The (CapeBreton) Summertime Review Calls it Quits after 15 Years:
I think the story is that they got tired of the unending round of grant
hustling...
With a "home" CB population of 165,000 and falling fast, $650 air fares to
Halifax, and a local tourist season of about 8 weeks there isn't much room
for a non-subsidized travelling performing troup.
The problem is that the cost accounting for "investment" in "incubators"
like the Review don't include the contributions made to the careers of
folks like Rita MacNeil, the Rankins and Bruce Guthro; to the learning
curve of folks like those who started Chatsubo Multi-Media Design; to the
image of CB as reflected in the Conde Nast Travel Survey result (#1).
"Bums in seats" isn't the appropriate measure of the "success" (for
continued grant support) of something like the Review just as numbers-of-
military-communications-facilitated should not have been (and in the end
wasn't) the measure of continued investment by the US Department of
Defense's Advanced Research Agency in the development of the protocols
that became the Internet.
The Review should be seen as a regional/national economic
resource/national treasure, like the CB coal mines used to be--from which
wealth and well-being could almost without thinking or effort be mined for
ever.
Coal has proven to not be a renewable resource and yet we have spent
billions chasing it further and further under the ocean. Music and
laughter is (fortunately for all of us) an ever renewable resource, but
for the trivial amounts needed to provide stable funding for something
like the Summertime Review nothing was available.
How much money every year goes into the Halifax Tattoo? And apart from
the short term tourism hit, what have been the longer term spin-offs from
those on-going millions in annual public subsidies.
Do the returns at all match the perpetually recurring benefits to all
of Atlantic Canada and beyond that the Summertime Review has contributed
through the East Coast celtic music revival for which it was in
considerable part responsible?
Mike Gurstein
On Thu, 21 Jan 1999, David G. Jones wrote:
>I was equally confused about all this. The show was excellent (I think I saw
>6 altogether). The review also had, I think, a fair amount of federal
>funding. I saw it last at the national Arts centre where tickets were
>subsidized down to $5 each!
> ----------
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Re: [NS-POL] NovaNewsNet Digest for Jan. 21, 1999 (fwd)
>Date: Thursday, January 21, 1999 9:53AM
>
>Is it my imagination? It seems that no organization in Nova Scotia, whether
>it is Devco, Sysco, The City of Halifax, The Summertime Review or new
>business, cannot "fly on it's own",unless supported by the Provincial
>Gov't.
>
Michael Gurstein, Ph.D.
ECBC/NSERC/SSHRC Associate Chair in the Management of Technological Change
Director: Centre for Community and Enterprise Networking (C\CEN)
University College of Cape Breton, POBox 5300, Sydney, NS, CANADA B1P 6L2
Tel. 902-563-1369 (o) 902-562-1055 (h) 902-562-0119 (fax)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Http://ccen.uccb.ns.ca ICQ: 7388855
