Thank you very much, and good morning.
I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today about the cultural hubs in Canada.
I started a small company 25 years ago. With a considerable cheekiness, I called it Theatre Gargantua. We may not actually have been gargantuan, but our vision was. We struggled to pay our phone bills, but we made art that was noticed: highly physical, actors suspended in air, live music, and designs that transported our audiences and won awards. It's clear to us now that the success was fundamental to the long-term survival of our company.
There's one key factor in that early success that cannot be overstated. We had space. The arts-friendly congregation of an inner-city church in Toronto, the Church of St. Stephen's-in-the-Fields, allowed us to develop our process of creation and perform our work in their beautiful space. With 40-foot vaulted ceilings, raised wooden floors, and exposed beams for us to swing on, it was an ideal place for a young company with big ideas to thrive.
As we grew and artistically matured, our technical needs went well beyond the capacity of that small church. Our first work was lit entirely with candles, but now we incorporate more sophisticated media into our works, and we use multiple projectors, moving lights, and large-scale set pieces. Our vision is as gargantuan as it ever was.
There's really only one thing holding it back. There just isn't a space for it. Appropriate and affordable space is a challenge for artists across the country and, after 25 years, I can speak with a degree of expertise to the challenges we face in Toronto. Where once theatre companies could create performance spaces in abandoned warehouses, the incredible challenges in the real estate market have virtually eliminated these possibilities in our urban centres. The pressure on real estate in Toronto has been well documented, and there's a need for a solution for the loss of these cultural spaces. The need for dedicated, affordable, and appropriate space for the creation and performance of live arts is at a point of crisis.
Gargantua, along with our partners, the Théâtre français de Toronto and the Obsidian Theatre Company—respectively, Ontario's largest French-language theatre and Canada's largest black theatre company—is launching an ambitious project to create a new cultural hub in Toronto. We are three award-winning companies that present diverse practices for multi-generational audiences in both official languages, and we are determined to address the critical need for space for ourselves and other artists in the community.
Our hub will welcome our combined audience of close to 20,000 each year, including 6,500 school-age children. Our programming is open to the larger public and runs from 9 a.m to 11 p.m. on most days. These include workshops, student matinees, weekend matinees, summer camps, and weekend writing camps for teenagers, on top of our regular evening performances.
Guided by our shared values of accessibility, affordability, flexibility, and inclusivity, our vision includes a creative hub that houses two flexible performance spaces equipped to support artistic and technical innovation and two rehearsal halls, as well as other public gathering spaces. This will be a purpose-built complex on a main street accessible to all by subway.
It will support diverse artistic and cultural innovation. It will be an activated community hub where there is always something happening and something being created, taught, or presented. It will be a place to gather and tell stories, a practice that is at the root of all cultural manifestations.