars in play subsidizing this of course, the argument will be tourism. (backdrop vistas, plus culinary tourism).

 

[Northern Light]

A piece in The Hollywood Report interviews TIFF honcho Cameron Bailey.

The news in the piece is that TIFF has secured 17M to launch a 'market', in conjunction with TIFF starting in 2026. By a market, I mean a formal set-up for the buying and selling of films and their rights.

The idea is to building Canadian film, TIFF's profile and to foster tourism. Should TIFF achieve its objectives, they would increase the number of industry players who come to Toronto in the Festival season from 5,000 today to 12,000.

Cameron Bailey Talks Toronto Film Fest’s Grand Market Plans, Rekindling China Connections

The TIFF head touched down at the Shanghai International Film Festival as part of a world tour promoting a new initiative he hopes will "bring the world to Canada."

www.hollywoodreporter.com

Excerpts from the above:

For the rest, follow the link.

 

[rdaner]

Loving that Denis Villeneuve is the hottest director in the world right now and much of the money for his films is actually spent in Montreal/Toronto. So was surprised when Enemy popped up on Netflix as I hadn’t heard of it! So many Toronto scenes!

 

[Dan416]

I think I saw Enemy either at TIFF or maybe at the Varsity theatre. I don't recall being overly impressed but I enjoyed seeing Toronto (and Mississauga) on the big screen.

 

[rdaner]

An article has mentioned that Cinespace is about to start 3 new soundstages at 8 Unwin but I can’t find any information on
CofA or a Google search. From The Hollywood Reporter:

 

[Northern Light]

An article has mentioned that Cinespace is about to start 3 new soundstages at 8 Unwin but I can’t find any information on
CofA or a Google search. From The Hollywood Reporter:

View attachment 595800

That, is this:

Cinespace to Expand Production Infrastructure in Port Lands to Better Serve Toronto | Cinespace

Cinespace selected through Request for Proposal Process to develop PortsToronto's Second Marine Terminal Building

cinespace.com

I don't think any additional zoning is required at this point, but I could be wrong on that.

No building permits have been applied for as yet.

 

[rdaner]

Slightly off topic but I recently watched ‘Station 11’ on Gem and loved it! The main hall of the OSC was used for a lot of scenes. And the lead has gone on to a really great career.

 

[jje1000]

Ultimately it all comes down to the cost of living, the cost of business, and the amount of spare cash the public has on hand to enjoy these events- there are very few cheap spaces left in this city, and it will always be more expensive to create these spaces from scratch (i.e. Artscape).

Personally I think that creating a more viable business model via reduction in regulations (esp. sound, which killed the Matador) and tax breaks to encourage the reemergence of these spaces may help as well.

Toronto’s cultural scene has been shredded. Can this ambitious, multimillion-dollar plan help reverse the crisis?​

Adjusted for inflation, the Toronto Arts Council’s budget has declined since 2020 while artists have faced rising costs, a Star analysis has found.
Updated Nov. 16, 2024

Toronto’s new cultural action plan, which proposes a 10-year road map for the local arts industry, doesn’t mince words when describing the current state of the sector: “Culture in Toronto is in a state of crisis,” it says at the top of the 76-page report.

It’s a crisis that was fomented under a perfect storm. First came the COVID-19 pandemic, which shuttered arts organizations across the city, leaving companies that relied on a steady stream of in-person audiences in a tailspin. As the sector slowly reopened, these same organizations were then met with inflationary pressures and a cost-of-living crisis that led to a mass exodus of artists from the sector. At the same time, arts funding across all levels of government has remained stagnant, while other sources of revenue from private and corporate donors have largely evaporated.

The numbers are striking. During the pandemic, roughly 13 per cent of all live music venues in the city permanently closed. All were licensed clubs or small venues with an audience capacity of under 300. Most of these closures never made the news. But this quiet toll has extended to other parts of the cultural sector, too: shuttering performance venues, artist studios and rehearsal venues throughout the city, rendering the industry a shell of its former self.

The city’s ambitious new action plan, which replaces a previous iteration from 2011, aims to reverse those trends. Among its key priorities is a multimillion-dollar proposal to boost funding to the Toronto Arts Council, the city’s primary cultural grants body. If passed, it would represent a generational increase to the organization’s budget.

But questions remain about whether the funding injection would actually help the industry to recover after nearly half a decade of cuts and setbacks. Proponents of the multi-year plan also face an uphill battle winning political and public support amid competing visions about what role the city should play to support the beleaguered cultural sector.

“It’s a pretty difficult time to be a new company right now, trying to create something sustainable in the arts,” said Victor Pokinko, the executive producer of Toronto’s Bad Hats Theatre, which is still relatively new to the scene having been established less than a decade ago. “We’re having to be scrappy about it, relying on the funding that exists but also trying to figure out new models for sustainability that other companies haven’t had to deal with in the past.”

The recommendation in the city’s new cultural action plan would see the Toronto Arts Council’s grants budget increased by $2 million each year over the next five years, bringing it to over $30 million by 2029. The increases would also be pegged to inflation.
If adopted, the proposal would fulfil a key pledge of Mayor Olivia Chow’s 2023 election campaign. It would also come after years of dogged lobbying by the council, pressing city councillors to increase its funding.

Toronto’s cultural scene has been shredded. Can this ambitious, multimillion-dollar plan help reverse the crisis?

Adjusted for inflation, the Toronto Arts Council’s budget has declined since 2020 while artists have faced rising costs, a Star analysis has found.

www.thestar.com

Some Reddit comments:

There was a quote I read long ago, I wish I could remember it better, that some of the art and music from the past that we love today was made possible BECAUSE while musicians and stuff were jobless and struggling to make ends meet, you could still get a bunch of them in an apartment together and spend all day jamming out and writing songs.

