Canadian Heritage Committee on March 1st, 2018

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

On museums and marketing to the public, my sense is that our museums do not do a good job on that here in Canada.

[Gail Lord]

I would agree with you.

The boards of museums are an area of weakness. Again, I'm not an expert in the health care system, but I think our boards are very confused about their roles. Many are appointed by government.

I think the current government in Ottawa has taken a great step forward in opening up and having more transparency in the appointment of boards, but our boards are not always seeing that their primary responsibility is funding. That should be part of our museum policy. That's their main responsibility.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

We went a little in the direction of where the government could assist by provincial or federal pushing for shared purchases of services and so on.

Could you elaborate a bit more on that in terms of things like insurance, for example?

[Gail Lord]

I think it's insurance. I think it's supplies. I think it's archival materials. I think it's a whole range of things, including supplies and services both, yes.

Our government used to provide services, by the way. Again, times have changed, but maybe there should be some type of service central that can help people make decisions on these matters.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

All right.

If you were to give us some new trends from abroad where museums are very successful, say in remaking themselves and there is in some way a role for government or policy in that, or just a good story to tell, where should we look? What would be some good examples of that?

[Gail Lord]

You can look at both the U.K. and France, and at our neighbour, the United States. The key thing at the small museum level is the ability to hire talented people who can work with the community. That is the number one thing.

A program was brought to me yesterday in rural Ontario which is having a school in one of our counties. The young people, the teenagers, take their classes in the local museum. That program has produced tremendous results. However, it depended on the fact that the school board was willing to pay a qualified historian to work in that museum. It comes down to inspired staff, like everything else. Technology is there to support—that's very important for young people, clearly—but it was the person.

In the U.K., I think you'd see the same thing. You see dynamic projects and programs, because creative people are working in their museums.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Thank you. That's a great way to end this session.

Thank you to all of our witnesses today. It was helpful to get your insights.

We are going to be suspending briefly while we set up for our next panel.

Thank you.

[Gail Lord]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

We'll start again so we can make sure we have enough time for all of our questions.

We have with us in person Shauna Levy, president and chief executive officer of the Design Exchange. In Haida Gwaii, we're having some technical difficulties.

Can you hear us now?

[Nika Collison, Executive Director, Haida Gwaii Museum]

I'm on the phone, but I'll be right there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

That was Nika Collison, executive director of the Haida Gwaii Museum.

We're going to start with Shauna Levy from the Design Exchange so we can work through our technical issues with the video conferencing.

Welcome, Ms. Levy.

[Shauna Levy, President and Chief Executive Officer, Design Exchange]

Thank you.

Good morning. I'm Shauna Levy, president and CEO of Design Exchange, Canada's only museum dedicated exclusively to design, and I believe that design can change the world.

Canada has an industry of hundreds of thousands of designers employed in graphics, fashion, industry, architecture, interiors, hospitals, and more. The DX—Design Exchange— reflects this industry as a unique cultural presentation space.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and committee, for inviting me to speak today. With a mandate to demonstrate the value and importance of design to everyday life, DX was launched 25 years ago. The City of Toronto gifted the original Toronto Stock Exchange for 99 years rent-free, and the developers, Cadillac Fairview, provided a grant of $500,000 a year for 25 years to cover operational expenses. This grant sunsetted in 2015.

Seven years ago, Lord Cultural Resources, completed a strategic plan that I was recruited to implement. The Lord plan made two recommendations: to be a design museum offering programs with broad public appeal, and to launch a design festival. In the case of the former, I installed Stefan Sagmeister's Happy Show, and Christian Louboutin's 20-year retrospective borrowed from London's Design Museum. We also developed our own shows: This Is Not a Toy, a show on street art, guest-curated by the performer-singer Pharrell Williams; and Politics of Fashion | Fashion of Politics with Canadian icon Jeanne Beker.

These four shows attracted over 75,000 mostly first-time visitors and increased DX admission by 300%. We earned 800 million global media impressions, and for the first time DX saw a meaningful increase in revenue. For example, Louboutin brought in a record revenue of $250,000 in corporate sponsorship and about the same in provincial government grants. Yet, given the current funding landscape for museums, it remained difficult to cover our costs. To complicate things further, the more we used space for programming, the less it could be rented out for venue rental, which is our most significant revenue stream.

