Conferences and Events

Conference Hosts:
Alain Pineau  
Robert Spickler

Facilitator:
David Hasbury

Workshop Leaders:
Susan Annis
Anne-Marie Des Roches
Kelly Hill
Megan Williams

Rapportage:
Greg Frankson

Performer:
Maureen Shea

Bloggers

Alain Pineau, Conference Host

Alain Pineau, CCA National Director, spent 34 years of his life within the CBC, where he was, among others positions, radio journalist, Managing Editor of French Radio Network News, Regional Director and Vice President of Planning and Regulatory Affairs. Before joining the CCA, he launched and managed for nine years Galaxie, CBC’s very successful for-profit pay audio service. He has an MA from Oxford University (UK) and has completed studies in public administration at ENAP in Montréal. Alain has been on the Board of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards Foundation since 1992 and served for many years on the Board of Opera Lyra Ottawa.

Robert Spickler, Conference Host

With 35 years of experience as a senior manager of cultural organizations, CCA President Robert Spickler possesses considerable knowledge of the field at both the national and international level. Co-founder and, for almost 10 years, business manager of Montréal’s Théâtre d’aujourd’hui, he subsequently held senior management positions at the Canada Council for the Arts, le Théâtre du Nouveau Monde and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. Currently, he is the Associate Director, finance and administration, of the Canadian Centre for Architecture. He has been chair and spokesperson of cultural agencies on the domestic and international scene. Since 2005, he has chaired the standing committee on Finance and Resources for the International Council of Museums (ICOM).

Alain Gourd, Keynote Speaker

Alain Gourd is President of Alain Gourd Communications Inc. of Gatineau, Quebec, a company specializing in strategic planning, regulatory and government affairs as well as relations with the industry.

Alain’s career is vast and varied. He has successively taught Philosophy and Law at the University of Ottawa, been President and CEO of Radio Nord, Radiomutuel, Cancom and BCE Media, as well as Chairman and CEO, Bell ExpressVu, and Executive Vice-President, Corporate Services, Bell Globemedia. He has served as Chairman of the Board of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters. Gourd was Deputy Minister under Marcel Masse during a formative time in Canadian cultural policy development. He was also Deputy Clerk and Associate Secretary to the Cabinet and, as such, was an insider to government transitional periods remarkably similar to the current one - that is, both the Trudeau-Turner-Mulroney and Mulroney-Campbell-Chrétien transitions.

Alain is also a member of the Quebec Bar and a PhD Honoris Causa of the Université du Québec en Outaouais. He is also Chairman of the Board of GlobeeCom Inc, of the Colorectal Cancer Association of Canada, as well as of Hexagram, the Institute for Research/Creation in Media Arts and Technologies. He is Vice-Chairman of the Board of TQS Inc., and Director of the Banff Television Festival Foundation and of the Canadian Broadcast Museum Foundation.

Paul Hoffert, Keynote Speaker

Paul Hoffert is Chair of the Guild of Canadian Film Composers, Chair of the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund, former Chair of the Ontario Arts Council, and former President of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television. He is a Faculty Fellow at Harvard University Law School, and a Fine Arts Professor at York University.

He is a well-known television and concert performer, and his record albums have achieved gold and platinum sales. He has composed music scores for dozens of feature films and an off-Broadway musical, as well as an award-winning Violin Concerto.

In 1992, he founded CulTech Research Centre at York University, where he developed advanced new media such as digital video telephones and networked distribution of CD-ROMs. From 1994 to 1999, he directed Intercom Ontario, a $100 million trial of the world's first broadband-connected community, distributing digital music and video years before Napster and others.

He is a best-selling author of books that detail how to thrive in the Information Age and is a pioneer of creating and understanding online content. In 2001, he received the Pixel Award as the New Media industry’s Visionary and, in 2005, the Order of Canada for his contributions to music and media.

