Canadian Heritage Committee on April 26th, 2018

[Vincent Roy]

Thank you for the question.

I can tell you without hesitation that collaboration and partnership building has only advantages because, even if it is with the little town next door, it is about cultural exchange. Right now, we are working with the City of Gatineau, actually, as part of another project. We have also worked with the City of Montreal, which hosted one of our projects last year. Creating partnerships is on our list of objectives because it is often how we generate projects. Currently, we are working with the people who hold a festival in France. We build partnerships and then we create.

That is often how we work when we are outside of Quebec City. Even in Quebec City, we have worked in collaboration with cultural organizations, artists' centres, the Musée national des beaux-arts, events like the Festival d’été de Québec, and so on. Our artistic production can still interest a lot of partners.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Great, thank you.

Mr. Virani, you have the floor.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you, Ms. Dhillon.

First of all, I want to thank our witnesses for their great presentations.

I'm going to direct my questions to you, Mr. Boni, partly out of self-interest. Your theatre space is located about 100 metres outside of my riding of Parkdale—High Park, so I want to start by saying thank you for providing a venue for the amazing creators and artists in places like Parkdale not only to develop their talents but also to offer those talents and truly engage in part of that conversation with citizens, which you've outlined so eloquently, in that sort of cultural hub environment.

I want to build on what you commented on two or three minutes ago in response to one of the other questions, and ask you about your residency program. Can you describe to us how it facilitates part of that engagement between artists and non-artists? It dovetails with some of the issues you listed, and the issue of mental health comes to mind most of all, for my riding but also for the downtown core. I know you have a neurologist from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, who is a current resident at your cultural hub.

How does having that type of person develop that conversation about mental health and provide a venue for people in downtown Toronto to engage in these issues through an artistic medium?

You could start with that, please.

[Franco Boni]

Sure. Thank you.

There are two things. Suvendrini Lena is a neurologist at CAMH, and she came to us with an idea, an idea to really try to uncover the early stages of schizophrenia, something she as a doctor was quite interested in. She didn't know how to make a work, but she had a love of the arts, so we suggested we try to make a work with her. What would that be like?

We sat down for the better part of six months to talk through her ideas, and then I realized that what she needed was a sound designer. We connected her with a sound designer in the community, and then a scenographer came in, and eventually, now, what she's building is this installation. That's the project she's making, but beyond that, she teaches her University of Toronto theatre and medicine class at the theatre. So every month—it's a bit on hiatus at the moment—since about a year ago we have had doctors come in to the arts centre to read plays, to talk about performance, and to try to understand empathy, something the arts do very well.

She's a central figure now in our residency program. She has been with us now for three and a half years, making this work, and it's scheduled to be produced next year. The way we work with artists and with citizens is for the long term, and it's with questions. We're partnering now with CAMH and a number of organizations within the mental health community to uncover and unpack these questions that Suvendrini has.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you so much.

I just want to ask you one more question, and this relates again to hitting these issues that people are concerned about in places like Toronto, areas like Parkdale, but doing it also with artists at a distance. I'm thinking about indigenous reconciliation in particular. I know there's the project called the Embassy of Imagination.

[Franco Boni]

Yes.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

That project has been funded by Canadian Heritage.

[Franco Boni]

Yes.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Obviously, reconciliation is a big priority for our government. I think it's a big priority for the artistic community, but can you tell me why it's important to show the work of indigenous youth from Cape Dorset to a Toronto audience, and how you are pursuing reconciliation at The Theatre Centre?

[Franco Boni]

Yes. As soon as you walk in the door, we have our land acknowledgement. It's very present. It's there as you walk in. It references the dish with one spoon wampum belt, which means to peaceably share the resources of the land. It's one spoon and one dish and how we need to share those resources.

The Cape Dorset project was a fabulous partnership that we had with the Pan Am Path and a number of other organizations that brought those young people in from Cape Dorset. I want to also speak to partnerships. That's how we operate: with partnerships. It's about connecting those youths not only to our community but to the different communities we partner with. They spent a week on the Pan Am Path creating murals. Their artwork, which is in our stairwell that goes up to the theatre, is still there, so it is not ephemeral. With our building, we have ways to keep remnants of the works up so that as people come up those stairs they look at those drawings and murals and ask, “Who is that?” There are remnants left from that project as a way for us to continue to talk about our relationship with indigenous artists.

I just want to add, too, that it's not—

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

I'm sorry. I'm just going to chip in and ask if you can do that very briefly, because we are running out of time.

[Franco Boni]

Okay. I just want to say that it's not just local indigenous work that we do this with. Next year, we are bringing in a piece of indigenous work from Australia. It's really about how those communities and those artists, not only those on Turtle Island, can connect with each other. It's also about what things we have in common, all as settlers on the land.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Thank you.

My thanks to all our witnesses. It was really interesting, especially because the projects are so different from each other.

That's going to conclude this meeting. Thank you very much. We're adjourned.