The Shaw Festival has opened a new 42,000-square-foot campus in Niagara-on-the-Lake that will house dozens of the performers behind its productions and give the theatre company's education programs a permanent base.
The Artists' Village, built on the site of the former Upper Canada Lodge long-term care home on Wellington Street, was marked with a ribbon-cutting reception last Friday attended by the Shaw's executives along with local, regional and provincial representatives.
The residences opened in February and have been nearly full since April, Niagara Now reported. The village's 26 furnished apartments can hold up to 31 artists, replacing part of the roughly 100 artist beds the festival currently rents across town at a subsidy of about $800,000 a year below market value, according to executive director Tim Jennings.
“The Shaw Artists' Village is a game-changer,” Jennings said at the ribbon-cutting event.
New home for education programs
The five-building campus took a year and a half to build and anchors the festival's $150-million All.Together.Now fundraising campaign, which received a $15-million federal matching grant in 2024.
Inside the village, the new Burton Centre for Lifelong Creativity gives the Shaw's education and outreach programs a dedicated space after years of competing for room at the Festival Theatre. Jennings said the festival holds more than 5,300 such events annually, reaching more than 120,000 people beyond its stages.
The centre includes a dance lab with a sprung floor, sound-isolated practice rooms, a digital lab with a green screen for media and hybrid programs, and a flexible room called Village Hall for performances and lectures. In September, the Shaw plans to launch a program for older adults interested in trying the performing arts.
“It is our goal at the Shaw Festival that you don't just come here to see a play — you come here to play,” said Melissa Novecosky, associate executive director. “You come here to do an activity. You come here to try something, to get out of your comfort zone, to be with other people.”
Overnight stays and costume work
The centre is named for Canadian entrepreneur Jim Burton, whose family foundation invested $5 million in the project. He describes the village as bringing professional theatre skills to people who may never work in the arts, recalling a visiting musician in his youth in Orillia who inspired him to join an orchestra as a trombonist.
“Maybe it sets a spark that inspires them for the rest of their life,” he said of the students who will visit the campus.
An adjoining visitor residence offers simple two-bed rooms at about $60 per bed per night for school and university groups taking part in Shaw programs. Novecosky said the price could make multi-day trips realistic for university theatre programs facing shrinking arts budgets, and Queen's University has already booked a two-week course at the campus.
A new wardrobe building brings together nearly 60 costume workers who produce close to 1,000 costumes a year for the Shaw's 12 to 14 productions. The department previously worked out of four locations, and associate head of wardrobe Janet Ellis said staff often lost time hunting for supplies and "running up and down the stairs." The new facility puts the operation on one level, with room for seven cutting teams instead of five.
Artistic director Tim Carroll called theatre the best answer to social isolation and hours lost to screens. Tim and Frances Price gave $10 million to the campaign, among its largest private gifts.
“After decades of dreaming about it, drawing it, discussing it, fundraising for it, advocating for it, fighting for it and very frequently lying awake at night worrying about how we're going to fund it,” Jennings said, “we at Shaw finally have achieved it.”