David Hasbury, Facilitator

David Hasbury is an organizational and community development consultant, educator, and facilitator. For more than 20 years he has been committed to engaging the power of CoCreation — people gathering together to creatively shape the world around them.

He has worked throughout Canada, the United States and England. Among his methods of education and group work Dave utilizes "group graphics". This innovative model dynamically captures a group's words, images and colours enabling participants to, quite literally, "see what we are saying", getting everyone on the same page and positioned for action.

Dave has worked extensively with diverse groups, large and small. He has supported groups interested in youth, people with disabilities, community development, the arts, inclusive education, literacy, health and social services, social planning, coalition building, and community economic development. His work adds vision, forming a crystallizing catalyst, charting a course of action.

Dave is a poet, and the father of two wonderful teenage daughters, Briagh and Michaela. He lives in Peterborough.

Susan Annis, Workshop Leader

Susan Annis has dedicated the major part of her career to the support and promotion of arts and culture. She served as Associate Director of the Canadian Conference of the Arts for almost 9 years, dealing with cultural issues such as copyright, status of the artist, arts awareness, arts funding, tax incentives, culture and foreign affairs, culture and international trade, and policy development in new media, film and broadcasting. In that position, she was responsible for the participation of the CCA in the creation of CultureNet, and helped to establish the Cultural Human Resources Council. With a special responsibility for CCA arts and education initiatives, she chaired the Arts and Education Committee of the CCA Board, coordinated the McConnell Foundation's ArtsSmarts project for its first three years, chaired the Arts Education Consortium, and sat on the National Steering Committee of the National Symposium on Arts Education.

In September 2002 she was appointed to her current position as Executive Director of the Cultural Human Resources Council.

Anne-Marie Des Roches, Workshop Leader

Anne-Marie Des Roches has been Director of Public Affairs at Union des artistes since April 2000. Prior to this, she was Director of Corporate Affairs, Television at Société Radio-Canada, in charge of the renewal of the licence for French-language television, as well as requests for new specialty services at SRC.

Until 1998, Anne-Marie Des Roches was French-language Broadcasting Policy Manager at the CRTC where she had been working in a variety of positions since 1989. From 1984-1989, she worked as a policy analyst at the Department of Communications (now Canadian Heritage). She has also worked as a researcher, associate producer and producer with SRC radio.

Anne-Marie has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Ottawa with a specialisation in communications.

Kelly Hill, Workshop Leader

Kelly Hill is President of Hill Strategies Research, a Canadian company providing top-quality, highly relevant and insightful research for the arts and culture.

Recent Hill Strategies Research projects include: the Arts Research Monitor and ArtsResearchMonitor.com, Government Spending on Culture in Canada for CCA, data analysis for the Ontario Association of Art Galleries, bilingual surveys and multiple reports for the Dancer Transition Resource Centre, and Reading at Risk for the US National Endowment for the Arts.

Recent reports in his Statistical Insights on the Arts series include Artists by Neighbourhood in Canada, Diversity in Canada’s Arts Labour Force, A Statistical Profile of Artists in Canada and Consumer Spending on Culture in Canada.

Prior to founding Hill Strategies Research, Kelly gained a solid knowledge across the artforms as Research Manager at the Ontario Arts Council. Kelly’s academic background focused on socio-economic research and analysis: he obtained an MA in Political Science from the University of Western Ontario (1994) and a BA in Economics from Université Laval (1991). Kelly, a fluently bilingual anglophone, has lived, studied and worked in Regina, Saskatoon, Québec City, Sarnia, London, Toronto and Hamilton.

Megan Williams, Workshop Leader

Megan Williams once had an inside understanding of the advocacy position of the Canadian Conference of the Arts, during the time when she served as National Director, from 1998 to 2004. Where does one go after learning the complex skills of distilling and articulating the needs of Canada’s artists in the federal policy environment? To set up a consulting practice in Nova Scotia, a province distinguished for its vibrant arts community and its lack of a provincial arts council. Megan works from Halifax with a vast network of colleagues across Canada and internationally on issues that affect the arts and non-profit sectors.

