Thank you, everyone, for having us here today.
We are from Small. We are an organization that works with cultural heritage in small communities across the country. We look at the existing assets within small, rural, or remote communities, and we work with people within the communities to leverage those assets to help move their communities forward.
We're looking at revitalization strategies, often in communities that are facing resource closure or other transitions within their communities. They're facing economic transitions that need to happen. Often what we have seen in these communities is that cultural assets and cultural facilities can help with those transition strategies and help rejuvenate and revitalize the communities.
We're looking at some cultural hub ideas in small communities. I want to share with the committee today what we've seen and what we have seen as best practices within a lot of these communities. We wanted to propose a working definition of “cultural hubs” that is a bit beyond infrastructure or it's a different take on infrastructure. Instead of just looking at the physical infrastructure of buildings, we wanted to look at a more holistic approach towards infrastructure.
We will touch on five things today. The first one is the physical infrastructure. The second is the idea of educational infrastructure within these facilities. The third is social infrastructure, support systems within the facilities. The fourth is operational infrastructure, which helps the facilities keep going into the future. The last one is market infrastructure, to help bring cultural products or cultural producers to a broader marketplace.
The first is physical infrastructure. This is something I think we're all familiar with when we talk about cultural hubs. It's the facilities that can be used for cultural activity. One of the things we see in small or rural communities is that a lot of physical infrastructure already exists. There are buildings in rural communities that are being underused and could be leveraged or repurposed as cultural facilities.
We're looking at things like churches, schools, and community centres. One example of this is the Grand Theatre in Indian Head, Saskatchewan. This was a theatre that fell on some hard times, and the community ended up buying the building and repurposing it as a bit of a cultural hub. Now not only is it a theatre, but it runs programs for local schools. It brings people from other regional communities together. It's more of a hub facility now, but it's reusing what already existed. It's not new infrastructure; it's a building that already existed within the community.
The second is educational infrastructure. We find it's important that these types of hubs provide programming for the community that reaches out to youth and newcomers. It provides broader programming to engage people in cultural activities. This goes beyond the bricks and mortar and really reaches into the world of innovation, and that helps support new businesses, cultural businesses that are operating within these communities.
One example of the educational style of programming is the Falls Brook Centre in Glassville, New Brunswick. It has a lot of educational programming that focuses on environmental and ecological programs, bringing in school groups, youth, to learn within the centre, which helps support and revitalize the community.
The third component is social infrastructure. This is about building networks within communities, reaching out beyond the physical infrastructure again. This has a lot to do with engaging new residents in rural communities, attracting new residents to rural communities, and retaining youth within rural communities, so retaining current residents within these communities.
Developing these types of networks leads to volunteerism, which leads to mentorship within the communities. Again it's programming that goes beyond the physical bricks and mortar of a cultural hub. One example is the Canadian Centre for Rural Creativity, which is under development right now in Blyth, Ontario. One of the main focuses of this centre—it's a cultural hub, a cultural facility for the community—is about retaining youth. That's something the community really struggles with right now. A lot of youth are leaving Huron County, in Ontario. One of the programs that they want to have encompassed within this facility is something that can help retain youth within the community. Again, it's a very small community, so it's a challenge that a lot of these communities face.
The fourth component is operational infrastructure. Often we see hubs start up in small communities and they get funding or a capital campaign comes together for the bricks and mortar, yet they struggle when they come to operational programming. Moving forward with their programming, they do not have the same level of support or the same level of funding as they did for the actual bricks and mortar campaign.
When we're looking at hubs in smaller communities, it's important that we consider the future and how that programming can reach into the future and what kind of challenges are going to arise from a new building or a repurposed building.
One example of this is a project in Chapleau in northern Ontario. This is a church building. The church now has a restaurant and a little artisan market in the basement. They've really diversified what they offer to the community. As the church found a new use, it was hit with a high level of municipal taxes. A church itself is tax exempt within a community. Now that it has new uses in there, it has to pay a high level of municipal taxes. This isn't something that they saw the impact of going into this process. They've responded to the community's needs. They're offering a service to the community, and they're being forced to pay something and to impose these costs on their user groups that they're not really prepared to manage at this point.
The last thing we want to touch on is market infrastructure. In small or rural communities, and remote communities especially, there's often not an audience or a significant market that can support a lot of cultural activities or cultural small businesses. What we see is a need for market infrastructure that can connect rural communities to urban centres or connect networks of smaller communities so that they can build their market capacities, build their audiences, and build connections with collectors or supporters. Again, this is a form of infrastructure that goes beyond just the normal hub concept and really connects different hubs or different facilities.
One example of this is Dorset Fine Arts. Dorset Fine Arts is located in Toronto, but they are a marketing or sales branch of the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative, located in Cape Dorset. This is a physical extension of their marketplace. They're able to reach into the Toronto marketplace through this facility in Toronto, but the hub, the creation, and the artists are located in Cape Dorset. It's just extending that market reach, which is quite important.
Those are five examples of different forms of infrastructure that we see the need for, again, going beyond the typical definition of infrastructure when you look at cultural hubs. We wanted to give those examples to the committee today just so you can understand the specific components that we see in small and rural communities when you look at cultural development and cultural rejuvenation.
I'll leave it there.