Toronto filmmaker Danis Goulet's short film Wakening is screened as part of a double bill of her work on the opening night of the Toronto Outdoor Picture Show, at Fort York, on June 22, 2023.Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias/Supplied
After 14 years of combining two summertime essentials – pictures and parks – into a citywide series that attracts about 25,000 movie lovers every season, the head of the Toronto Outdoor Picture Show is sounding the alarm over the festival’s future.
TOPS, which screens free films at four parks throughout the summer, has traditionally operated on a patchwork of funding. This includes project grants from each level of government, plus arts council funding, corporate sponsorships, individual donations, and concession sales that have enabled the charitable organization to run what artistic and executive director Emily Reid calls a “very tightly budgeted festival.” This year, TOPS has found that many of its traditional funding sources have dried up.
“There’s never been a moment like this where we’re in the middle of the summer and we know the results to all our funding applications and it’s all bad news,” says Reid, who notes that TOPS needs $70,000 in additional funding to cover its annual budget of about $570,000 and plan its 2025 edition.
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“We don’t want to join the chorus of arts organizations sounding the alarm, but it’s by far the absolute worst it has ever been.”
Screenings take place in different corners of the city, including Christie Pits Park and Corktown Common. According to Reid, the costs of running a live-arts festival have increased, because of inflation and audience growth, at the same time that financial support has evaporated.
Government funding that TOPS had received in the past has not come through, including a federal tourism grant that is oversubscribed. And a grant for which the registered charity assumed that it would be a natural fit – the new $15-million My Main Street initiative from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario – was rejected. Meanwhile, private sponsorship has fallen sharply. Prepandemic, TOPS had corporate support of $90,000 annually. That figure sits at $35,000 this year.
“It’s not that we’ve lost operational funding – we’ve never been entitled to it, and every year we start from the ground up in applying for grants,” says Reid. “But the funding envelopes have all been cut or oversubscribed. All of a sudden, the bottom is falling out from under us.”
Reid founded TOPS in 2011 as a response to the lack of public-arts programming in public spaces. It is one of several Toronto arts organizations that have found themselves struggling for support in recent months, including Hot Docs, Luminato, the CONTACT Photography Festival and the Reel Asian and ImagineNATIVE film festivals.
In a bid to sustain operations, TOPS has raised concession prices and launched a grassroots-donation campaign, while Reid is working to find piecemeal funding solutions to fill the gaps. “I’m hoping to get 14 different $5,000 solutions,” she says.
“Our programming will be delivered until the end of the season, but we might not have an organization by the fall,” warns Reid, who leads a year-round staff of four, which swells to 20 during the summer. “With culture non-profits at a breaking point, the city won’t have much programming, free or paid, to lean on soon.”
This year’s edition of TOPS runs through Aug. 25.