Canadian Heritage Committee on March 27th, 2018

[Ellen Hamilton, Executive Director, Qaggiavuut]

Hi. I'm Ellen, from Qaggiavuut. That was Vinnie. Vinnie is our chairperson, by the way.

I just want to note that we have not built Qaggiq yet; we are advocating for it.

This traditional Inuit term, I think, really encapsulates what you're all talking about here, a hub, a place where people come from different places and gather and celebrate life through story and song, which is our history. We pass on language through music and stories. That's what we do as human beings, and in Nunavut we don't have a space for performing artists right now.

We envision Qaggiq as a hub for Inuit culture, not only in Inuit Nunangat, but in Canada and the circumpolar world, providing training and opportunities to artists, education to youth, and a professional space to present the Inuit performing arts. The aims of Qaggiq complement the work of governments, as governments seek to strengthen and recognize Inuit culture and address issues of community stability, particularly and importantly among our youth.

Qaggiq is an exciting opportunity to launch a performing arts industry in Nunavut and provide higher education in the performing arts, including the cultural, visual, and technical fields of the arts—lighting and sound, recording, and digital design. The most effective way of strengthening language is through the performing arts. Qaggiq would be a hub that encourages Inuit artists to collaborate with each other, strengthen their skills, and connect people to culture and language through the arts.

Our dream for Qaggiq is to strengthen Nunavut performing artists ultimately. We want artists from across Nunavut to come to this hub and receive training and presentation opportunities to build their skills, create new work, promote their careers, and secure employment.

On youth programming, research indicates that the performing arts are the most impactful method of providing youth at risk with a sense of belonging. Qaggiq would deliver Inuit performing arts education and training to our children and youth. Perhaps they would travel to the hub to learn Inuit performing arts through music and drum dancing and storytelling, the way we send kids right now to Iqaluit to play hockey and badminton.

On suicide and risk prevention. “Breaking Point”, the recent report from the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs, makes direct links between the development of indigenous language, arts training, and suicide prevention. The committee recommends community control over the arts, cultural infrastructure, and the teaching of indigenous languages to youth. Our Qaggiq would provide all three of these elements.

According to studies by Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, mental health issues are the highest priority for Inuit. Factors contributing to mental health issues include the loss of culture and the lack of recognition. Research is showing us that participating in the performing arts all around the world improves mental health and well-being. Qaggiq would be a hub of creativity, inspiration, and expression.

Qaggiq would strengthen Inuit culture and language by training Inuit artists and allowing them to deliver the Inuit arts programming to our Nunavut children and youth. This is a huge issue right now in Nunavut, where most of our Nunavut children go through school seldom having an Inuit teacher and education in their language.

Mentorship and training positions for Inuit are built into our project, from constructing the building to running the lights and sound.

On post-secondary and higher learning, we would like to have a space where we can actually get to that higher level of learning through language.

Now I'd like to pass it on to Laakkuluk.

[Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory, Artistic Director, Qaggiavuut]

I just want to emphasize that we are creating something that has not existed yet. It's wonderful to hear about projects all across the country that are able to regenerate buildings, as we have just heard. We have nothing, and so we're doing what we do in small living rooms and in garages across Nunavut in the Arctic.

As an inter-sector cultural hub, Qaggiq provides the physical space needed by performing artists to create other compatible uses, including much-needed visual arts gallery space and a theatre to screen Inuit, Nunavut, and circumpolar films. Qaggiq features a teaching kitchen for the Inuit culinary arts, and an atrium, which is an indoor market, for our country food—seal meats, caribou meat, and so on— and for artisans and cultural skills teaching, including skin sewing and hunting tool construction. Broadcasting to Nunavut communities, Qaggiq provides advanced digital streaming capacity and live broadcasts of performances and master classes to Arctic communities in the world. In a digital age, it is vital that Internet providers support the delivery of Inuit content to stave off the onslaught of mostly English-dominated environments. We need to be able to hear our language in order to use our language.

On interdisciplinary collaboration, there are many disciplines within the performing arts umbrella, including contemporary and traditional Inuit music, theatre, dance, acrobatics, film, and new media. Qaggiq provides opportunities to bring artists from various performing arts and media arts together to collaborate, including Nunavummiut interested in learning and working in the technical fields of the arts—lighting, sound, recording, video editing, camera, digital design and projection—as well as in the fields of art management, stage management, set design, construction, costume and makeup design, directing, writing, and producing.

