99.9% of the people who waited for hours in the blistering sun will never attend an actual symphony performance in comfortable seating despite tickets being as low as $14.
Now that's a stat!
Posted 03 August 2015 - 09:22 AM
99.9% of the people who waited for hours in the blistering sun will never attend an actual symphony performance in comfortable seating despite tickets being as low as $14.
Now that's a stat!
Posted 03 August 2015 - 09:30 AM
Nearly 40,000 there last night, take from donations was $35,000.
My plan to charge $5 to half that number of spectators would have raised nearly 3 times as much money. I stand by my statement that Victorians are cheap wads.
Posted 03 August 2015 - 09:30 AM
$10 for a reserved seat. No waiting in the blistering sun.
Posted 03 August 2015 - 09:36 AM
$10 for a reserved seat. No waiting in the blistering sun.
I can just imagine the cries from the anti-gentrification types. Reserving public property? Blasphemy!
Could Victoria Symphony even get away with gating public space and charging access? I don't think so :/
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Posted 03 August 2015 - 09:43 AM
Make a deal with the Empress.
Posted 03 August 2015 - 09:56 AM
I can just imagine the cries from the anti-gentrification types. Reserving public property? Blasphemy!
Could Victoria Symphony even get away with gating public space and charging access? I don't think so :/
Sure they can. They gate off streets for running events that you have to pay $35+ to enter.
Posted 03 August 2015 - 10:04 AM
They're charging the participant, not the spectator.
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Posted 03 August 2015 - 10:06 AM
How about this. Free for anyone outside the pay area. Pay area is lower causeway, sidewalks and paved streets (Government and Belleville).
Posted 03 August 2015 - 01:03 PM
You're all trying to fix something that isn't actually broken you realize, right?
Posted 03 August 2015 - 01:16 PM
Posted 03 August 2015 - 02:28 PM
I just think it could be a bigger fund-raiser for the Victoria Symphony without any significant impact on the event itself.
Posted 03 August 2015 - 02:31 PM
You're all trying to fix something that isn't actually broken you realize, right?
Posted 03 August 2015 - 03:19 PM
I just think it could be a bigger fund-raiser for the Victoria Symphony without any significant impact on the event itself.
The stated goal is to bring the Symphony to a larger group of people, And it succeeds very well in doing that. Most symphonies, even in much larger cities, will never have the experience of playing in front of 40k people. And very few cities have such a large percentage of the population who have actually heard the local symphony.
I don't think it is intended as principally a fundraising event, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to me to measure its success in that vein.
Posted 03 August 2015 - 03:19 PM
Well, it requires significant taxpayer money every year. So it's far from perfect.
How much? I'd be pretty shocked if the event wasn't a net positive financial contribution to the community.
Posted 03 August 2015 - 03:30 PM
Well it had a $300,000 budget this year...
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Posted 03 August 2015 - 04:33 PM
How much? I'd be pretty shocked if the event wasn't a net positive financial contribution to the community.
...this is 2006, so 9 years later, and they have made no inroads.
Handman admits he is disappointed. He had budgeted for the Splash to bring in at least $60,000 this season. He believes it ought to be grossing $100,000 for the orchestra annually.
So what did folks get for their 100 pennies? A kids' tent with magicians and ice-cream. A flamenco dance showcase. A military band concert. And the Victoria Symphony itself, a 50-plus ensemble that has practised for years to achieve excellence in music. We enjoyed Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Strauss, Elgar and the traditional 1812 Overture complete with cannon and fireworks.
The fun started at 2 p.m. with the children's entertainment and finished at 10 p.m. So if you dropped in a dollar and stayed for the whole thing, your cost was 12.5 cents an hour. Are you embarrassed yet?
Of course, it's not exactly as if everyone who attended the Inner Harbour concert tossed a dollar into the plastic garbage pails that serve as donation bins. Some were doubtless much more generous, while others (the majority, I suspect) forked over nary a dime.
So what's the big deal? It's a free event, right? And besides, doesn't the government pay for it or, uh, something?
Handman says the first Splash was indeed staged 17 years ago as a thank-you to Victorians for supporting the orchestra over half a century.
After that, it became an admission-by-donation event.
Fearing the public wasn't getting the message, the organization last year publicized the Splash as being "by-donation" in its promotional materials.
That move helped bring up the 2005 donation level to $42,000, the same gross as this year.
Forty-two thousand might not sound too shabby. But after expenses, the Victoria Symphony will likely walk away this season with just $20,000. And if you consider what a massive event the Symphony Splash is -- indeed, the largest of its kind in Canada -- it's peanuts.
Other symphony fundraisers, requiring a fraction of the work, have raised as much as $125,000.
"If you did a cost-benefit analysis of the Splash, you'd kinda go way out of your mind," Handman says.
About $200,000 is paid out in staging the Symphony Splash, and that doesn't include the efforts of 250 volunteers plus in-kind donations. Government funding and sponsors cover only some of the cost.
Cash from local sponsors adds up to $104,000. The Symphony Splash receives a $40,000 grant from the province. The City of Victoria provides a $4,500 grant -- paltry considering the Splash is one of this town's defining events. By comparison, the city allocated $50,000 this year to the International Arts Symposium happening next month. And the City of Victoria charged the orchestra for municipal tents it rented.
Posted 03 August 2015 - 07:04 PM
Watched the drone get attacked by gulls most of the time it was in the air.
Edited by sdwright.vic, 04 August 2015 - 08:47 AM.
Posted 03 August 2015 - 08:39 PM
I always found the way they collect money "Sketchy". Volunteers with open buckets. How about a way to text to a number on your cell for a $5 or $10 , $20 donation...
Posted 03 August 2015 - 09:39 PM
I always found the way they collect money "Sketchy". Volunteers with open buckets. How about a way to text to a number on your cell for a $5 or $10 , $20 donation...
That's sure another way. But some will says "Oh, I'll text/I texted in" and then don't. The modern equivalent of "I gave at the office".
Posted 10 August 2015 - 02:21 PM
I dunno, can we not just allow some events to be free?
The city of Berlin, just one city, has a public arts budget of $500 million. That's about 5x the budget of the Canada Arts Council.
We need culture. And sometimes it's nice not to have to pay to access that culture. Yes, Victorians can be cheapskates, but so what, this event costs $300,000 to put on so we're going to subsidize it heavily one way or another.
Meanwhile in reality land the City of Victoria's social engineers will gladly spend $500,000 of our dollars improving the grass medians in front of Our Place. They'll spend a few million more so that a few cyclists have cycling lanes they can tweet about.
Know it all.
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