Around this time I had two conversations that led us to the next stage of our evolution. First, when I asked Pharrell why he curated the show pro bono, he said that people are often intimidated by contemporary art and stand in front of an art gallery afraid to walk in. He explained that street art was accessible and served as an introduction to cultural expression. The second conversation was with a city councillor who represents a high-priority neighbourhood. He asked me to think about the kids out there.

First, Pharrell was right. We received phone calls from young adults asking us what the dress code was because they simply had never been to a museum before. Second, the councillor's question made me think about relevance, diversity, and accessibility, so much so that this became a starting point for the next phase, DX Satellite.

DX Satellite was launched. In addition to our home at the Toronto Stock Exchange, we became nomadic with pop-up installations throughout the Greater Toronto Area. The 3DXL exhibition illustrated the impact of 3D printing on architecture, while Smarter. Faster. Tougher. was an exhibition on innovative sportswear design held during the Pan Am Games.

We evolved a robust series of educational programs, tours, and customized workshops for high-priority neighbourhoods. These programs continue to grow. We annually engage with approximately 90,000 visitors and participants and have approximately 200,000 friends and followers through social media. We did a project at Union Station with Luminato and our high-priority neighbourhood programming.

In 2015, further to the strategic plan, we developed the concept for a design festival and biennial, leading to our most ambitious and acclaimed project to date, EDIT: Expo for Design, Innovation, and Technology. EDIT was a 10-day interactive and immersive festival that looked at how design innovation and technology can make the world a better place for all people. It was held in 2017 to celebrate Canada's 150th anniversary. It wasn't until I learned about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 that EDIT's raison d'etre really became clear. I was excited about the prospect that our planet could achieve these goals, but moreover I saw them as design challenges. I met with the UN in New York and asked them to partner with us on EDIT.

We repurposed the deserted Unilever factory in Toronto, occupying 150,000 square feet with an immersive experience of curated exhibits by global thought-leaders like Bruce Mau and Carlo Ratti.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Thank you.

I'm just going to wait for us to be able to see Ms. Collison again.

If you could speak to us, that would be great. We have you on the front screens now.

You have 10 minutes, please.

[Nika Collison]

Can you hear me?

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Yes.

[Nika Collison]

Xaada 'láa isis....

There's a reverb here. I'm going to turn my end down. Can you still hear me?

Okay, great.

[Witness speaks in Haida]

Good people, háw'aa for inviting me to speak today.

My name is Jisgang. My English name is Nika Collison. I'm the executive director of the Haida Gwaii Museum, a position I've only recently taken on. Before this, I worked here for 18 years as a curator and senior negotiator for Haida repatriation initiatives, among other things. Until we can secure proper funding, I continue to carry this work along with my new role.

I've been invited to share experiences on the Haida Gwaii Museum, its history and current existence, and the challenges we face. In this, I'd like to begin by saying our museum might be one of the earliest calls to action in regard to reconciliation in the museum and greater world, in that its formation was a vision of both Haida citizens and our friends residing on Haida Gwaii. The museum opened in 1976 at Kay Llnagaay, an ancient Haida village from which I'm presenting right now, and of course we're on Haida Gwaii.

Since almost all of our treasures left the islands during the height of colonization, we didn't have much of a collection to begin with, but several families, both Haida and settler, donated their treasures so they can be cared for and shared by all. One of the earliest acts of repatriation in Canada also occurred through the formation of our museum when then curator Peter Macnair of the Royal British Columbia Museum showed support by returning some monumental poles taken from Haida Gwaii in the early 1900s.

The Haida Gwaii Museum has since grown to include a considerable collection of treasures obtained through donations, commissions, long-term loans, and repatriation and by purchases and really large donations made possible through Canada's Cultural Property Export and Import Act.

In 2008, our museum grew from 5,600 square feet to 17,000 square feet with the creation of the Haida Heritage Centre at Kay Llnagaay, a 50,000 square foot complex of which our museum is a partner, along with the Skidegate Band Council and Parks Canada. Conceptualized and driven by our community, the centre houses several cultural and educational spaces and organizations in addition to our museum. It took seven years and almost $30 million to create.

Throughout, every experience, word, object, and image has been developed with our people ensuring we say what we want to say and how we want to say it. Amongst it all is a grave house that was built to house ancestral remains unearthed during construction of the Haida Heritage Centre. It also serves as a holding place for repatriated ancestral remains awaiting reinterment.

