Contrary to what people believe, we don't have access to a lot of funding. I spend most of my time trying to figure out where we can get more money and how we can convince people that we are a cultural hub and that we do work in the arts. We also work in technology, but I think there's a whole portion of what we do that just gets ignored.
No offence to the City of Montreal, who are sitting right beside me, but they don't define us as culture so we can't turn to them for help. We can't turn to our provincial government for help either, because they don't define us as cultural. We struggle for funding as much as rural communities do.
I grew up in a small town in Alberta. I know how hard it is. My parents worked as arts administrators and ran one of the local theatres in that town. I saw my entire life that this was a difficult thing to do. I empathize with the smaller communities and their lack of resources and access to funding. While my mission is to help specifically the community within my walls and the ones that come to our events, I haven't hesitated to reach out to these hubs that sit in the smaller communities throughout Quebec and to develop relationships with them to see how we can help them.
I'm lucky. Video games are inherently a digital art form, so we can work with people and mentor them through the Internet. We can access their work and share our work digitally. We don't need to physically be in a space with them.
The other thing we've done is that we've kept all of our costs low. We've had only two events in the last three years that people have had to pay for. Other than that, they're free and open to the public, which lowers the barrier to entry for anyone who doesn't have money. For students who are looking to enter the industry, for anyone who just wants access, it's there. I think these things have helped to attract people to our space and to our online space as well. If I could do more outside, in the smaller communities, I would.