Arts in Health and Well-being Strategy

Arts in Health and Well-being Strategy

The Arts Council of Wales has published for public consultation a draft strategy on Arts in Health and Well-being

The strategy has been developed in partnership with a steering group of representatives from health, education, local government, the arts and Welsh Assembly Government, and chaired by Professor Stephen Tomlinson CBE (Provost, Cardiff University). Comments are invited on the direction and content of the strategy, which has been recognised as a significant step forward in valuing the impact of the arts within the health sector and the excellent work already being delivered across Wales. The deadline for comments is 20 September 2007. The document is available from www.artswales.org/viewnews.asp?id=621.

deadline: 20 September

Jude Kelly, telling it as it might be... 2012 Olympics

“I’m the Joan of Arc of the Southbank”

Here’s a taster from the Guardian online click here for the original.

“As artistic head of the resurgent Southbank Centre, Jude Kelly has confounded her critics - and there were many. She tells Lyn Gardner how they had her all wrong.‘Do I think that having the Olympics here in 2012 is damaging the arts? No, I don’t,” says Jude Kelly, so firmly that I feel like a heretic summoned before the thought police for having allowed such a dangerous notion to enter my head. The former artistic director of West Yorkshire Playhouse, Kelly is one of the most powerful people in the arts. Not only is she chair of culture, ceremonies and education at the London organising committee for the Olympic games, she is also the artistic director of the recently reopened Southbank Centre, the 21-acre site which encompasses the Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery. She is a woman who has always had a finger in many pies and whose mantra of access and diversity has chimed well with New Labour’s agenda over the past decade as it has increasingly seized upon the arts as a vehicle for delivering social policy. (At one point it looked as if Kelly might be the first woman to run the National Theatre. Instead, she has had to settle for the Southbank, potentially the more far-reaching empire.) …

…”Do I think that doing the Olympics is easy? No - it’s messy, chaotic and difficult. I don’t underestimate how people whose grants have been affected must feel. But am I personally responsible? No. Should we not have bid for the Olympics? No. Is it a paradox one has to live with? Yes,” says Kelly…

"Space&Place" and "LAND2" get it on

Look what took place in June! Summer studio about art, geography and re-placement... right up my alley.

Space&Place is hosting a summer studio with LAND2, a U.K. visual arts network, to begin a dialogue about creative/research practice and to explore the possibilities of an international partnership.

Space&Place (click here for bibliographies etc) is an interdisciplinary, intellectual and creative collaborative begun in 1999 by Drs. Sonja Kuftinec (Theatre Arts and Dance), Jani Scandura (English) and Karen Till (Geography), and, since 2004, co-directed with Dr. Margaret Werry (Theatre Arts and Dance). We have become a vital interdisciplinary and experimental forum that bridges the methods, concerns, theories and practices of the Humanities, Performing Arts and Social Sciences, bringing faculty and postgraduates in conversation across the University.

LAND2 (wow, very cool group!) is a creative practice-led national research network of faculty, artists, and research students started in 2002 by Dr. Iain Biggs (Reader in Visual Art Practice, Bristol School of Art Media and Design, University of West England (UWE)) and Dr. Judith Tucker (Lecturer in the School of Design, University of Leeds); currently, artist Dr. Ruth Jones is an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Fellow (Appendices II and III). Members share a common interest in how art can engage with the possibilities and problems associated with landscape, place, and space, as they are understood today.

"The main focus of the studio will be presentations of works in progress that will refer to participants’ self-understanding of their location, positionality and social situation, and of how their various geographies may have framed their theoretical understandings and practice-based deployments of place, matter and memory..."

