Big headline problem. This is not a story about weak ticket sales, it's a story about the appalling gaming policy of this government.

What on earth does it take for our so-called Families First government to put its money where its mouth is?

When the Kelowna Women's Shelter, the Children's Festival and scores of other vital community organizations are dead or dying due to gaming cuts, but our government is spending $563 million to put a butt-ugly roof on our stadium, their priorities could not be more clear.

Please write your MLA (google MLA finder) and Christy Clark and tell them to reinstate full gaming grants and eligibility TODAY.

?Sandy Garossino is right. This is about BC Gaming cuts, and not about ticket sales. It's also about Canadian Heritage cuts and other cuts from both the current BC and Canadian governments. If federal and provincial governments don't make changes to their so-called "Families First" policies soon, which really means their corporate buddies first, we will soon be holding funeral processions for arts organizations, women's shelters, children and youth groups. And in only a very few cases - TELUS - for instance, are we seeing the corporate sector fill the void. With the coming tax cuts for the private sector, one would hope that they would step up and ante up.

This is a story about the VICF refusing to change with the times. You can't charge $22 a ticket for a 45-minute show (that's 66 bucks for a mom and two small kids), then wonder why you're not selling tickets.

If the board can't make the fest affordable, members need to make tough decisions: use less international talent and rely on the abundance of amazing local performers; bring in bigger sponsors and thank them properly; or run the fest in the evenings, so that working families have a fighting chance of getting there.

While arts funding is a small part of this story, the real fest-killer is that a longtime, major Vancouver nonprofit is so completely out of touch with the families (and schools) it's supposed to serve.

My suggestion is that $10 is the absolute maximum you chould charge for a ticket - with $5 being a better goal. That's still $20 for a family to see one short performance, and is still out of reach of many Vancouver families.

If the VICF goes under, I hope it opens a space for a more financially realistic, and frankly a more fun festival to open in its place.

Whatever the reality of VICF ticket pricing, it is irresponsible and destructive, let alone unnecessary, for the BC Gov't to treat organizations in this way. To notify the VICF that such a major portion of its funding is being taken away 18 days before it opens means that they have no way to compensate through restructuring (sure, maybe including changing the nature of the festival). This timing guarantees that they can't respond progressively, leaving ticket sales as their only hope.

This verges into corruption when you take into account that what's left of the BC Gaming Funds program (started to justify massive gov't investment in gambling) has been promised to children's programs. Does VICF not fit this mandate? Are they reducing the amount of gaming funds further while expanding the number and size of casinos?

Dear Please
The Festival has evening shows this year check out their website - www.childrensfestival.ca
Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings

I have to agree with "Please" I am only a mom of 1 and last year I had no job at the time, I desperately wanted to take my daughter, since I have so many fond memories of the festival from when I was a child. Only to find that I had to pay $20 for my daughter too... I actually had to go back home because I simply could not afford to go in. I understand government cuts may be largely responsible for this, and I feel that yes, people should speak out and contact the local MLA in order to correct this. BUT, maybe if the children's festival lowered their ticket prices to make it more affordable for low to mid income families with more than 1 child, maybe they might sell more tickets!

With a fair amount of experience on both sides of the border, I don't quite know how to react to this article. On the one hand, the fact that the BC government shows such blatant disregard for families in their allocation of funds -- in this instance as with the daycare crisis in the province that they do nothing to help -- just tells me the current government is completely out of touch.

But on the other hand, any nonprofit that relies on the province for the funding to keep it alive, especially after the last two or three years of budget / gaming cuts, is naive at best. Seriously, there are no donors in this province that could be cultivated to keep the festival alive? Maybe stop writing grants you know aren't likely to be funded and start cultivating donors, or try to attract working families so they'll support the festival. After spending a fair amount of my adult life working with nonprofits in the States, I've always been amazed at how naive Canadian nonprofits are w/r/t government funding. Don't want your funding to vary according to the whims of the provincial government? Cultivate other funding sources. I find it hard to believe that donors would turn away a long-established organization targeting families.

Ticket prices have gone up for all arts organizations in BC in direct correlation to both governments of BC and Canada funding cuts. Make no mistake about it, the fault of the Children’s Festival running into financial problems lies with the BC and Canadian governments and their Draconian funding cuts. This has little to do with ticket sales and I believe the Children’s Fest should focus on that fact.

Let’s not forget the millions being spent on that ugly roof at BC Stadium. Why is that project being privileged over the 78,000 jobs in the arts in BC, over arts and social service programs to children, youth and battered women?

Private sector funding has gone down significantly due to the economic crisis. Most BC-based corporations are more concerned with lining the pockets of their investors than in ensuring the health and growth of a civil society. There are exceptions to that rule but far too few, the exceptions being TELUS, Vancity, Coast Capital Savings and perhaps a very few others. The big banks could do much better but are all focused on Toronto where their corporate offices are located or on larger, splashier events. After all, their philanthropy has more to do with marketing that charity.

