Earlier this month, the City of Regina played host to the 42nd Annual Juno Awards, which is a big-deal celebration of the Canadian music industry. Yours truly, along with Canada Council for the Arts Music Section colleague Pierre-Louis Pinel, braved celebrity-studded crowds in an effort to extoll the virtues of Canada’s public support of arts and culture. We were also on the hunt to identify those nominees who’d received a grant through Council programs. Armed with Pierre-Louis’ database-like memory, we figured that the Council had supported more than 30 award nominees – and at the risk of ruining a perfectly good ending, 7 of those overachievers eventually went home with a Juno! Read more
May
10
10
And the Juno goes to …
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May
01
01
Why consult?
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Tiphaine Girault, O-porte-nité (Doors of Opportunity),2013. Commissioned by the Inter-Arts Office as visual commentary for its 2013 consultation.
“We consult because the information gathered is vital to our work as a public funding agency and because we value the input of artists in our work.”
I’ve had the pleasure of leading the Canada Council’s Inter-Arts Office (IAO) since its inception in 1999 (with a 20 month hiatus in 2011-12 when my colleague Gerri Trimble was at the helm). In a nutshell, the IAO funds various forms of “hybrid activity” that complement support to existing artistic disciplines. It includes support to integrated arts, contemporary circus arts, and artist and collaborative practices related to these art forms.
The IAO recently launched a crowd engagement online consultation that will run through July 30, 2013, as part of the Council’s Review of Operating Grant Programs.
You can participate here: Inter-Arts Office Consultation.
Apr
25
25
Consultations now underway
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The Council is launching the first of a series of discipline-based consultations this spring as the next phase of its review of operating grant programs. The review formally began in October 2011 in response to growing pressures to ensure Council’s programs stayed in step with the massive changes – demographic, technological, economic – taking place at the community level.
Read more
Apr
15
15
Cultivating the arts marketplace at home and abroad
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The Canada Council is known for its grants to artists and arts organizations – for nurturing and sustaining our national arts ecology. Less well known is its work to expand markets and build audiences for Canadian art – domestically and internationally.
The Audience and Market Development Office, a small, dedicated and agile team, works closely with its Canada Council colleagues across all disciplines. Armed with an intimate understanding of changing markets both at home and abroad, the Office organizes special initiatives such as familiarization visits, networking events, workshops, information sessions, online tool kits, and delegations to cultural trade fairs. Its perspective is both large-scale and grassroots. In the last few months, Office staff has been to Paris, New York and Yellowknife. Read more
Mar
26
26
What’s in a prize?
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Picture from the video on Chantal Pontbriand, directed by Lysanne Thibodeau.
What’s in a prize? I’ve been asking myself this question while looking at the videos of the 2013 laureates of the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts. I know from my own experience that it’s humbling to receive such an honour. Being recognized by one’s peers and by Canada’s Head of State is a double acknowledgment: a personal one, of course, but also an acknowledgment of the importance of the visual and media arts to this country and to our shared identity, whatever our politics. Read more
Mar
22
22
Reading for all
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The Canada Council for the Arts announced in January 2013 that it will contribute $360,000 over 3 years to support the National Reading Campaign.
The National Reading Campaign is an essential way of reaching out to Canadians, reminding them that reading is important to a good life, not for the immediately tangible results of better jobs, but because it makes us better citizens Reading is vital for a democracy. It’s a lifelong source of pleasure. It empowers people to think for themselves.
Reading leads to greater empathy for others – and other ways of understanding the world.
Hundreds of educators, librarians, parents and readers from every part of the country have worked together to develop a National Reading Plan to ensure that each of us has access to reading of all kinds and on all platforms. Read more
Mar
20
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On meeting Rebecca Belmore
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Picture from the video on Rebecca Belmore, directed by Danielle Sturk.
We met for a coffee, two artists in Winnipeg in January: one a nationally recognized laureate of a 2013 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, the other an independent filmmaker; one new to the city, the other born and bred here; one an Aboriginal performance, visual and media artist, the other a francophone filmmaker and former dance artist; both women and multi-disciplinary artists where the loss of, struggle for, or re-creation of one’s language is potential common ground. Read more
Mar
12
12
Meeting Marcel Barbeau and Ninon Gauthier
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Picture from the video on Marcel Barbeau, directed by Luc Bourdon.
Our first impressions of a film subject are generally influenced by our prejudices, clichéd ideas or our own ignorance regarding the subject. This was certainly the case for the film portrait that I was commissioned to make of Marcel Barbeau.
And so it was that just before my first meeting with the famous painter, I’d imagined a severe man who would only reluctantly allow himself to be filmed by our intrusive cameras – a unique individual, to be sure, but one who would be protective of his privacy (and really, who isn’t when faced with a stranger’s prying eye?).
Feb
25
25
RE-FRAME: International spotlight on Aboriginal art
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Danis Goulet’s Barefoot, 2012
From February 7-17, several contemporary film and video works by some of Canada’s most talented Aboriginal filmmakers were screened at the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale), as part of the festival’s first in a three-year series on Indigenous film and video. The Canada Council funded Canada’s representation, working in partnership with the ImagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival and the Embassy of Canada was a key supporter Canada’s representation at the festival.
Louise Profeit-LeBlanc, Coordinator of the Aboriginal Arts Office at the Canada Council discussed the growing international interest in Aboriginal film and the impact of participating in events like Berlinale.
Feb
12
12
Dance Mapping Study – update
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Bharatanatyam dancer. Photo: Jim Bachalo
It’s been almost a year since I first blogged about the Canada Dance Mapping Study. And what do we have to show for it? Most significantly, we have a better understanding of the scope of knowledge missing for our map of the dance field. In other words, there are many, many gaps. But we do have solid data in some areas, largely professional dance practices and infrastructure, dance that is of European origin, and the professional landscape in specific parts of the country (particularly Quebec).
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