Canadian Heritage Committee on April 24th, 2018

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Peter Van Loan]

Thank you. We are now past the time. We may be able to have an opportunity to hear a bit more from you in the questions and answers.

We will now move to Ms. Sarah Douglas-Murray from the Creative City Network of Canada.

[Sarah Douglas-Murray, Vice-President, Creative City Network of Canada]

Thank you for the opportunity to speak about cultural hubs and districts in Canada.

I'm here today as vice-president of the Creative City Network of Canada. The network is a national non-profit organization that facilitates collaboration, knowledge sharing, research, and professional development for the cultural sector at the local level through the development of cultural policy, planning, and professional practice. Our membership is primarily made up of municipalities and regional governments, with members from over 178 communities across the country ranging in size from 3,000 to 2.8 million and representing over 16 million Canadians.

The network's vision is that culture is a core pillar of sustainability, facilitating positive change through creativity and innovation and creating healthy, vibrant, and engaging communities across Canada. Through its work, the network helps build the capacity of local cultural planning professionals and, by extension, their local governments to nurture and support cultural development in their communities. By doing so, our organization aims to improve the operating climate and conditions of artists, arts, heritage, and cultural organizations and the quality of life in communities of all sizes.

Upon being invited to speak here today, we reached out to our members in asking them to define cultural hubs and districts and identify whether they currently have or are working towards having them in their communities. We learned that they exist or are in development in many of our member municipalities, and while we heard a consistent message in support of the development and benefits of cultural hubs and districts, it also became apparent to us that every member community was unique and that the type, scope, scale, and definition of each community's assets was extremely diverse.

As our communities are unique and varied, we must be creative and innovative in the development of the program and how we support the development of the sector and individual communities across the country. It is also important that the approach in terms of how we define and support cultural hubs is flexible.

While each community's definition varies, cultural hubs tended to be identified as specific spaces or a building where multiple creative and cultural service organizations and disciplines came together in one location to deliver programs, services, and opportunities. Cultural districts were identified as a series of cultural assets that are located in close proximity to each other, creating a sense of place geographically. When speaking about cultural districts, our members talked about the places between the spaces also being important in defining the district.

It is important to note that both cultural hubs and districts are happening in our communities organically and intentionally. They happen intentionally as a tool for community development, such as the regeneration of downtowns, to promote tourism, and to enhance engagement in community well-being.

In looking at similarities between hubs and districts, they both offer a high volume of facilities and activities that attract people. They enable a cross-pollination of ideas, sectors, and projects; they're dynamic, flexible, welcoming, and accessible; and, they serve a diverse community of artists, performers, creative entrepreneurs, and the public.

We also asked our members to tell us what role the government can play to help hubs and districts. We heard that municipalities are already playing an important and growing role in facilitating, delivering, and ensuring cultural activity at the local level. They're already supporting cultural hubs in a number of ways, including: inclusion in official planning documents; the development and enhancement of infrastructure and public spaces; funding and granting, both to existing hubs and not-for-profit organizations; and, amendments to zoning, bylaws, licensing, and permitting, as spoken about earlier today.

Our members feel strongly that culture is the fourth pillar of sustainability, and many municipalities have worked through extensive community consultation to develop cultural plans and policies. The cultural planning documents in many cases identified the development of districts or hubs within the communities.

Often, the ongoing challenge is funding for development, operations, and programming. In this regard, coordination between levels of government needs to be improved. We were very pleased to hear the statement to this committee by the director general of the arts policy branch that it is important for the Department of Canadian Heritage to have the opportunity to establish partnerships with municipalities and the provinces, and that they are looking to see how the department can support these centres.

We very much agree that municipalities, the provinces, and the department should be working together to develop funding agreements and frameworks for the development and renewal of cultural infrastructure. This recommendation was also made by the Canadian Arts Coalition in their statement to this committee when they requested that future provincial bilateral agreements be required to include a broad consideration of cultural projects. They correctly pointed out that at the provincial level there is a significant absence of programs parallel to the Canada cultural spaces fund and that organizations and municipalities are often left in a compromised position of lobbying provincial governments for discretionary matching funds.

We also heard from our members that funding is needed to support operations, programming, and ongoing activity within hubs and districts. As was mentioned earlier, they are by their very nature diverse and often do not fit neatly into the existing funding streams that are focused on single disciplines, such as performing or visual arts, or on very specific outcomes often identified through economic development programs.

Creative and cultural industries have a positive impact on our communities. They nurture the soul of our country. We encourage embracing culture as a fourth pillar of sustainability.

