In this weekly column, Robert Everett-Green writes about the people, places and events that make Montreal a distinctive cultural capital.
'I met them all at the party of special things to do." The refrain from Captain Beefheart's psychedelic anthem may be a fair summary of cultural life in Montreal, where overlapping arts festivals seem to offer the citizenry a party of special things to do almost every night.
Right now, you can catch the closing days of Le mois de la photo or the Festival international de la littérature, chose from a dozen remaining shows at the L'OFF festival de jazz, or get ready for Wednesday's opening of the Festival du nouveau cinéma. As anyone and everyone will tell you, Montreal is a festival town.
But why? The usual answer involves some measure of cultural insecurity, or – conversely – pride, in the level and quantity of arts activity in the city. It's also often said Montrealers go out more and party harder than urbanites in English Canada.
Maybe. But institutions of cultural life aren't just emanations of local spirit. They have to be created and financed and run, and for the past few decades, conditions have made it easier to launch a festival in Montreal than to start a new arts company, or to build something to house an old one.
"To get core funding for a new organization is nearly impossible," says Sylvie Fortin, executive and artistic director of La Biennale de Montréal. "You have to do so many things before you can get a penny. The festival funding programs are more welcoming, and a lot more agile."
These effects are magnified in Quebec, where arts organizations rely more heavily on state funding than in other provinces. For anyone who can put together and execute a convincing festival proposal, the rewards can be sweet. According to a report by the Conseil des arts de Montréal, festivals operating in 2009 with a budget of less than $250,000 got an average of 57 per cent of their budget from government.
Some of that money came from tourism budgets. Festivals are seen to be events that people will travel to experience – more so than, say, a string of performances or exhibitions spread out over several months. That was part of the thinking behind a recent development at the other end of the country: Vancouver Opera's decision to stop doing a regular fall and winter season and become a spring festival.
In Montreal, small festivals sometimes become larger ones. Last year's La Biennale de Montréal, for example, was much bigger than the previous editions, and more international in scope. Again, according to the Conseil's 2009 report, the numbers for this kind of expansion are seductive. As festivals grow, their visibility and private support increases, until, at the $5-million budget level, an average of 60 per cent of the budget is covered by private money. It's the inverse of the ratio for the startups, and must make it even easier for governments to back the little guys. The biggest festivals, such as the Festival International de Jazz and Just for Laughs, are even more self-sufficient.
From this angle, a festival looks almost like the not-for-profit equivalent of a venture-capital play, which, if successful, can be spun off to private patrons and sponsors. The payoffs include more tax revenue and higher employment. According to the Conseil, jobs in the cultural sector increased by more than 57 per cent during the previous decade. It's a safe bet that some, if not much, of that increase was due to festival activity.
Festivals have another advantage, Fortin says, which is that they usually don't have to maintain their own buildings. And because their offerings are spread over a few days or weeks, they're naturally equipped to make a bigger impact on public consciousness than a company that has to promote shows all year. There's always a publicity blitz going on in Montreal for some festival or other. Whatever the event, the message of the publicity media is always the same: Get it while you can, because we've already made the hard choices for you.
"There are a lot of people who like having stuff delivered to them in packages, so they know what they're getting," says Jack Udashkin, a veteran arts administrator and recently retired director of Théâtre La Chapelle. "They tend to gravitate in numbers to what's going on." A concentrated festival that manages to position itself as "what's going on" promises a big-box, one-stop encounter with culture.
In short, Montrealers flock to festivals partly because that is what's offered. It's where the money and opportunities are. People here may flock harder than elsewhere because there's a Québécois tradition of having to represent your culture or possibly lose it; though only 50 per cent of Montrealers say French is their mother tongue, and some of those francophones are immigrants.
The city has become accustomed to the festival rhythm and its somewhat hectic mentality, which emphasizes the new and presents everything as a limited-time opportunity. That affects the city's standing arts institutions, which compete for the public's attention. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, for instance, has become noticeably hungrier for the big event that gets everyone talking, and has had remarkable success in that direction. The museum's 2011 blockbuster show, The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier, is still touring the world, and has been seen by more than two million people.
The more personal effect of so many festivals clamouring for your time is that you're constantly reminded of the must-see events you can't get to. There are just so many parties of special things to do.