In fact, the Pantoum will have at least $170,000 once the campaign is completed on June 20 since the Thousand and One Youth Fund has promised to also contribute $85,000 to the project if the crowdfunding campaign via the site The Hive achieved its objective. And the campaign, planned for 50 days, will be able to collect other donations since the rules of the Hive mean that it continues until the date initially announced.
“For us, it’s really a big breath of fresh air and people can continue to contribute, we raised the goal to $100,000 which was the figure we had in mind at the beginning, but we preferred be more realistic by setting it at $85,000,” explains Émilie Tremblay, general director. “The people at La Ruche advised us to do the campaign over 90 days, but for us it was important to have these funds in June to complete our work on time.”
“The campaign went faster than we thought, we had 50% of our goal in the first 72 hours. It’s all thanks to a lot of teamwork.”
— Émilie Tremblay, general director of the Pantoum
The work aimed, among other things, at creating a new broadcast room capable of accommodating 250 people on the ground floor, transforming the old broadcast room on the third floor into a multifunctional room mainly used for pre-production, reorganizing the rehearsal rooms, to repair the elevator which had been broken for fifteen years in order to make it accessible to all four floors of the building and to double the steel structure in order to better soundproof so that several parts of the building can be used simultaneously. However, inflation and the discovery of asbestos in the walls of the building on rue Saint-Vallier caused the cost of the work to jump by 25%.
The Pantoum recently welcomed the Toronto group Hot Garbage for its Nuits Psychédéliques. (Caroline Grégoire/The Sun)
On hold
The Pantoum is also awaiting help from the Ministry of Culture after a very positive meeting last week. “All of this is crucial if we want to finish the work in May to have the infrastructure in place and reintegrate people into the premises in September. Our reservation book is already full and we cannot afford to lose reservations for fear of losing money,” notes Émilie Tremblay.
“And with all the mobilization around our fundraising campaign, we also have a lot of requests for our premises for next year.”
— Émilie Tremblay, about the interest in the services offered by the Pantoum
The $170,000 raised thanks to crowdfunding and the Mille et UN Fund combined with the sum of $50,000 released by the City of Quebec and the $10,000 coming from Minister Jonatan Julien’s discretionary envelope will therefore have enabled the Pantoum to raise almost half of the half-million $ missing for its work. The requests placed with the Quebec Ministry of Culture and an additional request with the Canadian government, which had already confirmed aid of nearly $1 million for the work via Canada Economic Development and the Canadian Cultural Space, should make it possible to complete the budget.
The artistic community of Quebec and Montreal had also greatly supported the Pantoum by publishing in several media a letter signed by several artists such as Hubert Lenoir, Les Louanges, Michel Rivard, Serge Fiori, Souldia and Klô Pelgag in order to request government support for the work. in progress.