In the area of tourism, Qaggiq will be Canada's first performing arts space for Inuit, providing a destination for Inuit and cultural tourists. Qaggiq is a physical space for cultural exchange between artists, the community, and visitors.

On economic impact and cultural exports, Qaggiq will allow Nunavut to become a unique international cultural centre while contributing significantly to the $54.6 billion arts industry by creating high-value jobs. Qaggiq creates economic opportunities for artists and arts sector technicians and managers.

The hub model is at its most effective when there's an intersection among hubs, including partnerships, collaborations, and cross-cultural alliances. When hubs strengthen their sector, they are better able to share knowledge with other sectors, including other hubs in the cultural sector, such as heritage, visual arts, film and new media, and non-artistic sectors, such as business, government, environment, social justice, and technology. Qaggiq will strengthen the abilities of Inuit performing artists and technicians to work and collaborate in other sectors.

The rationale for an Inuit performing arts hub is that the people of Nunavut are the only people in Canada without a performing arts space. Without space, Inuit performing artists cannot collaborate, create, learn, teach, and present. By strengthening performing artists with an interdisciplinary hub dedicated to their needs, artists can build culture and language and strong partnerships with other sectors in Canadian society.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Thank you very much.

We will now continue down the table to Méduse, Caroline Salaün and Claude Bélanger.

[Caroline Salaün, General Manager, Méduse]

Good morning.

First of all, I would like to thank the committee for inviting us and giving us the opportunity to share our expertise with you.

For this presentation, I am joined by Claude Bélanger, who is the general manager of Manif d'art, the Quebec City Biennial, and vice-president of our board of directors. I must also point out that Mr. Bélanger was the general manager of Oeil de poisson, one of the founding members of Méduse. So he will be able to answer any questions you may have about establishing a cultural centre.

We are going to use the time that you have given us to briefly present to you our cultural centre and to draw your attention to some of the remarks in the brief we submitted on March 24. We are also going to focus on some aspects that were not in our brief that may complete the picture for you, and thereby give you more food for thought.

We would like to start by showing you a short introductory video on Méduse.

[Audiovisual presentation]

Thank you—

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Can I ask you to hang on for a moment? There is something I have to say.

There is a 30-minute bell. Can I have unanimous consent for the witnesses to finish their presentation?

Then I will be asking the witnesses to give their presentation quickly. But first I have to ask whether that is acceptable to all members of the committee.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

All right.

Thank you.

So I am going to ask you to shorten your presentation a little, because we have to rush off to vote.

[Caroline Salaün]

No problem.

Now that we have shown you the facility, we are going to quickly talk about Méduse’s foundation and operations.

I will hand you over to Mr. Bélanger.

[Claude Bélanger, General Manager, Manif d'art, Méduse]

The Coopérative Méduse was born in 1993 from the collective will of a number of contemporary arts organizations, the will to acquire a building together in order to improve the precarious conditions of artistic endeavour. I should mention that the project began in 1989 at an event that brought several of the founding members of Méduse together to celebrate the 150th anniversary of photography.

The building was opened in 1995. Choosing its legal status was not easy, but the cooperative model won the day; it has allowed each organization to have a voice. To be members of Méduse, artistic, cultural or community organizations must participate in the life of the cooperative and operate in accordance with its mandates. The fundamental idea is to provide contemporary arts professionals with expertise, service and equipment of various kinds under the same roof.

Most organizations provide support for research, production and outreach. As we have seen, this can be printmaking, photography, video, wood, metal, sound, computers, or multidisciplinary art. Others specialize in a specific field. That is the case with my organization, Manif d’art, which focuses on promotion.

Besides managing the facility, the cooperative’s objective is to provide local, national and international showcases. As well as being able to work on site, artists can have residencies in one of the cooperative’s five studios for short or medium stays or in order to show their work there. Our two performance spaces are open to the public and used for all forms of art, music, theatre, dance, contemporary art or cinema, in annual, high-quality programming. The spaces have been managed for a number of years by one of the member organizations of the cooperative. Our galleries are seven in number and are used for annual programming in all aspects of contemporary art. As we have seen, that includes photography, installations and video, to name but a few. In total, the cooperative’s activities involve almost 100,000 people. The video that we showed you is a few years old: today, 100,000 people come to visit us each year, which makes us very proud.