Greg Frankson, Rapportage

Greg Frankson (aka Ritallin) is a motivational speaker, facilitator and spoken word artist based in Ottawa. He is the co-founder of Capital Slam, Ottawa’s slam-tastic monthly poetry slam series, and organizes other spoken word events as Director of the Capital Poetry Collective.

Originally from Scarborough, Ontario, Greg began performing and writing as a hip-hop artist at the age of 12. He gradually transferred his love of wordplay and literary imagery to the poetic creativity of spoken word.

Voicing his dissatisfaction with the growing negativity of hip-hop, as well as deep concern around issues of oppression, exploitation and racism in society, Greg assumed the name Ritallin as a poetic metaphor – just like the drug, his poetry is designed to clear one's mind of clutter and permit the listener to focus on issues that matter.

Ritallin was a member of the Ottawa Team and a festival organizer at the 2004 Canadian Spoken Wordlympics and managed the 2005 Capital Slam Team. He was the executive producer of Live at Capital Slam 2005, a compilation CD of Ottawa slam poetry. His EP Capital Thoughts was released in December 2005 closely followed (in February 2006) by his first book of poetry, Cerebral Stimulation.

Maureen Shea, Performer

Maureen is an active independent dance artist based in Ottawa. She instigated the Grasshoppa Dance Exchange in 2002, and has led and participated in countless Hops and Dance Farms in Ottawa as well as in Toronto, Montréal, Massachusetts and Italy.

Maureen was introduced to dance through the Margaret Morris Method, a spirited 20th century modern dance form including technique and improvisation. She attended Canterbury High School (Ottawa), and graduated as a scholarship student from the Professional Modern Dance Performance Training Program at The School of Dance (Ottawa).

She has subsequently travelled and trained with numerous inspiring movers in contemporary dance technique, improvisation, contact dance and experiential anatomy methods, including Peter Boneham (Le Groupe Dance Lab), Sylvie Desrosiers, Andrew Harwood and Nancy Stark Smith. As an arts educator, Maureen has toured her performance project, 'Social movements', in rural schools throughout Ontario.

Maureen currently dances for choreographers Sylvie Desrosiers (Flots) and Marc Boivin (in collaboration with Andrew Harwood’s AHHA productions). She creates and tours her own work, most notably 'City project' which has been performed in theatres, school auditoriums and on the streets. 'City project' explores the relationship between movement research and social action, and includes audience participation.

Bloggers

The following young people are adding their energies to the CCA conference:

Erika Adams (Master’s student, School of Public Policy and Administration, Carleton University)
Jessey Bird (3^rd year student, School of Journalism, Carleton University)
Sarah Dea (3^rd year student, School of Journalism, Carleton University)
Laura Hall (3^rd year student, Public Affairs and Policy Management program, Carleton University)
Stephanie Hallett (2^nd year student, School of Journalism, Carleton University)
Tara McCarthy (4^th year student, School of Journalism, Carleton University)
Jessica Rose (4^th year student, School of Journalism, Carleton University)
Amanda Smith-Millar (3^rd year student, School of Journalism, Carleton University)
Robin Sokoloski (Publications Coordinator/Intern with Theatre Ontario and the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres)

Armed with laptops, cell phones and digital cameras, these young people will report on the conference and its activities through a blog. Half the students will provide an as-it-happens account of the proceedings while the others will provide an overview end-of-day report. All will be participating in the workshops.

In addition to academic backgrounds in journalism and public policy, each blogger also has an active and direct link to the arts. We encourage you to seek them out, answer their questions, and help make their participation at the conference a fruitful one. This year, it is being run as a pilot project. Next year, the CCA plans to expand the project to include both official languages.

Read the blog at www.ccarts.ca/blog.