Issue: 2015-05-21 PHOTO: Bruce Barrett
Gwaandak Theatre’s general manager, Marjolène Gauthier, discovered a love of administration when she came to the Yukon in 2008.
Marjolène Gauthier doesn’t accept the idea that the territory’s small population means arts organizers don’t need to improve how they serve their customers. “What I really hate to hear is, ‘Oh, we’ve been doing that forever. Why would we change the way we do things?’ I want to scratch myself all over,” she says.
Besides being general manager of Gwaandak Theatre for the past three years, Gauthier also helps other non-profit arts groups with their marketing, communications, and strategic planning efforts. “People are sometimes resistant to change, so as arts administrators or artistic directors, we have to help people understand that the Yukon of 30 years ago, or even 15 years ago, is not the Yukon of today.”
For some organizations, especially long-established ones, the impetus for change usually comes with a new artistic director, or fresh faces at the board table. “Sometimes it doesn’t work and it’s okay, I think, for an event or festival to just die and leave space for something else.”
Gauthier was raised in the Montréal suburb of l’Assomption. After graduating from Université de Montréal in 2006, she realized her command of English wasn’t good enough to land a job in her field of communications. “I decided to immerse myself on the other side of Canada — where I thought at the time there were no francophones at all — to learn English,” she laughs.
After a brief stay in Vancouver, she spent two years in Fort St. John, B.C., polishing her English and working on the events management and communications side of the arts.
From there she went to the Northwest Territories to work with the francophone association in Hay River and Yellowknife where, she says, “I started to realize there were francophones a little bit all over Canada.”
In 2008, she landed a job as cultural offi cer with the Association Franco-Yukonnaise (AFY) in Whitehorse, “and just fell in love with the Yukon.”
Working at AFY and volunteering with events such as the Frostbite Music Festival and the Yukon River Quest allowed Gauthier to discover a lot about herself. “I have some skills that I hadn’t used in the past, so I have been just pushing up those skills and developing them, and networking with other people and growing through that,” she says.
One thing she discovered was a love of administration. “I don’t want to do administration for a business. I really want to keep working in non-profits, and I just felt that it could be really useful for me to go back to school.”
In 2010, Gauthier took a year off to travel in Mexico and Bolivia, and then returned to Montréal to take a one-year diploma in arts management at the international HEC university business school.
She was enroute west and north in 2012 when Gwaandak’s artistic director, Patti Flather, made her an offer. “I didn’t know Gwaandak at all. I was just looking for a job, and they were looking at that time for a marketing co-ordinator,” she says. “My specialization during that year (at HEC) was marketing for the arts, and the art I love the most, since I was about 16 years old, is the theatre. So I thought, ‘Wow, that’s like the perfect match.’”
What started as a six-month marketing contract for 14 hours a week became a half-time position as general manager with a company that now has a full season, an increased budget, and a strategic plan.
Through her volunteer work with various other organizations, Gauthier noted some common themes. “People had a lot of energy and a lot of passion, but they weren’t always organized, or strategic, or they didn’t have a vision of the long term.”
Gauthier says having a vision is hard for some people, but if there’s something they really want to pursue here, she can help. “I work with different people and different organizations. I just like it. I like to help small, nonprofit organizations to grow, or to organize.”
One issue she frequently encounters is a hazy understanding of what board members’ responsibilities are, especially as an organization matures to the point it requires professional staff.
That’s why strategic planning, board training, and well-developed polices on such matters as fi nancial management and human resources are essential. “It’s not the most fun part working on policies, but it will really help you in the long term,” Gauthier says. “If everybody has the same information and everybody’s on the same page, it’s just going to be clearer. There’s no place for interpretation; it’s just there.”
Another challenge for artistic non-profits, she says, is that “we want to do so much, but we only have so much time. So it’s just trying balance your work life with your personal life and your artist’s life.”
For Gauthier, finding that balance involves living off the grid in a “tiny house” with her husband, a permanent resident, originally from France.
As well as continuing to help arts organizations with planning and marketing, she plans to stay two more years at Gwaandak, “then pass on the torch to someone else — hopefully a young, passionate indigenous person.”