Over the last ten years, TACTICS has provided a space for artists to dream big with their art and make it possible to build a sustainable, professional life for themselves right where they live—in Ottawa—without needing to move to a larger centre like Toronto or Montreal. In turn, a thriving artistic scene supports the overall community and makes Ottawa (or any city!) a better place to live for everyone. And now, we are at a critical point where we need to ask our community to support us in return. Can you help us keep TACTICS active and growing through this challenging time?
We’ve had incredible growth over the last decade, featuring hundreds of artists in our Mainstage Series, supporting the development of dozens of new plays in our Development series, connecting and growing our community in our Green Room series, and incorporating as a not-for-profit organization in 2020. However, we are still reliant on grant funding for the bulk of work, and while we do have some operating funding from the City of Ottawa, unfortunately this year our project grants have not been successful. As you probably know, most arts funders in Canada have had cuts to their budgets in recent years. And meanwhile, inflation and population growth make it even more impossible for the funding that is available to keep up with the needs of artists.
All this makes our work at TACTICS all the more important, as we have always been a platform where independent artists could access more resources for their work, and paying artists and staff fairly is a key priority for us. And of course, in the last few years, we’ve had pandemic cancellations and deferrals making artistic work nearly impossible, and throughout it all TACTICS (like so many other arts organizations) has been continually reinventing itself to continue to support our local artistic community.
With the reduction in funding for this year, the TACTICS board and staff have decided to cut back on our activities as much as possible and focus our efforts on continued capacity building and fundraising, so that our organization will be less precarious in the future. However, we have a Development series planned for this fall, featuring artists whose work has already been deferred in the past, and we are passionate about honouring our commitment to those artists and supporting their projects, while also being able to pay our staff to keep the doors open.
This is where you come in. If you could make a donation to help us keep TACTICS active and growing through these critical next few months, it would make such a difference for so many local artists and our staff. We need to raise $5000 by November, another $2500 by December, and any more we can raise on top of that will allow our staff to work more hours to continue to stabilize our position and work towards new growth. Unfortunately, we are not yet a registered charity, so we are unable to issue tax receipts, but your support will help us keep moving towards that milestone!
In gratitude, we will list your name on our website, in thank you posts on social media and you’ll receive exclusive access to behind-the-scenes content. Please consider donating to TACTICS so we can continue to support our thriving artistic community.