"To begin the summer studio, we reframe questions both groups have explored in recent years: Why, how and when does memory matter? What is the matter of memory? How do people negotiate the temporal and spatial landscapes of becoming and being subjects in and through memory and forgetting? How do we think about, represent and respond to a modernity seeped in the oldness of its newness? Although intellectuals and artists have interrogated these questions in recent years, few institutional spaces foster translocal intellectual and creative projects that interrogate the very terms that divide them: place, space and memory. The main focus of the studio will be presentations of works in progress that will also refer to participants’ self-understanding of their location, positionality and social situation, and of how their various geographies may have framed their theoretical understandings and practice-based deployments of place, matter and memory. By initiating, articulating and discussing the similarities and differences related to participants’ current practice, work and locations, the studio will also seek to create “re-placements” as a basis for further work in an international context."

Love it.

R

Diversity in Canada

Culturescope.ca continues to do a great job of providing accessible and weighty research.

Here you can find Diversity in Canada, an independent research study. It quite comprehensively explores consumer behaviours, social attitudes and demographics of Canadians in six target groups: Chinese, South Asian, West Asian/Arab, Black, Hispanic, Italian in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. It was created by Solutions Research Group for the Department of Canadian Heritage.

Click here to check out their work.

Call for artists to participate in mediatised sites

CALL FOR ARTISTS TO PARTICIPATE IN MEDIATISED SITES

Artists with an interest in exploring relationships
between mediatised performance and site-responsive
work are invited to participate in a research and
development project that investigates notions of
place, performance and mediatisation

The project will involve participating in a curated
making process from November 2007 to April 2008. The
curation and performance process will take place
through new media, such as free online social
technologies, wikis, blogs, streaming video etc.

The project will culminate in online and live
performances on April 18th 2008. Performance
participation can be live or through online
technologies. Geographical presence at or proximity
to the live performance is not a requisite of
participation.

Each selected project/participant will receive £100.

To apply to participate send:

• A short biography

• A rationale for your participation, including what
you think you might bring to the project and what you
hope to gain from taking part

• Contact information

Send the above, or any questions that you might have,
to Kate and Tamara mediatisedsites@yahoo.co.uk

Final year undergraduate students, post-graduate
students, emerging and established artists are all
encouraged to apply.

Deadline for submission: Friday 28th September 2007

Kate Craddock is currently a graduate teaching
assistant at Northumbria University, where she is
engaged in PhD research on notions of cross-cultural
interdisciplinary collaboration. With Lynnette Moran,
she is co-artistic director of mouth to mouth: a
globally dispersed performance collective.

Tamara Ashley is currently undertaking PhD research
into improvisational practices in mediatised
performance sites at Texas Woman’s University. She
also co-directs Brief Magnetics, with Simone Kenyon
and is a senior lecturer in choreography at
Northumbria University.

The project is supported by Northumbria University.

Risk and relief

Talking about risk...

"There are times that break apart and the indefinite comes to light: the grey time of the inbetween. lt is a time without definition, rare and precious, when all seems to be possible, and that after all passes most swiftly. There are moments in which one feels inevitably to be on an inclined plane, and as there is no short-term release in sight, there is no escape. Only one thing is helpful here: to look precisely, to listen, to become all pervious and sensitive. In these in-between-times dreams can change into spaces which it is worthwhile to occupy and then to defend."

Talking about artist residencies, check out this article - Artists' Residency: A Model
There are opportunities to escape, look precisely and dream: www.resartis.org

R

Community art or finding the way home?

The Canada Council's website has some great 2-pagers (or in this unusual case, five) about their workshops in 2003-04 about critical practice in art. My favourite to date (still working through all of them) is 'Community art or finding the way home?' - looking at the ethical issues fundamental to community art practices.

Find the whole paper here.

A quote to whet your whistle:

It is all about relationships and responsibilities.
What kind of relationships are you coming from,
and what kind are you
developing in the work you are doing?
What are your responsibilities?
This assumes that we are never operating as
individuals, but rather within a community or
multiple communities. We carry
responsibilities in all our relationships,
human and other.
How does our work as artists play into all of this?
- Kim Anderson

Necessary kudos and details:

Saturday, March 13, 2004, La Caserne, Montreal, Quebec
A day of discussion organized by Engrenage Noir on the ethical issues fundamental to community art
practices.
Joanne Gormely (yoga instructor)
Kim Anderson and Pam Hall (speakers)
Louise Lachapelle and Devora Neumark (facilitators)

Return to risk

I've heard it around, but never as much as recently. There is a lack of risk going round, and choreography is suffering for it. So what if the political tendency is towards security, lockdown, safety, the thrill of art is that it can show us a different truth.

