When Karan Bowyer checked the signs around town advertising the Summerland Community Arts Council’s Café Noir fundraiser last Monday, she was discouraged to find only two were still up.
By Wednesday, only one, on a bulletin board on Victoria Road North near Main Street, was still in place.
“I was amazed,” said Bowyer, the vice-president of the arts council. “Are people removing them to make room or are people taking them down because they think it’s funny?”
When Café Noir was held on Friday evening, only 29 people attended the evening of music, dessert, coffee and wine.
This was just half the attendance of a year earlier.
“We’re probably not going to do it next year because it’s not worth putting it on,” Bowyer said. “It’s a fundraiser. It has to make us some money.”
She said the low attendance is disturbing since the event is badly needed to keep arts programs in place.
“Our funding has been cut. It’s gone. It’s going to be a shortfall,” she said.
She added that other arts initiatives in the community are also at risk because of funding shortfalls.
The street banner project, which received some municipal funding last year, will depend on external funding to proceed this year, she said.
The cost of a blank banner is $27. Additional funds are needed for the arts supplies and donations of time have not been included in the cost calculations.
A year ago, the arts council experienced problems when provincial grant funding was uncertain.
In July, the arts council received $25,000 in funding and was told the funding would also come in for this year, the final year of the province’s three-year commitment to the arts council.
During the uncertainty, the arts council had worked to find ways to run more leanly.