In the 1990s, the repatriation of ancestral remains became a primary focus of our people and has been facilitated and supported by our museum, in partnership with the Haida Repatriation Committee and Council of the Haida Nation since the movement began. To date, more than 500 of our ancestors have been brought home and reburied, from museums, universities, and private individuals across North America and one from overseas. This work has taken over 20 years and has cost over $1 million in cash, sweat labour, and in-kind donations.

We are a category A museum, meaning we meet professional Canadian museum standards by way of facilities and the ability to care for and present our multiple historic collections and archives. We also present new works, as we are a living culture.

Our museum's principle research, collecting, and presentation focus is the recovery of art, knowledge, and documentation pertinent to Haida history located in institutions around the world. This is brought forward into our living culture today. Our mandate is also very focused on the preservation and continuation of the Haida language, an endangered linguistic isolate. We also collect and conduct research on the natural sciences of Haida Gwaii and its history of Canadian settlement.

We conduct all our work in consultation with the Haida and greater islands community, and we approach this work locally and abroad with the goal of mutual respect, co-operation, and trust. We are the main generator of public programs on-island with an annual arts and culture program featuring workshops, art exhibitions, educational programs, and a series of public programs also aimed at visitors to Haida Gwaii.

Other programming includes an array of ongoing community-driven research projects, educational experiences, and other collaborations with organizations both locally and on a global scale. We are also committed to building capacity in the fields of art and heritage by mentoring Haida and other islands in museum practices and arts administration.

These opportunities build important skills for employment and passion and provide unparalleled access to learning about historic and contemporary Haida language, art, and culture, Haida Gwaii itself, and our shared history with Canada. We also operate a gift shop that supports and promotes local artists. In observing the many facets of our operations, it is clear that the Haida Gwaii Museum is not an institution in and of itself; rather, we are part of the institution that makes up Haida society and Canadian society. Together with the Haida Heritage Centre, we provide space, support, and opportunity for artistic and cultural practices, ceremonies, research, education, capacity building, and so on.

We are driven by the community, as I said earlier, and are a part of and contribute to our Haida way of life, an islander way of life, both inside and outside of our house. We have been blazing paths towards reconciliation long before the term became popular.

I will segue into our challenges, and then we'll be touching on each subject in anticipation of providing you with further pertinent information in response to your questions.

Of course, the number one issue or challenge is funding. In order to run a professional small-to-medium sized museum of our stature, at the bare minimum we require professional staff to serve in administration, curation, repatriation, collections, archives, retail, and, ideally, education.

With an absolute basic operating budget, meaning no major exhibitions, publications, research projects, mentorship programs, education programs, etc., thus a very basic annual schedule of programming, our budget runs just over $400,000. Ideally, it would be around $750,000. Based on revenue from existing annual operating grants, admissions, and retail sales, in order to break even, we can only employ myself, a bookkeeper, and a gift shop manager. In this case, our payroll expenses make up about 25% of our operating costs. All other positions are grant dependent, and when we do find grant money for additional positions, all staff are still grossly underpaid.

I'd like to give you some personal examples. As executive director, visual arts curator, repatriation negotiator, facilitator, and marketer, I make $60,000 a year. When I was everything except the executive director, I made $32,000 a year. Our curator of collections and archeology, who is also our conservator and exhibitions preparator, makes $35,000 a year. The archives and gift shop each make $42,000 a year, and remember, many of these positions are grant dependent.

Human resource and capacity building is huge. We're absolutely overworked, underpaid, and underdeveloped. The indigenization, decolonization of museums and, by extension, Canadian society by way of repatriation, reparation, reconciliation, and recognition of indigenous scholarships, laws, and protocol.... Amazing work has been accomplished by working together. I can tell you many stories that demonstrate the miles and miles we have yet to cover. We really need to embrace the TRC calls to action and UNDRIP in this round.

The rural location is very much a challenge. There is an increased cost to living on an island, and because of that, we have fewer visits and less opportunity for revenue generation and grants. However you support art, culture, and reconciliation in general by way of this inquiry, I highly value your understanding of the essentiality that this brings to the sustaining of a healthy economy and society for all and support one of the most powerful on-the-ground roads to reconciliation.

Háw'aa.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

Thank you.