"It is not just new work that we need; it is work that has genius and resonance. It is up to the people who are in the positions of power to discover the new talents and bring them into a bigger scale and take risks. We need to be more daring, and OK, maybe we fail. Maybe it won't sell. But does everything we have to put on necessarily have to sell?"

So says extraordinary ballet dancer Carlos Acosta in 'Dance must be more daring' in The Telegraph June 23 2007.

Equally, the recent Vancity report The power of the arts in Vancouver: Creating a great city (by Pier Luigi Sacco) alludes to the fact risk is essential for the growth of artists, economies and cities. If we don't risk we lose.

In spite of the popular cultural concerns with fear and terror, all aspects of dance arts require a rigorous return to risk for the ongoing development of the form.

New book plus peripherals: "Engaging Art"

There's a new book out there, coming to a mailbox near me hopefully soon. If anyone has read Engaging Art: The Next Great Transformation of America's Cultural Life (Co-edited by Steven J. Tepper and Bill Ivey), I'm keen to hear your thoughts.

Here's what The Curb Centre for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy has to say about it: click here
Here's what Taylor & Francis books have to say (and they have the best price): click here

The Engaging Art group blog is a discussion based around the idea that the ways in which audiences and artists interact are changing. Twelve bloggers have been lined up to participate in the conversation beginning June 14, 2007 - that's TODAY! Get your fill here http://www.artsjournal.com/league/ See also http://madsilence.wordpress.com/

R

Nonprofit Arts Organizations Face Leadership Crisis

Nonprofit Arts Organizations Face Leadership
Crisis as Baby Boomers Retire

Menlo Park, CA – The world of nonprofit arts organizations must act now to forestall a looming crisis of leadership that will occur as the current baby boom generation of administrators and volunteers starts to retire, according to a newly released report commissioned by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

The sixty-two-page report, “Involving Youth in Nonprofit Arts Organizations: A Call to Action,” was prepared by Barry Hessenius, former Director of the California Arts Council. Hessenius cites a shrinking pool of young people, increased competition for their services and a lack of attention to the issue of generational succession on the part of arts organizations as key reasons for the problem.

“The vast majority of arts organizations have too few young people on their boards of directors or staffs, even fewer young advocates and financial supporters, and no means to track their young audiences,” Hessenius says in the report. “No quarter of the arts community can afford to remain silent or fail to participate in crafting a response to this looming problem.”

Moy Eng, Director of the Performing Arts Program at the Hewlett Foundation, said she decided to commission the study after hearing anecdotal accounts from the arts community about the rising age of their audiences and growing concern from them about attracting a new generation to the arts.

“A generation has passed since the arts have been given their due in the California public schools,” Eng said. “In a sense, a new generation is rising that doesn’t even know what it might be missing. And an increasingly competitive marketplace for fewer young people will only make the arts leadership problem more acute."

The report has three parts: a survey of youth programs among California’s nonprofit arts organizations, case studies of a dozen successful youth engagement programs in the arts, and a comparative analysis of youth programs in the environmental movement, with an in-depth look at the youth programs of two leading organizations. An advisory committee of leaders from all areas of California’s arts community was created to review the survey and recommend arts organizations to include. The survey tried to embrace the broadest possible range of organizations geographically, in size and by discipline. A total of 720 organizations comprised our final master list.

The report recommends that national service organizations for the arts craft a plan to increase young people's involvement in the arts nationwide. Local and regional arts organizations are called upon to budget time and money to involve youth, add young adults to their boards and strengthen ties to high schools and colleges. The report also recommends that funders to support research into young people’s views and behavior regarding the arts.