BC and Canadian arts organizations should *never* be compared to the U.S. Our tax system here does not give private sector or individual donors a very good tax break at all compared to the U.S. In the U.S., it’s dollar for dollar – here at best it’s 27%. That’s it. And it’s not as if artists and others from the charitable sector haven’t been lobbying for better tax breaks for DECADES with no concessions from either the Chretien Libs or Harpers CONS.

Also there is the problem of not many head offices of large corporations being based in Vancouver or anywhere in BC for that matter. In addition, there is not a real spirit and culture of philanthropy coming from the vast majority of those in the BC private sector. Sure there are exceptions but they are rare.

The corporate sector, with their massive tax breaks have not stepped up to the plate to fill the void. The federal and provincial governments with their patronage of the private sector, has given great privileges to those corporations. It’s not artists and those in the charitable sector that have a real sense of entitlement - it’s the directors and officers of the large corporations with their $200,000 salaries per year and their disproportional tax breaks.

Most Artistic Directors and General Managers of professional arts organizations that I know, many in their 50s and 60s, survive on incomes averaging around $30,000 or less, work 70 – 100 hours a week, no benefits, no real holidays. And we are serving a culturally divese, multi-generational community, and serving it with love and enthusiasm.

Let’s be pragmatic when we look at what has happened here. Comparisons are ridiculous in an age in which BC artists have suffered the *largest cuts of any sector and any arts community* in this country.

All this dialogue reminds me of the debate around whether the Kids Fest should even have corporate sponsors back in 2000 when I began as its Artistic and Executive Director. At that time people saw how important public funding was to the events existence. It has come a long way since then in terms of generating significant sponsorships at various levels, including cultivating individual donations. This hasn't changed the fact that tickets have always been subsidized to the tune of $36 - $40 per person, and that a festival of this nature needs public funding to ensure that ticket prices are affordable to the majority of families. Funders need to keep in mind that Festival production is no cheaper because the audience is pint sized - when others can charge much more for tickets the kids fest has made sure it didn't - until this year when their federal and provincial funding was cut. The result - ticket sales are down because they are no longer affordable - a direct demonstration of the need for increased public funding. It is also not the case that presenting International companies make it more expensive, as most other civilized countries actually fund their artists with travel support. To deal with this kind of drastic reduction in funding in such a short space of time is next to impossible, even when you cut out the cost of building a village in Vanier Park! It took 9 years to reduce it's former deficit of $175,000 to $30,000 only to have this new deficit created by disinterest on the federal and provincial fronts. This event has been copied around the world and it would be a very unfortunate legacy of the post-olympic funding cuts in the year of Vancouver's 125th anniversary to see it end. The festival has survived teacher's strikes, civic strikes, bus strikes, sewer construction, car seat regulations, education funding reductions, regulating against asking for field trip funding from parents and of course rainy and even stormy weather.... now it seems to be the government's turn to rain on this 34 year old parade. So I too urge people do whatever they can to support what is seen around the world as a vital part of Canadian Culture. Donate, buy tickets, write letters - but don't be silent and just let it disappear.

@ Marianne,

Your experience south of the border may suggest that there is a deep well of donors here in Vancouver for the Children's Festival. Please believe those of us who have spent decades fund-raising in the non-profit sector here--there is not.

Vancouver probably has one of the lowest head-office rates per capita in Canada. You can pretty much count the number of major head offices here on the fingers of two hands--at most. That means that support from the corporate sector is just not as robust as in other cities. It is the same with our philanthropic sector. We are a city where the usual suspects are expected to fund the VAG, the opera, the ballet, major theatre, all the small and large arts organizations, to say nothing of the health, social services, and education sectors. These stalwart supporters have been incredible, but the well is running dry. As the cuts are felt everywhere, strength is draining away from our communities.

The depth is just not there. The issue goes broader than gaming grants, but I have focused my comments there because of the shocking situation surrounding that area.

Alberta takes in slightly more revenue from gaming than we do ($1.4 billion compared with our $1.1 biillion), yet manages to provide almost 3 times as much funding to their non-profit sector than we do--some $323 million compared to our paltry $120 million. On a per capita basis, Alberta's gaming grants fund non-profits about $4 for every dollar BC does.

Alberta has honoured the traditional entitlement of non-profits to a percentage of revenues derived from the gaming sector. Alberta non-profits have a guaranteed entitlement to gaming revenues (around 24%), while the BC government basically raids funds from the sector to fund its own vanity projects, like a retractable roof on BC Place Stadium.

There is much more to be said here about the federal and BC Arts Council situation. The bottom line is that the BC government has fallen for the tax trap--the notion that taxes must be endlessly cut. This leaves them no alternative but to become reliant on gaming revenues for basic services. It strains public policy by making the government a gambling pusher who bullies the smaller non-profit sector out of its lunch money.

It is imperative that the public push back hard on this disastrous policy.