CANADA OH CANADA
28 October 2026 I was amused to read Jonathan Biggin’s piece in the Guardian about being a cultural tour guide because I too have had that experience. Once, but never again. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/oct/27/a-job-that-changed-me-tour-guide-for-seniors-art-lovers?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other When I first started work at Melbourne Theatre Company, we were in debt. A very large debt. I needed to come up with all sorts of ways to raise money to avoid having to have make too many people redundant. We tried cutting costs via decreasing the number of shows we put on but we also needed to find new sources of income. We looked for new sponsors, applied for philanthropic trust grants, put on gala dinners with raffles and auctions built in, and put on one spectacularly large garage sale. And I came up with the idea of taking a group of theatre lovers to Canada with a “donation” built into the cost of the tour. Why Canada, you may ask? The two biggest theatre companies in ...