The full report can be viewed and downloaded here. An executive summary is available here.

Hot research 4 - Society for the Arts in Healthcare

Round the world work...

The Society for the Arts in Healthcare (SAH) is a non-profit... in Washington, DC. Founded in 1991, the Society for the Arts in Healthcare is dedicated to promoting the incorporation of the arts as an integral component of healthcare by:

• Demonstrating the valuable roles the arts can play in enhancing the healing process;
• Advocating for the integration of the arts into the environment and delivery of care within healthcare facilities;
• Assisting in the professional development and management of arts programming for health care populations;
• Providing resources and education to healthcare and arts professionals; and
• Encouraging and supporting research and investigation into the beneficial effects of the arts in healthcare.
  

Hot research 3 - CCAHTE Journal

Here's a source I've happily stumbled upon. I'm subscribing.

The CCAHTE Journal is your creative arts, health, training and education connection. You'll find information about creative arts approaches in staff health and wellness, arts raising awareness about social issues and health, information and resources that will benefit those involved in gerontology and education, nursing education, social work, medical education & health training.

Here you can also subscribe free toThe Canadian Creative Arts in Health, Training and Education CCAHTE Journal which features topical news and stories from professionals across the country involved in cutting edged research and progressive programmes making a difference in health, training and education in Canada and internationally.

www.cmclean.com

Hot research 2 - Arts in health: a review of the medical literature

Arts in health: a review of the medical literature by Dr Rosalia Lelchuk Staricoff

This review of medical literature published between 1990 and 2004 explores the relationship of arts and humanities with healthcare, and the influence and effects of the arts on health. See the full document (90 pages) by clicking here Arts in health: a review of the medical literature. For a bite-sized version click here - it's the executive summary.

Another option is to read Can the arts have a positive effect on health? A review of the medical literature by the same author. It's the promo version.

Hot research 1 - Arts and Culture in Medicine and Health

Arts and Culture in Medicine and Health, by Nancy Cooley, January, 2003.

This is a survey paper on research available in English on the ways that arts and culture promote the health of individuals and communities, contribute to effective medical treatment, and assist doctors, nurses, and other health care workers to cope with the grief, frustration, and other stressful demands of their work.

The paper briefly looks at the current relationships between arts and medicine and then summarizes research from the United Kingdom, United States, Sweden, Australia, Japan and Canada that indicates various aspects of arts and culture make positive contributions to at least seven of Health Canada’s twelve Key Determinants of Health.

This paper is now available in PDF format at Arts and Culture in Medicine and Health: A Survey Research Paper.

Community-Engaged art research

Three to refer to:

IMAGINE: An External Review of the Canada Council for the Arts’
Artists and Community Collaboration Fund by Laurie McGauley (February, 2006) click here

The City of Rich Gate: Research and Creation within Community-Engaged Arts Practices by Rita L. Irwin, Principal Investigator, Ruth Beer (Emily Carr Institute for Art and Design), Kit Grauer (CUST), Stephanie Springgay (Penn State), and Gu Xiong (UBC Fine Arts), Co-Investigators (2004-2007) click here

Whose voice is this, anyway? Exploring Artistic Control and Issues of Ownership in Community Arts Practice by Douglas David Durand click here

R

The Nature of the Beast: Cultural Diversity and the Visual Arts Sector.

There's a new book out called The Nature of the Beast: Cultural Diversity and the Visual Arts Sector by Richard Hylton, a UK curator and art critic. It's a a study of diversity policies in UK arts between 1976 and 2006. The Spiked Review of Books reports it to be a "thoughtful, thorough and searing critique of the introduction of divisiveness into the visual arts in England" click here to read the full review.

Looks like a good book to read alongside its US counterpart The Trouble with Diversity: How we learned to love identity and ignore inequlity by Walter Benn Michaels.

