Members of Ottawa’s artistic community are looking for a permanent home in Centretown.
Since its launch last year, Performing Arts Lodge Ottawa has been working towards providing affordable housing to the city’s aging or disabled artists.
Performing Arts Lodge Canada started in Toronto in 1986 to support artists in retirement.
PAL Toronto is now one of eight PAL organizations across Canada and has a building that provides rent-geared-to-income housing to 212 residents.
PAL Ottawa hopes to open a similar residence. The organization is looking to develop in Centretown, or a nearby central neighbourhood, says Jim Bradford, a screen and stage actor and PAL Ottawa board chair.
PAL Ottawa launched in 2012. It has received charitable status and attracted about 100 members.
This membership is made up of people from Ottawa and Gatineau who earn their living in the arts or related industries.
The average annual income for full-time performing artists in Canada is $17,137 and $14,065 for visual artists, according to a 2010 study by the Cultural Human Resources Council.
These low earnings make saving for retirement especially difficult, according to PAL Ottawa.
Robert Cram is PAL Ottawa’s communications director and a former flutist with the NAC Orchestra. He says he has seen the impact of these low earnings on his colleagues and mentors.
“People were seeing their elders, people they had respected, end up with nothing,” said Cram in an interview at the PAL Ottawa launch in November 2012.
With this in mind, PAL Ottawa is already fundraising to make retirement easier for artists in the Ottawa region. Alison Atkins, the co-chair of PAL Ottawa’s housing committee, has set a four-year fundraising goal of $500,000.
PAL Ottawa is currently preparing for a comprehensive business plan, says Atkins. The plan, which Atkins says will be completed by spring 2014, will tell PAL Ottawa how many affordable housing units are needed and how much it will cost to open a building.
The City of Ottawa already offers affordable housing programs to seniors, but PAL organizers say it is important that artists “care for their own” so retired and disabled artists can remain connected to Ottawa’s artistic community.
This connection to community is especially important to local actor and writer Paul Mackan. Most of his career was spent performing with his late wife, actor Sara Lee Stadelman. Since her death in 2008 he has performed on Ottawa stages, published novels and books of poetry and volunteered at Third Wall Theatre.
He lives alone, and says it is difficult to find peers who appreciate his career and passions.
“An artist never stops learning,” says Mackan. “To see another artist’s work, even in progress, is an education itself.”
Bradford, 75, says PAL Ottawa hopes to provide those connections by bringing together artists young and old, in a residence with studio and performance spaces.