But that's not an entirely facetious comment. It's those things that layer together to create that sense of a unified celebration that everyone can come to--and who can't fall in love with a great theme song?
I think it is a layer of things. For festivals like Luminato, for example, that are already multi-arts festivals, we already present...on average, 70% of our programming every year is Canadian artists from Toronto, from Ontario, and across Canada, and yet we have very rapidly built a reputation as a festival of international arts as well.
Our founders had a big vision right from the beginning, about six and a half or seven years ago, that Luminato actually was meant to be a festival for Toronto, for Ontario, and for Canada, and was meant to be embraced and loved by all Canadians in the way that they are now proud of TIFF, after its almost 35 years versus our five years. But we actually aspire--as TIFF now has achieved--to be among the top three multi-arts festivals in the world, such that we're thought of in the same breath as Edinburgh or Sydney and people plan their calendars around it and so on.
When you take that kind of scope and thinking with the large festivals and events, what I would layer into it, whether through a new MTEP-like program or the celebrations...it is an ecosystem, and you will hear from FAME members.... In fact, some of the proposals on which we've been working with government are around equally supporting smaller festivals and events. There does have to be this whole kind of holistic approach, where perhaps FAME can have that trickle-down effect, as I said, or work with artists and organizations across the country. But we also believe that there are going to have to be entry points for smaller community festivals and events, because they equally can have huge impacts in their own community.
So I think it will be important to look at the whole ecosystem. Again, it's a place where we have a lot of experience in doing that, and we are certainly willing to expand upon that for you.