-R

Speaking up, speaking about

The recent reading I've been doing about artists and artists' voices was mostly published in the 70s - views of critics, views of artists, views of scholars. Yesterday on New York Sun's website, Kate Taylor published Artist's Own Words Can Drown Out Scholars', raising the question of roles in speaking:

The deluge of available information on American artists from the 1960s on
is both a blessing and a curse to art historians. Since the 1960s, most artists
have been audiotaped or videotaped talking about their work; because of changes
in how they are trained, artists have become increasingly sophisticated in
talking about their work and cooperating with critics to shape the
interpretation of it. But where does this leave the historian?

Not only is this an issue about who is or feels entitled speak about art and artists, or who can hold the attention of listening ears, but also, what is the current-day role of an artist and a system of people that surround artists (critics, presenters, historians, scholars, managers, funders, etc)? In an environment in which people speak for themselves (reality-tv led/followed), what is the place of disciplinary expertise in a network system of art? And what of the emerging problem of 'qualification overinflation' - what results is a confusion in conferrance and entitilement.

Ongoing determinations about what makes a dance artist 'professional' (and what professionalism is) fuels a whole other set of related questions.

Rolling it all around my mind...

Flexible Management Models report

Jane Marsland created a report on Flexible Management Models for the Canada Council in 2005. It offers some material to think about when feeding back to the Council's stragetic plan, and their questions about it.

Find the whole report: click here.

Here's the briefest excerpt.
Three critical aspects emerged from the review:

1. Nonformal or alternative producing entities require new supporting administrative and management structures.
2. The increasing deficit of trained administrators, managers, producers, agents must have training/development/mentoring programs in place to alleviate the impending crisis.
3. Changing the ‘institutional lens’ as the primary way of seeing arts organizations – for both the funders and artists, will take time and the building of trust.

- R

Department of Canadian Heritage's 2007/08 priorities

The federal Department of Canadian Heritage put out a report on their cultural priorities.

Click to see: 2007-2008 Report on Plans and Priorities (RPP) Provides Further Clues to Federal Government’s Cultural Policy

Here are some key excerpts from the report:

Priority - Canada's Cultural Interests Abroad

The arts and cultural industries play a vital role in our economy, engage Canadians, and
represent the face of Canada abroad. The Department has identified three key initiatives that
collectively serve to promote Canada’s cultural interests abroad.
These include:

• taking an active role in Canadian trade policy, delivering the cultural trade development program, sharing Canada’s expertise in cultural trade with developing countries and expanding on an international level to strengthen industry at home;
• promoting the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, an instrument that reaffirms the right of countries to take measures in support of culture, while recognizing the economic nature of cultural goods and services; and
• managing Canada’s participation in international expositions - events that promote Canadian interests and strengthen bilateral business relations with host countries.

Priority - An Inclusive and Participatory Society

Canada’s ability to leverage the benefits of diversity depends on its success at ensuring that all citizens have the opportunity to participate economically, socially, politically and culturally in Canada. The Department aims to identify and work towards addressing the barriers to full participation in Canadian society through targeted interventions.

Canada Council is all ears

The Canada Council for the Arts has a discussion paper out called "Creating our Future" and it's looking for feedback.

Don't be slow about it - they want to hear back by July.

It's a strategic plan, with questions imbeded. A historical overview is provided, for a bit of depth.
Read it with a thoughtful mind... it's policy in the making.

http://www.50.canadacouncil.ca/Downloads/Discussion_paper.pdf

Artists as entrepreneurs

There was a conference on social theory, politics and the arts (the 32nd Annual STP&A Meeting) held in Vienna in July 2006 with some heafty topics. Going through some of the transcripts (I wasn't there for the conference) I found this one quite interesting, it's by Elmar D. Konrad. Artists as Entrepreneurs acknowledges the skills, talents, and contributions of artists to society, as entrepreneurs. It's a pdf done in the format of powerpoint. Read the document at www.culture.info/images/stories/konrad.pdf.

The main conference listing website is stpa.culture.info/listings... it's worth a look.

