FROM THE DESK of Alain Pineau: The CCA publishes its Report on the Regional Forums 2008

CCA Bul­letin 6/09

Feb­ru­ary 26 , 2009

Through­out Novem­ber and Decem­ber 2008, I had the great plea­sure of con­duct­ing Regional Forums in 14 cities across Canada and to which more than 430 per­sons par­tic­i­pated. These forums enabled a national con­ver­sa­tion on the state of the arts and cul­ture sec­tor, the advo­cacy pri­or­i­ties we should be pur­su­ing, and the nec­es­sary strate­gies which should be har­nessed to iden­tify and achieve com­mon goals.

These con­ver­sa­tions were enlight­en­ing and they have informed the CCA’s upcom­ing National Cul­tural Strat­egy Work­shop, which will take place on March 12, 2009 in Ottawa.

As promised and in prepa­ra­tion for this work­shop, we are pub­lish­ing today the Regional Forum Report enti­tled If there’s a Will, there’s a Way, which dis­cusses the find­ings from this national tour. I hope this Report will inform you on the ways in which the sec­tor can bet­ter work col­lec­tively to cre­ate con­sen­sus and enhance its effec­tive­ness as a whole in posi­tion­ing its issues on the agenda of decision-makers. This is obvi­ously only a stepping-stone in a process which will have to be con­tin­ued… if we have the col­lec­tive will to do so!

I invite you to send me any com­ments you may have on this report and on the next steps we may col­lec­tively take to address the chal­lenges which we have iden­ti­fied together. It goes with­out say­ing that we will keep all of you informed of the out­come of the March 12th event.