It's incredible frustration. It's not so much that malls and stores might be open, because obviously people are passing through those. However, there's a similarity with those museums and galleries. It's the concern about the venues for performing arts in particular, where people would be sitting next to each other. In our research, for example, we noticed that in Germany a symphony orchestra, I think, tore up half the seats in their theatre in order to get live performances. Of course, that was very heavily subsidized by the German government as well.
There are real questions about when performing arts spaces will be able to open safely. Will that vary based upon the size of the performing arts centre—small versus medium versus large, such as a 3,000-seat proscenium, for example, versus something that holds 100 people?
I want to underline that one thing we brought forward is that there needs to be a marketing strategy to convince Canadians that things are safe, or to encourage Canadians to try. We think government and arts organizations should collaborate to say, “Yes, we are working together to make sure that the environment is safe, and we encourage you to take the chance, because the PPE is in place, the sanitizers are in place, foyers have been taken care of, the front of the house is taken care of, etc.”