Building Bridges - Strengthening Provincial Government and Community Voluntary Sector Relationships in British Columbia

Building Bridges - Strengthening Provincial Government and Community Voluntary Sector Relationships in British Columbia
This is a paper that addresses the volunteering sector - related to but different from the non-profit sector. Sometimes they get confused, and also confusing.
Anyways, as this paper says, despite the significant role of the community voluntary sector in society and economy, and the vast numbers of community organizations delivering public programs, there are far fewer examples of relationships between government as a whole and the sector overall. Where those links have been made they rely on:
• structures supporting alliances,
• policies guiding and sustaining relationships, and
• knowledge and capacity building initiatives increasing understanding about the sector
and the capacity of community voluntary sector organizations.

I believe we need to develop these relationships for the goodwill, in the interests of, and to benefit the arts sector. Here's a line from the executive summary:

"Over the past five years, there has been much work done to promote positive relationships
between government and the community voluntary sector. This paper, commissioned
by the Centre for Non-Profit Management, outlines what has been learned from this work and describes examples of relationship-building initiatives linking the voluntary sector and both federal and provincial governments in Canada. It also discusses the relationship between the Government of British Columbia and the province’s community voluntary sector since 1998 and proposes actions that could be taken to strengthen that relationship."

The report's conclusions?

1. A sound relationship between government and community is critical for developing effective public policy and the management of programs.
2. Mutual understanding between government and the community voluntary sector is vital.
3. It is important to continue building a body of research and capacity.
4. Structures in both government and the community voluntary sector are critical for the development of relationships.
5. An accord sustains the relationship between government and the voluntary sector.

Read the full report - click here.

- R

Economic Contribution of the Culture Sector

Economic Contribution of the Culture Sector to Canada’s Provinces by Culture Statistics Program

A Statistics Canada report that provides a descriptive analysis of the economic contribution of the culture sector to the Canadian economy. Culture sector output and employment levels are measured for each province, for the years 1996 to 2003.

The results of the study demonstrate that, on average, the culture sector accounted for 3.8% of national output and 4% of national employment, over the period under investigation. Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia were among the largest contributors to the culture sector in Canada, accounting for more than three quarters of total output and employment.

Read the report online by clicking here.

Canadian report on Mental Health and the Arts

No joke, this is hot stuff. Everyone's after the not-so-elusive connection between mental health and dance, and it's top of the charts for today's research.

In September 2006, the National Arts Centre held the second in its series of three roundtables on healing and the arts. The roundtable addressed the interconnections between the arts and mental health. A report, The Roundtable on Mental Health and the Arts, provides an overview of the day’s dialogue, including information on some of the current research being undertaken in Canada in this field.

Check out the report - click here to download your copy.

New online network for emerging arts professionals

Mentor of the Month?! Great idea!

The Emerging Arts Professional Network is a new online community network, podcast, blog magazine, discussion forum (coming soon) and career resource for Canadian arts professionals.

The blog-magazine will be dedicated to articles written by arts professionals across the country. Each month will feature a new Mentor of the Month and the discussion forum is on it's way to provide another outlet to share ideas and communicate. Visit the EAP at http://www.eapnetwork.ca/blog/archives/welcome/

EAP is looking for writers with all levels of experience and insight, is seeking more article submissions for a monthly blog magazine and also seeking emerging arts professionals from across Canada to interview seasoned arts leaders. See www.eapnetwork.ca/pages/submit/ or contact Blair Francey editor@eapnetwork.ca for more details.

- R

City of Vancouver reviews funding approach for grants

Is Vancouver is poised to be a world leader for arts and culture, or, just like everyone else will it keep plodding along at the usual speed? Which will it be? Don't get me wrong, I am for funding reviews. Who doesn't like time to reflect, review and respond to current opportunities? Thought the last - about responding - is the clincher. The Creative City Conversation that happened in Vancouver on April 23rd wasn't the response I was looking for when all the promo material focused on contributing my point of view as an arts worker living here. I spent the whole day listening to other people: people on stage, people who were facilitating, people who felt more entitled to interject... I barely got a word in edgewise. To my mind, a review should host many views, it should consult by listening with an ear open to multiple perspectives, it should take into account (and in order to take into account, it needs to encourage) others' innovative ideas in transforming the way things are now into *the way things could be*.