In closing, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to speak today and would encourage future collaboration with the Creative City Network and our membership in the development of your programs.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Peter Van Loan]

Thank you very much.

Now we will do something that we haven't done in this committee yet and have a teleconference with the Jasper Community Habitat for the Arts. Marianne Garrah is with us by telephone, and I'm told there might be some others.

Perhaps you could introduce them as well, Ms. Garrah. You have seven minutes.

[Marianne Garrah, Director, Jasper Community Habitat for the Arts]

Thank you for contacting us.

I am Marianne Garrah. I will be passing this over to David Baker, who speaks for Habitat for the Arts.

[David Baker, Director, Jasper Community Habitat for the Arts]

Good morning. Thanks for the invitation to talk to you guys today.

I'm going to tell you a bit about our little arts centre that we have going on here in Jasper, the Habitat for the Arts. It was designed to provide a unique and meaningful opportunity for creative partnership arts programming. Programming ranges from studio space for the community and visiting artists to classroom space and after-school programs, and post-secondary accredited outreach education. It's also a venue for small music, theatre, and film presentations. It's a home for the Alberta Foundation for the Arts travelling exhibition. It's a volunteer-based centre and a hub of information on cultural events in the community as a comprehensive guide, and it's a resource centre for the arts and artists.

The plan is to develop a place where artists and cultural organizations can engage with each other, educate the public, and interact with the community. It is intended to be a space to be enjoyed by all demographics, whether it be for presentations or engagements with Jasper's cultural offerings.

I'll give you a little history now. In 2010 we opened Habitat 1.0. It was a vacated provincial courthouse, and we were financially viable in about 18 months, meaning that we could pay our bills with a little bit left over. We are a non-profit organization or, as I like to say, a for-purpose organization. That caught the attention of the municipal government here in Jasper.

They invited us in 2012 to come in with the architects and design a purpose-built dedicated space for the arts. In 2016 they opened the new facility and we have been programming since then. We are an effective centre of activity for our region and the centre of a network for all disciplines and everything that is related to arts and culture.

As a result of our being here, we have renewed the theatre community. We have a theatre club here.

We have established a pottery facility here at the centre, with a kiln to fire pottery. Classes are taught by professionally trained potters. There's a tremendous interest in that.

Music-wise, we have regular events. Artists who we know travel through here to perform concerts. They are well attended.

We also gained the trust of the municipal government to initiate a project to put buskers on the streets of Jasper. That was a project we started as a result of the Rozsa Foundation and arts management here in the province. We have also established Jasper's first-ever film festival, and the arts centre has a new media lab and recording studio for sound and for music.

We have the full support of our council, in that we have established events such as the Mayors Poetry Challenge. If you remember, Mayor Naheed Nenshi from Calgary was the first to start that. Our mayor picked up the baton and in fact is a poet himself.

We have annual events that the community looks forward to, such as the Bowls with Soul, where we have a local potter make and sell bowls. Local restaurants are partnering with us to provide soup to go in those bowls. We have entertainers who entertain while people dine.

We are part of the National Canadian Film Day and have multiple venues in our town. We also have Raven About the Arts, the mayor's award that celebrates local arts. As well, we are part of Culture Days, the national event of Culture Days. We've been involved in that for about 10 years.

Jasper is on the world stage. We are on the world's radar with mountains, moose, and maple syrup, but we go beyond that. We have partnered and have put our arts centre into the minds and the places that discuss these things. We have been part of the creative cities conferences and have built networks there. We also have strong connections to the Banff Centre, which is our neighbour to the south.

“Technology, tolerance, and talent” is something that is quoted in the creative philosophy. We've always had the philosophy of people, place, and process. This means people who are put into a place that's properly equipped and who are allowed to take part in a process that produces meaningful outcomes both socially and in terms of the actual product. The product of that process is really secondary to the connections that are built socially. We call it “proactive inclusion”.

Now, we are a national park in the province of Alberta and the municipality of Jasper. We are an 18-year-old town, which is kind of unique. I moved here in 2001. That's the year that Jasper became a town. The two events are not related. However, we have since established something that has never existed here, which is the arts centre. We have collaborated with the community outreach services and the family community services here in Jasper, to provide activities for staff, residents and visitors.

That's relevant because Jasper has a population of 5,000 souls year-round, but that goes up to about 30,000 a day in the summer months and now in the winter, with the skiing, to the tune of about 2.35 million visitors to Jasper National Park each year. We act locally, and we connect globally. The world comes to Jasper.

Our transient population is a bit of a challenge, but I would challenge anyone to get involved with theatre production and not come away after the production is over with a new set of connections and possibly the weirdest extended family you've ever experienced.