Following these two presentations, we're going to move to the question and answer period. We'll begin with seven-minute rounds.

We're going to begin with Ms. Dzerowicz for seven minutes.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thanks so much to both of you for your excellent presentations. I'm a born and bred downtown Torontonian, so I know the Design Exchange very well. I've been there for a number of functions, but I can't say I've been to any of the exhibits. That's something I would love to do.

Toronto has a big love for design. We have a lot of design talent across this country and there is a lot of diversity. One of the things we heard from one of the presentations earlier is that some of the most successful museums have very talented people such as yourself who work with local people. What I'd love to hear from you is how you incorporate the diversity of the city and this country into the work you do at the design museum. How do you the tap into some of content creators and influencers in Canada, and what are some of your challenges?

[Shauna Levy]

One of the things I talked about in the presentation was this moment where I had a wonderful conversation with Councillor Michael Thompson when I first started in the position. Prior to me being involved in the organization, the focus was very much on promoting design to industry. Our focus then, further to the Lord plan, became about promoting to the general public, or programming for the general public. When meeting with Councillor Thompson, that was something that he really emphasized: your design. You're downtown Toronto; how are you reaching out to the many communities within the city?

We did that by truly being authentic from the very beginning. All the content that we create is, at its core, something that we feel is of interest to all people and is not exclusionary but accessible to all.

We do calls for submissions. We do calls for participation. We look at various topics. For example, for International Women's Day on March 8, we're doing a talk about women entrepreneurs. We're looking at various issues around housing in the fall to really focus on accessible and affordable housing, and so forth. Because it's design and because design truly touches every aspect of our daily life, it's very easy for us to be able to talk about a whole range of subjects that really appeal to a very broad demographic.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

One of the questions we've had floating around is, which country does it well? We've heard a lot about the U.K. and the U.S, which are two completely different models. In the U.K., there's actually funding done publicly for content creation, whether it's their BBC or various other things. In the U.S., it's largely private.

The second part of that question for me is really about fees. In the U.S., and largely in the U.K., it's actually free to get into museums.

The third part of it is just funding. What's the proper funding mechanism? In our country we tend to do a bit of a hybrid of everything: private, and then different levels of government.

One, I wonder whether you can touch a bit on which country you think does it well. Two, on the fee structure, where are you at? Three, where do you think is the right balance of funding?

[Shauna Levy]

I'm going to come at it from the perspective of design museums, because that's what we're looking at. That's not to say we're not inspired by everything around us, but the two most successful design museums globally are Design Museum London and the Vitra Design Museum.

In the case of the latter, Vitra was started by a manufacturer and supported by a manufacturer. The funding model is somewhat supported by the manufacturer or the original benefactor.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Where is Vitra?

[Shauna Levy]

Vitra is in Weil am Rhein. It's in that little...it's like a country between Austria, Italy, and Germany. It's in there. It's very obscure, hard to get to. It's really a destination, but they do some of the best work in the world. I just spoke to the director a couple of days ago, and he said it's just because they have some money from a benefactor. It's still challenging to balance budgets.

The Design Museum in London just moved to a huge building done by a world-famous architect, John Pawson. It was started by Terence Conran. It's very much supported by a benefactor.

What I see is that design is still something that people, when thinking about things, that design is the design of things versus design of systems, of thinking of solutions. To generate philanthropy around that is still difficult.

Corporate sponsorship is another story. That we can do, but the challenge around corporate sponsorship is that, as I mentioned in my presentation, it costs money to make money, so you have to create programs, you have to create opportunities in order for the sponsor to feel that they're getting their ROI out of being involved.

In terms of the funding model, for example our overall annual revenue is $3.2 million; 56% of that revenue we generate through our event rental business. The rest falls: donations and sponsorship is 25%; tickets, registration is 9%; membership is 9%; and government funding is 9%.

In the study that Gail Lord did for us, it clearly said that museums, generally, about 20% to 40% of their support is government funding. We're far below that.

I'm sure you've heard this over and over again. It's the operational expenses that are really killing us and killing everyone, so that's where we really need help. I also said in my presentation that I think there's opportunity to share resources, to share venues, to think outside the box and think outside of bricks and mortar. Maybe we don't all need bricks and mortar, but then what's the funding model for that? There isn't a funding model stream that would support that initiative, either.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much.

How much time do I have left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dabrusin]

You have over half a minute.