That's not even taking into consideration the fact that the Creative City Conversation was predominantly foolscap white... in this day and age, this makes me ask how the event was marketed and, because of this, who was excluded. We all missed out big time.

Okay, so the Creative City Conversation has nothing really to do with the funding review. The only thing is, it occurs around the same time, things are interlaced in time, and a pattern is being woven.

Here's the blurb from the Alliance for Arts and Culture - for the original click here.

"On April 3, Vancouver City Council unamiously supported a motion brought forward by Councillor Elizabeth Ball that will have city staff report back to council in three months with plans to develop a collaborative, comprehensive, streamlined and multi-year funding approach for grants that will include:

• Consultation with Corporate Services (Budgets/Finance) and Law to review the city’s legislative framework and budgetary process;
• Review of funding models and cycles utilized by other funding organizations, both public and private, in the non-profit sector;
• Consultation with community groups and other funders;
• Cost/benefit analysis;
• Development of funding guidelines;
• Potential alignment or augmentation of existing evaluation and monitoring mechanisms;
• Identifying any additional resource requirements to conduct the above noted work."
...
"At the April 17 Vancouver City Council meeting, Ference Weicker & Company were awarded the contract to provide consulting services for a comprehensive review of the city’s current arts and cultural grants and support programs administered through the Office of Cultural Affairs, at an estimated cost of $75,000 plus GST, with funding to be provided by the 2007 cultural budget."

Planning process underway for Cultural Tourism Strategy

"On April 3, Vancouver City Council approved the planning process, outlined in the report Cultural Tourism Strategy – Planning Process (click here to read), for the development of a Cultural Tourism Strategy to be presented to city council in the fall of 2007 at a cost of $65,000. The approved process includes the creation of a temporary Cultural Planner I position at an estimated cost of $45,000 with the source of funds to be Cultural Tourism Strategy planning funds, budgeted in the 2007 contingency reserve. Council also approved an additional allocation of $300,000 per year for four years starting in 2008 in order to leverage support from other funders, agencies and organizations towards the implementation of the Cultural Tourism Strategy. The source of funds will be a $300,000 increase to the 2008 through 2011 operating budgets.

City staff were also directed to review and report back in the fall with potential funding implementation partners and in particular, potential funding support for the City’s 125th anniversary celebrations through the federal government’s Cultural Capitals of Canada program."

This was listed in Synergy, from the Alliance for Arts and Culture.

England cuts arts to pay for Olympics

Controvercy over Olympic wangling here in Vancouver is at the forefront of many dance artists' minds, as the 'cultural olympiad' dribbles by without much ado.

England has taken the bull by the horns:

"To pay for the 2012 Olympics, the culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, is taking another £675m out of the national lottery fund. This comes on top of the £410m she already plans to withdraw. The losses will hit a raft of good causes: not just arts and heritage, which will give up at least £273m, but also community projects. Even local sports groups are losing out to the 2012 celebration of athletics." Read more on The Guardian website.

Artists in England are rallying around, creating petitions, fighting for their survival. Check out Dance UK for details.

These cuts also affect Humanities Research in England (often underpinning and reinforcing art processes and products) - for more on this, check out Shirley Dent on theblogbooks.

As my favourite fortune cookie aptly says: the future is uncertain.

- R

Relational aesthetics

I've recently picked up a copy of Bourriaud's Relational Aesthetics, which is a great read for thirsty minds. Proposing art is relational at its core (taking impetus from Althusser and Marx), Bourriaud spins a fresh scent around modernity, urbanization, and the role of art in current societal developments. He's writing as one of those revered thinkers in France, and as so often, his book was translated into English several years after it was originally published.