Socio-economics are what we talk about. We believe the arts are a viable career choice for people to apply their energies to. We believe this is a very meaningful addition to Jasper's offering to our visitors. It's also a place where we can grow. We see ourselves as a cultural hub because we exist to simply unify what is already here as well as expand upon what we can do. We have some challenges here in terms of support for the administration of the centre, as well as the edifice complex.

We would like to also talk about a quote from a friend of the Habitat. Tommy Banks, God rest his soul, said once in an interview that you can get a loan for a field full of pipe in Alberta, but you can't get a loan to put a play on, and we've taken that—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Peter Van Loan]

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to interrupt. You're well over the seven minutes. We're now going to go to our seven-minute rounds of questions. Perhaps someone can come back to you on Tommy Banks and the pipes.

[David Baker]

Thank you so much.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Peter Van Loan]

We will go first to Ms. Dzerowicz from the Liberals for seven minutes.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

I want to say thanks for all of the presentations today. They were excellent.

I appreciate the patience of the Jasper Community Habitat for the Arts on the phone, as well as you, Ms. Marcuse, for joining us by video conference.

My first question is directed to Theatre Gargantua. A number of people have recommended tax incentives to make it more attractive to invest in cultural hubs. Typically when there's investment in the arts community, there's usually a mixture between the private sector and government, as well as the public in some way.

I think it was you, Mr. Spence, who mentioned that. Could you elaborate a little more on any specific ideas for the federal level in terms of what we can do around these tax incentives?

Either one of you is fine.

[Michael Spence]

I'll give that to Jacquie.

[Jacquie Thomas]

I think what Michael was talking about in terms of.... I mean, certainly from the perspective of donations, one of the best ways we can raise funds is to allow tax incentives for people who are supporting not-for-profits, which I believe is already in the tax code. The code could be written to specifically talk about cultural assets. There could be a way for the tax code to support a little more strongly these cultural hubs that are being proposed and the ones that already exist, so that when somebody comes forward and supports new creative centres, they will be able to gain some benefit from tax savings from their donations.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

You mentioned that you're in the process of creating a hub with three key groups: Obsidian Theatre Company, Théâtre français de Toronto, and Theatre Gargantua. What are the main challenges you're facing in terms of creating that hub right now?

[Jacquie Thomas]

The greatest challenge right now is finding a space, because it's extremely expensive. It's also about finding a space that's located somewhere that's accessible to transit. We're committed to doing that. We're committed to having something that's either on a subway line or very accessible, not just as an asset for that community and not just as a hub for that immediate community, but as something that can also be an asset for other artists in the community who can come to that hub to practise their work or for other audience members from all across the city who can come to practise there and view shows there.

Because of the huge difficulties and challenges in Toronto due to the price of real estate, we're really being priced out of a lot of these properties. We're focused right now on trying to find space that is a new build and is purpose-built. We have enough spaces that are not necessarily well equipped or well suited for art space, or for theatres in particular. What we really need is something that's purpose-built and that can house a variety of contemporary practices. All our companies are contemporary companies.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

That probably gets into my next question, just because we've had a number of people talk about how expensive this is, particularly in urban centres. The thing is, whether you look at Paris, or Sydney, Australia, or New York, all of them have very high rents, but somehow they manage to find spaces for their artists. I'm not quite sure if there are some lessons we can learn from some of the other bigger city centres in the world.

As well, we've been getting recommendations about more effectively using federal government space. Maybe I can have you dig in a bit and give me a more specific recommendation, and then anybody else who wants to can jump in on that. This is an area I'd like to focus on a bit to see what more we can do around this at the federal level. If you could draw on any international example or on what someone else is doing that has been highly effective, that would be good.

Maybe I'll start with you, Ms. Thomas, and then move over to you, Ms. Marcuse, on our video conference.

[Michael Spence]

One example I can give you is that in Sydney, Australia, there's a company called “Legs On The Wall”. They have a very specific oeuvre. They do their choreography on the sides of buildings, so they have very specific needs. They were initially given an old paratroop hangar to do their choreography. Eventually, they were given a purpose-built facility, the Red Box, specifically for their style of theatre. That's one example of a really successful arts group being supported by their government to create their specific work, which is now internationally renowned.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Marcuse, do you have anything to add on that?

[Judith Marcuse]

Yes, I have two examples to offer. One is in Melbourne, where they have designated laneways and other areas in the centre of the city for visual artists. It has enlivened that part of the city immeasurably. They're quite wonderful. This is integrated with shops and restaurants. The other is in Quito, where a social circus organization was given a hangar by the federal government. They reconstituted the hangar, and it has become a major centre for the practise of social circus in that city.