Meanwhile, people with full-time jobs are STILL struggling to make ends meet but they're also working all day and coming home to a condo that can barely hold themselves and most likely to exhausted after work to create.

This is it exactly. I've worked at three different art co ops downtown (artists paying for a space to work cooperatively on individual projects) and none are around anymore. One that lasted did so by moving far out.

Artists and musicians are pretty humble people: we will live in pretty poor conditions as long as we can do what we love....and Toronto can't even provide that anymore.

I read a book about the indie scene in the early 00's (Hearts on Fire by Michael Barclay) and this came up constantly. Montreal was the most obvious but even in Toronto and Vancouver there used to be cheap places you could rent back then. My favourite example- Feist and Peaches were roommates in a cheap flat on Queen West scraping by doing crazy art performances together before both of them blew up. No way you could make that work these days.

Nearly every single small and medium venue that would host alternative music of any kind also shut down.

For the Meta/Hardcore/Punk scene it was the Big Bop (Cathedral/Reverb/Holy Joe's) closing down that really killed it. After that the Annex shut down, Poor Alex Theater, and a few others. There's nothing to do in Toronto. It has to be the most soulless city I've been to, it wasn't like that before.

You say that but there are still a lot of small venues in Toronto and the scenes here are actually doing pretty good all things considered. We've had new venues re-open/open like the Concert Hall (former Masonic Temple) and Adelaide Hall, both of which are owned independently from Live Nation.

You even mentioned the Poor Alex Theatre, where they shut down at their new location but it turned into the Wiggle Room and The Hard Luck afterwards, the former is a dance club and the latter is your usual dive-y venue (that doesn't allow stage diving cause people broke too many lights, monitors, the ceiling etc).

The primary issue is still the commodification of housing and absurd commercial real estate costs. It's just a cycle that inevitably strangles itself and the city.

https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/1gu8nbl/torontos_cultural_scene_has_been_shredded_can

 

[rdaner]

One solution.

A Markham, Ont. arts hub reimagines the industrial park

Odessa Paloma Parker visits Industrial Arts, which aims to fosters an artistic community in an unlikely environment

www.theglobeandmail.com

 

[jje1000]

One solution.

A Markham, Ont. arts hub reimagines the industrial park

Odessa Paloma Parker visits Industrial Arts, which aims to fosters an artistic community in an unlikely environment

www.theglobeandmail.com

I think it'll be interesting to see an outward expansion of the arts into the outer suburbs, but I do think that the car-centric nature does work against it a bit (more limited movement, more controlled zoning, less spontaneity), while inner city areas that have barely entered the scene like Geary Ave are already being redeveloped. Hopefully I'm proven wrong and like the strip malls in Scarborough providing spaces for ethnic cuisine, this form of adaptive reuse can prove more enduring.

Also not to place Toronto in isolation, Montreal and much of Canada is facing the same issues with gentrification and the loss of venues- but may offer some possible solutions in terms of making life easier for small venues:

The unofficial slogan of Turbo Haüs, a bar and music venue in Montreal’s Latin Quarter, screams buyer beware to prospective neighbours: “Cheap booze, heavy music, hail Satan.”

Somehow, that fair warning hasn’t stopped the people next door from complaining about the noise. When the space was closed during COVID-19 a landlord turned the adjoining building into student housing, and now the satanic volume of hardcore bands gets in the way of studying for finals.

It’s a microcosm of the forces draining vitality from Montreal’s fabled nightlife, says bar co-owner Sergio Da Silva. The pandemic and creeping gentrification have dealt a one-two punch to bars and clubs in a city synonymous with partying and the artistic ferment that comes with it.

The closing of century-old concert hall La Tulipe in September, after a court victory for a noise-sensitive neighbour and real estate investor, served as a wake-up call for many Montrealers – “a perfect example,” said Mr. Da Silva, “of developers running roughshod over cultural institutions.”

Noise complaints and rising rents killed many of the core venues of that scene such as Le Cagibi and Le Divan Orange. Montreal has seen the same boom in housing costs as the rest of Canada in the last 15 years, increasing costs for small businesses and perhaps creating more sensitive neighbours. (If you’re paying $2,000 a month for a one-bedroom apartment, you’ll want it to be quiet at night.)

Advocacy groups like MTL 24/24 have been calling for policy changes to protect bars and venues from pesky neighbours. On Wednesday, the mayor gave them some of what they want, including the right to apply for later closing times in some circumstances (past the usual 3 a.m.) and a $2.5-million fund for soundproofing.

How Montreal’s fabled nightlife lost its spark

Figures released in September show that a lower share of bar and restaurant spending in Montreal happens at night than in any other big Canadian city, including Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto

web.archive.org

 

[christiesplits]

This is consistent with what I've heard from friends in the film industry.

Canadian film and TV production down nearly 20%, matching pre-pandemic levels​

Canadian film and TV production down nearly 20%, matching pre-pandemic levels

Hampered by Hollywood strikes and declining Canadian commissions, industry generated $9.58-billion in 2023-24

www.theglobeandmail.com

The $9.58-billion in shows and movies being filmed between April, 2023, and March, 2024, was in line with the pre-pandemic 2019-20 fiscal year, but much lower than the $11.75-million worth of Canadian production in 2022-23.

In its annual Profile report on the Canadian screen industry, released Thursday, the CMPA said that English-language Canadian commissioning slowed down more than the French side of the industry. It also found that smaller production companies as well as children’s TV and animation producers were disproportionately hit by the trend.

In the U.S., the production-data platform ProdPro has reported a similar downturn, including a 37-per-cent drop in projects being filmed in the first half of 2024 versus the first half of 2022 – the most recent comparable period not affected by the Hollywood strikes.