About the Blyth Festival

Blyth Festival - engaging, entertaining, essential

The Blyth Festival is a non-profit charitable organization. As such, we are required to undertake activities that are beneficial to the community as a whole and which the law considers charitable. With our non-profit designation the Festival must not be organized for commercial purposes and members must not benefit personally as investors. The Board of Directors and an extensive corps of dedicated volunteers of the Blyth Festival believe, as many Canadians do, that participation in the arts leads to healthy, stable individuals and helps to promote the social and economic well-being of the community. The Blyth Festival has played a vital role in promoting and assisting the development of the arts and artists for the enjoyment and benefit of all Canadians, and has contributed to our heritage by leaving a legacy of our culture - an achievement of which our community is quite proud.

Our Mission

The Blyth Festival is a community-based professional theatre that endeavours to enrich the lives of its audience by producing and developing plays that give voice to both the region and the country.

Our Achievements

Founded in 1975, the Blyth Centre for the Arts and Blyth Festival serves as an arts centre for Huron County in southwestern Ontario and produces a summer season of all-Canadian plays. Our company has a budget of over $1 million in 2008.

Our 2007 summer season attracted 21,000 people. Over $384,000 in revenue was earned through ticket sales and a further $95,000 from special events and other revenue-generating activities. 30% of our funds came from government sources with box office & earned revenues/special events representing 50% of our revenues. Our members, donors, sponsors and corporations contributed over $204,249.

Our 2007 season generated a small surplus. We produced two new Canadian shows and 9 special events and fundraising projects during the 2007 season, including the Festival's "first" annual Ontario Open Country Singing Contest.

Our programming for youth - Young Company, children's workshops and performances for school children attracted over 2500 youth and their families.

We invested over $15,000 in capital improvement projects during our 2007 season including updating office computer systems to accommodate an online ticketing system. Donations from government programmes made this possible.

The Blyth Festival supported over 230 community and charitable organizations by donating tickets to their fundraising and special events to benefit community volunteers and recreation, social service, environmental and cultural programs. Our country supper program distributed over $16,900 to churches and community groups who catered meals to theatre visitors.

Our 11-member Board of Directors are residents of the area. We have over 100 volunteers who assist with special events, promotions, fund raising, office work and ushering.

In 2007, the Blyth Festival supported 8 new Canadian plays through our new play development and commissioning program with four world premières planned for 2008.

The economic impact generated by the Blyth Festival in 2008 is estimated at $2.5 million. Our full-time staff of 4 people grows to over 60 people each summer. Over $28,000 in rent was paid to local landlords by our summer employees - performers and production team. Out of our production budgets that operate our shop and create everything you see on stage - about $50,000 is spent locally to produce our shows each year.

Our Community

The Blyth Festival is situated in a village of approximately 1000 that has limited tourist attractions in our region. More than half of our audience lives in rural areas or small towns within an hour's drive of the theatre, and these people are the focus of our programming. The remainder of our audience are dedicated Blyth fans, mostly from Toronto and Michigan, who travel here for the sole purpose of seeing our shows.