TORONTO: The #CityofTO’s Cultural Festivals Recovery Program provides one-time emergency funding to cultural festivals impacted by #COVID19.
To date, the City has approved 20 applications & allocated a total of $250k+ in funding.
The drive into program helps organizers safely set up largescale, high-value, temporary drive-in experiences throughout Toronto during the summer months at select sites.
The Program supports free nights offered by local film and arts organizations to create a diversity of programming and provide community access to these popular events.
DriveInTO Partner Events and Sites – Free Nights with:
• Hot Docs, imagineNATIVE and TIFF at Ontario Place
• Inside Out LGBTQ Film Festival, Reel Asian Film Festival, Reelworld Film Festival and Regent Park Film Festival at CityView Drive-In by Ink Entertainment at 20 Polson Pier
Cultural Festivals Recovery Program
To support festivals that have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the City has launched the Cultural Festivals Recovery Program (CFRP). The program provides up to a maximum of $25,000 to provide one-time emergency funding and advisory services to cultural festivals impacted by public health measures that reduce the spread of COVID-19.
This program is for cultural festivals that were planned to take place in Toronto between March 14 and December 31, 2020.
The City has received some 50 applications for requests totaling $537,994 and has approved 20 of these applicants for a total of $263,000 in emergency funding.
Among the initial recipients are the Contact Photography Festival, African Women Acting, Toronto Queer Media Arts Centre and Big on Bloor.
Eligible Cultural Festivals To be eligible, Arts and Culture focused festivals must be within the city and have occurred at least once in the last two years. Festivals must be a minimum of two days in length and historically, have at least 50 percent free programming.
The 2020 occurrence of the festival must have been canceled or postponed due to
COVID-19.
CFRP provides financial and in-kind support to:
• Defray financial losses for festivals that were cancelled due to COVID-19
• Assist festival organizers to meet payments due to their suppliers, including artists and small businesses
• Help festival organizers maintain critical operations to survive this year and prepare for
their next festival
• Support planning and purchases that help improve the public health and safety practices of festival organizers
• Aid collaborative efforts in areas such as event planning, insurance, volunteer training, and marketing to strengthen Toronto’s network of festivals, so that they can play a key role in the City’s recovery efforts.
Annual operating clients of either the City’s cultural grants programs or the Toronto Arts Council are not eligible for the CFRP.
Toronto Public Health COVID-19 Guidance for Drive-in & Drive-thru Events helps organizers properly design and produce these temporary events. City staff is available to review event production plans to ensure plans meet Province of Ontario and Toronto Public Health requirements.