The Vancouver Forum and meeting in Victoria

October 27, 2008

My trip to the British Columbia was a real pleasure! The weather was exceptionally beautiful, although I did not get to see much of it, busy as I was meeting with people.

It started early in the morning on Wednesday, October 22, when I was invited as guest speaker at a breakfast meeting of the Downtown Vancouver Association, thanks to the good offices of Andrew Wilhelm-Boyles, Executive Director of the Vancouver Arts Alliance. This was an opportunity for me to present the CCA to a group of about 15 people interested in arts and culture and to have an open discussion about the theme of our Regional Forums. The importance of working at the local level to position arts and culture, the relationship between arts, culture and education and the need to work on our collective image with the population at large were raised during the exchanges which followed my presentation.

The same themes were raised again during the Forum which was held during the afternoon at the Vancity Theatre, where about 35 people had gathered to discuss priorities and strategies. Education was raised again as a very important component of a long-term strategy to better position arts in our society and it stemmed from this discussion that it was necessary to develop a comprehensive strategy which would target local, provincial and federal decisions-makers. Fragmentation of the sector was also raised and it was suggested that maybe what was needed was a provincial organization modelled on the CCA, that is, an umbrella organization which would cover all disciplines and walks of life, intervene at the provincial level and work with the CCA at the national one.

People also welcomed the CCA’s objective of developing into a sort of think tank doing basic research on broad issues affecting the arts and culture sector at large. The importance of creating and maintaining a central repository of information and statistics accessible to artists, organizations, governments and the public at large was also underlined.

My next stop was Victoria, where I had the opportunity to meet with a number of members of the Professional Arts Alliance of Greater Victoria in the beautiful Belfry Theatre complex. The smaller group led to an animated exchange and raised some interesting suggestions concerning possible strategies to improve the profile of arts and culture in general and with Ottawa politicians in particular. I was particularly interested in hearing about an idea that had been discussed in previous years but has not yet come to fruition, namely the notion that national arts service organizations should look again at the possibility of coordinating Annual General Meetings so that they could take place over a period of a week in the nation’s capital and use the opportunity to hold an advocacy operation on the Hill.

My interlocutors also raised concerns about the fact that there may a temptation for the federal government to concentrate its attention and policies only on a few large centres of excellence to the detriment of mid-size communities which also have, and must continue to have, thriving arts and culture institutions and organizations.

My next regional forums will be in Edmonton (November 3), Calgary (November 4) and Regina (November 6).