Good morning, everyone.
I'm sorry, but since I only speak French once a year, I am going to speak English.
I'm delighted to share perspectives and ideas about how arts and culture can become more truly integrated into the fabric of our country and to relate this to the creation of arts and cultural hubs or centres.
An artist myself, best known previously as a producer and choreographer, I presently lead a $3-million, six-year national study on art for social change, or ASC, involving six universities across the country, 45 scholars, artists, and community-based organizations. It's the first study of its kind in Canada and concludes in December. We’ve already made public over 100 results of this work, including information on the impact for individuals and communities and for systems change.
I work all over the world and am off to South Africa in a few days, and I know from experience that Canada is considered a leader in the field of art for social change.
What do I mean by ASC? We define it as “artmaking made collectively by groups of people about things that matter to them, this process facilitated by a specialized artist or group of artists”.
This work involves every discipline—performing, visual, literary, digital, and urban arts—very often in partnership with local change organizations: community-based non-arts organizations in a wide swath of diverse sectors, from health and justice, immigrant settlement, and economic development to cross-cultural, cross-generational, and reconciliation work and conflict resolution with youth and elders, as well as strategic planning in corporate situations and the creation of public policy.
At its centre is the artmaking. ASC is a form of art with its own unique goals, pedagogy, methods, and scholarship. It's a form of cultural democracy. It's about our own voices: the imaginative way we have to understand and address often complex problems.
There are over 400 organizations currently working in Canada in this sector, with a history of over 50 years in our country. The field is growing exponentially as organizations, artists, and change-makers from every sector are seeing the profound impact of this work. It brings the right brain into action. Creative innovation is at the heart of these arts-based forms of dialogue, as well as the resulting action for positive change.
How does this sector relate to arts and cultural community hubs? I will get to that very soon, but first I am going to offer you an image. It is an image of the ecology of arts in Canada.
At the top, we see the high arts, such as museums, art galleries, ballet companies, and opera companies, and we see cutting-edge artists. At the bottom, we see our granddaughter singing in the bathtub about her dog. In between, we have community arts: pottery classes, Sunday painting, and all kinds of other arts activities that involve the community. What I like to do is to make all of this into a circle where every element of that circle is connected to every other element. If we are to create a healthier, more innovative and imaginative, creative, cohesive, and engaged society, we need to be inclusive when thinking about policies that enrich our experience of the arts. It's not about just consuming the arts but about making art with others about what matters to them and making visible the diverse voices of our country.
Soon you'll be receiving a policy report that is a summation of all our work over the past five years.
There are specific policy recommendations for the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Canada Council. After decades of inclusion, the council has eliminated community-engaged arts as its own field of practice. The sector is basically not present on the council’s website. The absence of experienced artists on juries and the absence of criteria for assessment are problematic as well. Despite two years of attempting dialogue, our national working group has not been able to engage in productive dialogue about these issues.
The second set of recommendations, which you are to receive in both languages soon, are calls for action across federal departments, based on meetings I've had with some 34 federal officials in Ottawa over the last year. Our research reveals that the federal government is far behind municipalities, provinces, and foundations in its recognition and support for the arts sector, with only some 8% of the total. We are under the radar in Ottawa. In fact, many other jurisdictions have increased their support for this work as they see its profound, sustainable, and positive impacts. The social innovation and social enterprise community is just the latest to integrate these arts practices into their work.
Given all these realities, I offer positive possible approaches to the question of arts centres, cultural centres, hubs, or whatever they turn out to be. I very much endorse the perspectives of the Canadian Arts Coalition and those of the McConnell Foundation, which truly represent attainable and positive directions for future hubs and centres. I propose that Canadian Heritage mandate that community-engaged ASC activities be integrated into the policies, planning, and programs of new centres. One could even use an arts-infused dialogue process to create the policies for these new bricks-and-mortar—and perhaps virtual—hubs.
My experience is that the majority of many arts and cultural activities in this country presently take place outside of existing arts centres. Often, the centres are too expensive for small and medium-sized organizations. In particular, community-engaged arts tend to be isolated from the mainstream and are constantly in search of places to do their work in the community.