LondonFuse media collective announces shutdown amid burnout and lack of funding
CBC
An independent media collective celebrating arts and culture in London, Ont. is shutting down in June.
Established in 2009 as a grassroots organization, LondonFuse was eventually incorporated into a non-profit. For 13 years, leaders of the group taught volunteers to research, write, photograph and film video content telling underground stories of local heritage, music, innovation and oddity. The content was posted and shared through the website LondonFuse.ca.
"There's only so much that can be covered by mainstream media," said Laura Thorne, president and chair of LondonFuse.
"Even just the conversations that happened at Fuse meetings with contributors, the way that information was spread and the stories that were told weren't being told anywhere else."
Thorne said that before 2019, 80 per cent of the funding for LondonFuse came from Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF) grants, with the plan to work towards a sustainable model via sponsored content.
The funding went toward paying a handful of part-time positions or contract positions to lead the volunteer program, and covering rent for a collaboration space. Throughout the years, LondonFuse moved from Richmond Street to King Street, then to Bathurst Street and finally landed at Innovation Works London.
"It was a wonderfully creative space," remembers Nicki Borland, a former volunteer turned program director turned executive director before departing from LondonFuse in 2019.
"It really showed me a whole different side of London, that despite the fact that I grew up in London I really wasn't aware of, or at least not as aware as I thought I was. It was a wonderful place to be."
LondonFuse was exploring new modes of sustainable funding when the last Trillium grant began to run out in 2019, after the Ford government cut approximately $15 million from the OTF 208-2019 budget. That program was restructured and application timelines were changed.
Thorne said that when LondonFuse tried to reapply, organizers were told they were ineligible because they weren't providing a service, but a product. They were also verbally told that to get an OTF grant, they would need to agree to not be critical of the provincial government.
"As a publication, that's a hard line to walk," said Thorne. "Fusers wrote about politics in a critical and thoughtful way and we couldn't censor that for funding."
The eligibility policy found on the Ontario Trillium Foundation website lists the following as ineligible activities for OTF grants:
LondonFuse did find some federal funding to compensate writers focusing on heritage, but it wasn't enough to hire anyone indefinitely. From 2019 to 2020, sponsored content kept the website afloat, while volunteers raised funds through events, donations and merchandise sales.
The start of the COVID-19 pandemic and volunteer burnout led to the collapse of those efforts as well.
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