All member organizations of Méduse are recognized and supported by different levels of government because of the quality of their offerings. However, no matter the quality of the cultural offerings, the financial realities of member organizations have to be considered, if we want to develop the infrastructure and increase its impact.

That development cannot rely on private funding, which is difficult to obtain and especially to maintain. In Quebec City, for example, the number of residents and of resident companies is limited and competition is fierce. Most of the funding from private companies goes to performing arts institutions or to very popular events like the Festival d’été de Quebec, or the Quebec Winter Carnival, and is a function of their marketing strategies, which really means the good will of the management of the day.

Let me emphasize that our reputation is built on our ability to work together and with others. For the members of Méduse, working together for mutual benefit is in our DNA. In fact, consistent with the multidisciplinary mandates and needs of the artists, partnerships are regularly established with private, educational and community sectors.

As a member of Méduse, but also as an administrator and an artist, the only way I can conclude is by saying that our centre provides both our artists and Quebec City with a high-quality cultural infrastructure. Méduse has allowed artists to bring their work to life, while staying in Quebec City. Examples are BGL, which has participated in the Venice Biennale, Diane Landry, who has an international career, and Giorgia Volpe. Méduse has also given birth to two international events: the Mois Multi, in multidisciplinary art, and Manif d’art, the Quebec City Biennale, which I represent and which is generating significant attention. Finally, the annual artistic residency exchange agreements with Europe point to Méduse's cooperation internationally.

We look forward to taking the next step.

I will now give the floor back to our general manager.

[Caroline Salaün]

As Mr. Bélanger said earlier, the members of Méduse are extremely dynamic and involved. They also all have a voice on the board of directors and they invest their time in setting the cooperative’s direction. Just recently, the members, the board of directors and I put the final touches on a strategic planning process that took more than a year and established a new mission and a new vision for the cooperative.

For everyone, Méduse is clearly a model and it must remain one, but, to do so, the hyperstructure must be allowed to develop in order to grow. So the vision is clear, the needs are defined, and the projects are major but realistic. Funding, however, is inadequate. Even if the cooperative managed to operate at 80% because of its own funds, it faces significant financial challenges mainly related—and I really have to stress this—to maintaining and renovating the building, and to keeping it attractive and visible. Without a long-term, 20-year lease from the Ville de Québec, a municipal tax exemption, and support from its tenants, the centre cannot be financially viable.

The precarious financial situation of some of the tenants and our solidarity as a cooperative is driving us quickly to think about other avenues so that we can keep our members’ rent affordable, while providing them with a stimulating and suitable place in which their expertise can be displayed.

In the brief we have submitted, we show that timelines for implementing asset-maintenance projects are longer than five years, according to the parameters of government programs. I am referring to the Programme d’aide aux immobilisations in Quebec and to the Canada Cultural Spaces Fund.

Our first, our main recommendation would therefore be to provide cultural centres with on-going financial assistance annually in order to make up for this long wait and to prevent the infrastructure from deteriorating. If I use Méduse as an example, with its current funding request of $2 million, which is awaiting confirmation by Canadian Heritage, it would be better for us if we could receive annual funding, rather than a one-time grant once every five or 10 years. It would mean that maintaining our assets would be more proactive and possibly less expensive, while providing ongoing cultural offerings and permanent outreach. The return on that federal government investment could not be more beneficial, or the national and international impact more robust.

Our second recommendation is related to the first: it is to create a designation of “Canadian cultural centre” in order to provide the country with a strong network for creating and showcasing arts and culture. In our brief, we refer to the French model of contemporary arts centres. By creating a designation of this kind—

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

I am sorry, but I really have to interrupt you here. The 10 minutes for your presentation are now over, and we have to hurry and vote.

[Caroline Salaün]

Great.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to all of you for submitting your materials.

I’m very sorry, but we have to run to vote, so that’s going to be the end of this meeting.

The meeting is adjourned.