I'd like to add that we really need to think about rural centres, which have particular needs. I'm sure you've heard a lot about that diversity. The rural-urban divide is quite profound right now.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Peter Van Loan]

You have 10 seconds left.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you, everyone.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Peter Van Loan]

We will now move for seven minutes to Mr. Eglinski for the Conservatives.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Vice-Chair.

I'd like to thank all the witnesses this morning, with a special thank you to Ms. Marcuse, who is video conferencing.

Of course, to two of my constituents, Marianne and David, thank you for joining us via a new system that was never used before. I am going to start with you. I'm going to let you finish your comment on Tommy Banks, but then I'd like you to comment on the fact that you are using a former government building, I believe, for your facility in the town of Jasper. It's very well located, and people who are visiting the community can easily walk to it from most hotels and motels in the area.

I'd like you to elaborate on the difficulties you have in trying to serve both a community and an international visiting community with a very limited amount of funding opportunities. I wonder if you could explain where you think we as government can help—whether it's the municipal, the provincial, or the federal government—in assisting small community organizations like yours that are a hub for art, etc. Go ahead, please.

[David Baker]

Thank you. It's good to hear your voice again. I remember when we talked to you; it was on the same day that we talked to Tommy Banks.

Tommy Banks was a good friend to us. In our initial stages, he said to us that in Alberta you can get a loan through the bank for anything if it's for a field full of pipe, but it's hard to get a play funded. You'd be laughed out of the bank.

We started this project in a vacated provincial courthouse. It was a cold call to the province, and the guy was either just about to go on vacation or to retire, but he said yes and we moved in there. We were financially viable in 18 months. That was a location right downtown—if you ever come to Jasper, you're all invited to come see us—where people can access the centre. After 18 months, we proved ourselves financially viable, and that got the attention of the municipal government.

Jasper was about to revamp our municipal library, so they invited us to come in and sit down with the architects to help design and build Jasper's first dedicated and purpose-built centre for arts and culture. We sat down with them. There were some construction delays. We lost a little momentum in the four years while we were waiting for the centre to open. We also lost about $20,000, because we were going to be a featured site of Alberta Culture Days. When the centre opened, they were going to come and shine the spotlight on us.

We have since opened the centre, and we are blessed enough to have a green space right out in front of the centre. We have about 2,000 square feet of space. We are still accessible. We are still able to have people access us and we're more or less in the downtown. The challenges we have are, first, that this has never been done before, and, second, the astronomical rents in Jasper, which has only been a town for 18 years. This means that we have quite a responsibility to the municipality to make this swing.

As to something the government could do to help us, in Lethbridge there is a arts centre, Casa, and the operating costs and rents are paid through the department of culture. For us in the town of Jasper, it would be good to have something to cover those costs, as well as to make it possible for us to pay administrative costs. It's the edifice complex, where we build the buildings and then no one wants to pay for the cleaning or their operation. If there's any assistance we need, it would be for the day-to-day costs of running the centre, as well as perhaps a living wage for the operation, the programming, the maintaining of events, and the planning of curriculum, and also for just keeping the doors open. That's our major financial challenge. We believe in this enough that we sacrifice to make it happen, but these things I've mentioned would be the greatest alleviations we could have.

Does that begin to answer your question?

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Yes, thank you.

I want to move on to another group now. I'll go to Theatre Gargantua.

We heard from a lot of the larger communities, such as the GTA and Montreal, where you have a whole network of groups, arts facilities, and cultural centres. How do you think we deal with the competitiveness there? Everyone is trying to grab their little chunk of change from the community. Is there a fairly good network where people get together and work together? Or are there a lot of individuals trying to grab as much as they can?

[Jacquie Thomas]

No, I would describe our community, and certainly the theatre community, as very collaborative. There are many different organizations, with TAPA, the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts, being the main one in Toronto. We strategize on how to assist one another, how to make our community stronger, and how to find ways to enhance our audiences and do cross-pollination of our audiences. We have much more collaboration and crossover right now between the disciplines, with more and more contemporary performance. Dance companies are becoming more theatrical, and theatre companies are becoming a little more physical in their work.

I would say that in the larger centres we certainly have the population to support the performing arts organizations that we have. I believe that in TAPA's membership there are 154 professional theatre companies in Toronto. Sometimes it is a challenge, especially with smaller companies that are forced to find space on some out-of-the-way back street just because they can't afford space in a regular theatre. Sometimes it's challenging to get audiences out there. One of the ways we could improve this situation would be through some kind of promotional campaign.