I think we received notice on Wednesday last week, but thank you to the clerk for his help in familiarizing me. I'm delighted to be here and to meet you all.
I'm here as much to let you know about our organization as to participate in this very interesting dialogue you're engaged in. I say this because the clerk didn't know who we were, and you probably don't either. The Canadian Art Museum Directors' Organization, or CAMDO, is a professional association that represents directors of art museums across Canada. We have over 80 members, and they are the directors of our largest institutions, like the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada. And they are the directors of regional art centres, like the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island; the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba in Brandon, Manitoba; and the Two Rivers Gallery in Prince George, B.C.
CAMDO represents executives who are responsible for budgets anywhere from millions of dollars to a few hundred thousand and for staff in the hundreds to fewer than 10. CAMDO works primarily in two areas, professional development and the development of policies and standards to help guide the challenging work of directing an art museum. CAMDO also facilitates research on topics of concern to the art museum community and serves as an important conduit for sharing information, networking, and partnering between institutions.
Rather than delving into the particulars of some of the things you've already discussed today, which my colleagues have so well addressed, I'd rather focus more on strategic approaches, particularly from the perspective of executives.
For art museum directors, arts and culture programs are tools that help them lead their institutions. We believe leadership is important, especially in these times of economic uncertainty, no matter what sector we're talking about, whether it's manufacturing, resource development, health care, or culture. I'm sure you all appreciate that our leaders carry enormous responsibility, and they must have the right tools if they're to make their organizations successful. Determining what tools are needed and whether they're good enough is all about strategy, and we assume that's what the committee is really here for.
I'd like to speak briefly about just four categories of tools, and not go over my time limit, hopefully. One is the essential recognition of art and culture as a keystone of national identity. From Hockey Night in Canada to Mordecai Richler, we have cultural products that give Canadians a sense of common purpose and well-being. These cultural products are essential for cultural stability. Public institutions, including art museums and public galleries, give their local communities a sense of coherence and meaning. They give local citizens a sense of responsibility and pride. Public programs offered by museums keep a running dialogue on cultural matters, dialogue that is open and informed, which minimizes the misunderstandings and inward-looking cultural thinking that so often leads to conflict. Our cultural institutions are keystones of civic life.
Now, for education, I don't know a parent who doesn't heap praise on their kids when they draw, paint, play music, or dance. What parents know intuitively is that imaginative play is a sign of mental health and the development of complex reasoning, which is to say that we know that it's good, even though we may not know exactly why. We need to ensure that arts education does not simply dry up after grade 6. It falls to our art institutions to provide the opportunities for Canadians to engage in this kind of life-long learning.
On training, more specifically, CAMDO has identified a need for specific skills development in the area of arts administration and cultural leadership. Some years ago, U.S. author, Daniel Pink, in an article in the Harvard Business Review, observed that the MFA is the new MBA. MFA, for those of you who might not know, is a master's degree in fine arts. He was the first person to identify a confluence between the increasing importance of innovation and knowledge-based businesses in western economies and increasing enrollments in post-secondary fine arts programs. In fact, enrollments in fine arts programs are second only I think to engineering and computer sciences. Today, Mr. Pink's insight can be taken another step: there is a need for advanced education programs to train the next generation of cultural executives.
As for efficient access to sustainable funding, arts and heritage institutions are presently crippled by the administrative burden of securing and sustaining funding. To be frank, there are too many small and short-term project-oriented programs that consume disproportionate time and resources in applications and reporting. What we need is consistent multi-year funding programs that are inclusive of the wide diversity of art museum activities, both operations and programs, and tools that simplify the application and reporting processes.
Some innovation has already started in this direction. Last year there was the launch of CADAC, which is the Canadian Arts Data/ Données sur les arts au Canada, an online database that allows arts organizations to use their same program and financial information for applying and reporting to different levels of government and agencies.
I think you know the problem. You have to do a budget for this organization, another budget for this organization, and the budgets are not quite the same, so you end up spending huge amounts of time. This idea of harmonization, which the Pew foundation started to develop in Pennsylvania, in the U.S., is very successful and they're starting to roll it out. Obviously, different provinces are even going to be interested in applying the same kind of mechanisms.
The Department of Canadian Heritage is one of the supporting partners, teaming up with both provincial and city funders in order to make this possible. We need to see CADAC-like systems roll out to other provinces. This is infrastructure and clearly worth the investment.
A last note on copyright. Although I know this is not really a focus for this committee—it's an industry matter—I think you're aware of the challenges of addressing copyright and its importance in terms of cultural materials. We have an increasingly complex and restrictive copyright standard. That seems to be the way things are going. There's a lot of lobbying in order to make it more restrictive. For public institutions that are responsible for maintaining and preserving public collections, the importance is to make sure the public has continued access to them.
Thank you.