I'm interested in Bourriard's take on the legitimacy of art in a mechanicalized world. This is not new, and Walter Benjamin tumbles to mind as an early songbird in this regard (anyway, Bourriard says the 'new' does not factor as a criterion for art anymore - a cool relief.) Here's what he notices: If the world continues along the line of increased machinery, human interaction will be increasingly restricted. He sees contemporary art as aloe on the burn of mechanization and asserts contemporary art provides intersticial opportunities. Contemporary art is a buffer zone of time and space in which interaction (relational engagement) can take place, and interaction between humans and art (humans and humans; art and humans) becomes a form of special 'limited time only' chance, therefore still commodified but in a radically different way.

This goes to reinforce Bourriard's understanding of the relational in art - that contemporary art serves to look at things not only in a different way, but through a whole set of new categories, new forms of paradigm shifts that collide with earlier modernist understandings of art. He believes we are not out of modernity, but we are in a different form of modernity, a form developed through a pile-up of encounters that beg borrow and steal a renewed take on the world, one that takes into consideration the extreme urban and demographic changes we have undergone in the past century.
- R

The latest occupation

It's been an occupied springtime, and I have been run off my feet with work: organizing pitch sessions, receptions, attending performing arts tradeshows, writing articles, fundraising.

My latest occupation is represented at madeinbc.org. No I have not changed jobs... I continue to develop the three-year pilot project Made in BC - Dance on Tour.

I've taken on the challenge of reinvigorating regional touring in the most westerly province of Canada. British Columbia is absolutely beautiful, and its geography is considerably challenging. The many mountain ranges cut off the north and south at the midriff of the province. The west of centre strip at the midline is nearly impenetrable and almost inhabitable wilderness. The 'regions' of the province are basically everything outside of greater Vancouver, which is our relatively mammoth city in the furthest southwest corner of the province.

In the 2006 census report, British Columbia is the most urban province in Canada - we have more people living in Vancouver than we do in the rest of the province... that's loosely 4.3 million in the province and 2.2 million in greater Vancouver. It makes sense that Vancouver is growing - the less the provincial economy is based on resources and industry, the more people are migrating to the city for alternative work. Too, as Vancouver's reputation for 'the best place on earth' spreads, the more populated it becomes.

Regional BC is filling up with moneyed retirees, and housing prices in 'beautiful British Columbia' are outpacing earners, especially young ones and growing families, so it becomes unaffordable in several ways. Here is a forecast for the next few years: schools will close, hospitals will be oversubscribed, second and third home ownership (which lacks resident taxation) will increase, golf courses will flourish, tourism will fluctuate, and young workers will be absent from the regions.

Remember, there are few roads crossecting the province, and the landscape and weather mean that road travel can be challenging (no, not impossible - don't be misled). Flights are costly, and nearly all are routed through Vancouver. Travel distances are long - arrive in Vancouver from Prince Rupert (close to the Alaskan border) in 2.5 hours by plane (plus you must take a bus and ferry to get the airport in PR) or drive it in 18hours. When I lived in Germany, the popular comparison was that Germany fits into B.C. two and a half times, yet the population of Germany is 82.4million now. We are a piddly population in comparison, but want and expect the same level of infrastructure and provision. No less, everyone deserves it. And yet, the demographic shift towards the one city is remarkable and has repercussions.

The regional and urban divide are strong here - we actually have a town called 'Hope' which marks the barrier for this divide. Both parties say that once you've crossed it, you're in the territory 'beyond hope.'

In the midst of this comes contemporary dance. Yes, contemporary dance. In the isolation of regional British Columbia (towns settled according to resource bases, not proximity), the presenters I work with are upping the level of dance in their communities. They are interested and committed to bring more BC contemporary dance to their audiences, and exposing their communities to new ideas through performing arts. Reciprocally, BC contemporary dance artists are reaching out to the regions with refreshed enthusiasm and developed understanding.

If you want to see how I'm working with presenters and dance artists to exchange ideas, bridge the urban/regional divide and stimulate awareness of contemporary dance in local communities, check out the work at www.madeinbc.org. There is plenty going on.

- R