Thank you, Chuck.
The policy framework devised some key priorities for the Cultural Development Fund. There were three.
The first was visibility. English-speaking artists in Quebec seek greater visibility, of course, within the English-speaking community. Because there has been so much recent growth, there's a lot of connecting to be done there. We're also trying to connect with the francophone majority, and some good work is being done there. Of course, within the francophone community, until recently, English-speaking artists were thought of as being Toronto and further west. We're slowly emerging the idea, thanks to Arcade Fire in some part, that there are anglo artists in Quebec. We're also trying to connect with the rest of English Canada...that there is still an English-speaking artistic community within Quebec, and that's coming forth as a revelation to a lot of people.
Another aspect of visibility is for artists to present a modern face for the English-speaking community. There's no need to remind you of the negative stereotypes that the English-speaking community has been saddled with for many generations. It is time to lay them to rest now that 80% of our community is bilingual. Those numbers are even higher amongst our youth.
Over the past four years, many individual projects supported by the Cultural Development Fund have addressed the challenges of visibility for arts and culture in the English-speaking community. The most broadly based was ELAN's Recognizing Artists:Enfin Visibles!, which we called RAEV. Almost 2,000 names of artists were submitted for this project, artists who were considered important enough by their peers to receive greater recognition. We chose 150 from all disciplines and regions to present a family portrait of the current artistic situation in Quebec. We created 25 short videos that talk about why these artists live in Quebec, how it benefits them, the degree of bilingualism, their integration within the larger community—again to break down the stereotypes. We created short histories of each discipline—writing, theatre, film, etc.—to talk about how there was a golden era, there was a crash, and there's a steady rebuilding. Guernica Editions thought the story was so interesting that they brought it out last year in book form. If anybody wants to order copies, I'd be happy to take orders.
So visibility is a process we've been working on, and fairly successfully, certainly in the last two or three years.
The other big issue is access. What that means is access for artists to audiences, but more importantly, or as importantly, is access for the English-speaking community to live arts and culture. This is particularly important as you get away from Montreal. The townships have a pretty lively indigenous art scene, but as you get further removed, the need for live artists becomes greater and greater.
The most influential project for access so far has been ELAN's arts and community culture on the road, which is developing a network between artists and regions, to send artists to regions, to send artists between regions, and to develop local arts and culture—theatre groups, choirs, book clubs—to really mobilize the people who are interested in arts and culture.
The third leg of this plan for our strategy and the Cultural Development Fund was the creative economy. We're just in the process of putting the final touches to a research project that was funded by Industry Canada through the Quebec English language research program out of Concordia University, and we're hoping that's going to give us some really clear guidelines on where we can develop our community over the next five to ten years.
On access to supports and services, because ELAN is a fairly late arrival on the scene, we've worked very closely with our francophone colleagues to look at how the Official Languages Act and support has benefited them. There is, for example, a CRTC support group, and we attend those meetings twice a year to find out the issues in broadcasting. Because the English-speaking community has lacked resources, expertise, and capacity, we've neglected the entire communication-broadcasting dossier, so there's practically no representation of the English-speaking community in Quebec. We're working on that, but it's a big dossier and progress is fairly slow. We have also been working with the Canada Council. The FCCF sits down with the Canada Council once a year to look over all of the dossiers in arts and culture, so we have also started doing that with the Canada Council, which is extremely beneficial.
Last year the Department of Canadian Heritage set up a working group with all federal partners relating to arts and culture, which is extremely beneficial. The second meeting we had a couple of months ago brought in new partners who are not directly related to arts and culture, like Industry Canada and DEC, and that led to this research project in the creative economy. This support has been extremely helpful to us.
ELAN plays a national role, consulting with federal partners and agencies concerning policies and programs for the English-speaking community, serving all regions of Quebec and collaborating with other sectors, such as education, employability, and health. However, ELAN does not yet receive funding from national envelopes for the work it does at a national level. That's a whole story about regional envelopes versus national envelopes eligibility. Traditionally, you had to be present in three provinces to be eligible for the national envelopes. When there's only one province in which there's a minority anglophone community, it's hard to be eligible for some of these national programs. Groups like QCGN and ELAN, which do a lot of work at what is effectively a national level, need somehow to be brought into that national envelope.