CCA Together!

May 10, 2012

Yes, we’re still here, and it’s high time that I reported our recent weeks’ activities!

Just like Mark Twain (and many oth­ers since), the CCA would like to say that rumours of its death have been greatly exag­ger­ated! Upon hear­ing the recent news, some may have jumped to the con­clu­sion that the CCA was fold­ing its tent. Nei­ther the board nor the staff has thrown in the towel and we’re work­ing at full steam ahead to imple­ment our 2012–2017 busi­ness plan and to ensure the finan­cial inde­pen­dence of the orga­ni­za­tion. We are moti­vated by the strong con­vic­tion that you should not lose this unique instru­ment in your com­mon pur­suit of a healthy cul­tural sector.

We have received con­fir­ma­tion from con­cerned par­ties that there is a real need for an umbrella orga­ni­za­tion, like the CCA, which plays a role unpar­al­leled in the Cana­dian arts, cul­tural and her­itage sec­tor. You have told us your needs and pri­or­i­ties. We have a detailed busi­ness plan, which in three years at most, should guar­an­tee the finan­cial sta­bil­ity of the CCA. We have spe­cific projects, and we have cur­rent and even­tual partners.

There is no doubt that the tran­si­tion fund­ing granted to us by the fed­eral gov­ern­ment is not enough. We had received the sup­port of offi­cials for a rea­son­able request for fund­ing over two years, but polit­i­cal author­i­ties have decided oth­er­wise. While we believe that even­tu­ally we can gen­er­ate enough income through mem­ber­ship and our seven other sources, iden­ti­fied in the busi­ness plan, the orga­ni­za­tion can­not keep afloat in this tran­si­tion period with­out the injec­tion of new funds. The sup­port received from Her­itage pro­vides us with a foun­da­tion on which to build. We have iden­ti­fied at least one pos­si­ble fund­ing source that, within the next six months, will help bridge the tran­si­tion fund­ing. But we need more and faster. These press­ing real­i­ties keep us extremely busy, since I must admit that time is not in our favour

As indi­cated by our pres­i­dent in her mes­sage from April 23^rd, we need to be able to count on the sup­port of every­one to suc­ceed in our ven­ture. The vote of con­fi­dence shown by your renew­ing your mem­ber­ship is one of the first con­di­tions for suc­cess. We have already received many such expres­sions of sup­port, backed up by a cheque. I have under­taken to con­tact all of our orga­ni­za­tional mem­bers to con­firm their com­mit­ment to the CCA. I am happy to report that so far I have received noth­ing but pos­i­tive reactions.

We are work­ing on the launch of a Together CCA! cam­paign. We have iden­ti­fied new ini­tia­tives and pos­si­ble part­ners that we are busy val­i­dat­ing. Today, we invite all our mem­bers, orga­ni­za­tional as well as indi­vid­ual, to answer a short online ques­tion­naire related to this ini­tia­tive. I want to whole­heart­edly thank the Cana­dian Dance Assem­bly for being the first one to com­mit to sup­port our campaign.

Another major ini­tia­tive:  the cre­ation of a Founders Cir­cle con­sist­ing of indi­vid­u­als, cor­po­ra­tions, and unions shar­ing the con­vic­tions of the CCA Founders who, 67 years ago, believed in the neces­sity of a national orga­ni­za­tion to pro­mote and develop the arts, cul­tural and her­itage sec­tor in our coun­try. The Founders Cir­cle will com­prise all those who, between April 2012 and March 2015, will have made a major finan­cial con­tri­bu­tion to the tran­si­tion plan

On another front, we are work­ing on promis­ing projects that gen­er­ated great inter­est dur­ing our con­sul­ta­tions, par­tic­u­larly in terms of argu­ments for the pro­mo­tion of the cul­tural cause at all lev­els of gov­ern­ment and with patrons. Last week I had the priv­i­lege of par­tic­i­pat­ing in a round table in Win­nipeg orga­nized by ACI Man­i­toba, to dis­cuss cul­tural sta­tis­tics and the reli­able evi­dence needed to sup­port argu­ments in favour of the arts, cul­ture and her­itage sec­tor. Based on this tem­plate, we are devel­op­ing a project of regional round tables lead­ing up to a national round table on this sub­ject of pri­mary importance.

We are also work­ing in part­ner­ship with our col­leagues at the Uni­ver­sity of Ottawa on the pub­li­ca­tion of an annual report on the fed­eral, provin­cial and ter­ri­to­r­ial bud­gets from the per­spec­tive of the arts, cul­tural indus­tries and her­itage. Not to men­tion the national con­fer­ence project that I will bring back to the front burner as soon as our imme­di­ate finan­cial foot­ing has been assured.

As you can see, we are not idle! Allow me to say it once again: we can­not suc­ceed with­out you. Please respond to our short ques­tion­naire  to tell us how you can help the CCA and thus con­tribute to shap­ing Canada’s vibrant future for arts and culture.

I thank you advance for your par­tic­i­pa­tion! CCA Together!

–Alain