From the traveling desk of Alain Pineau — Written from the tarmac in Winnipeg

Jan­u­ary 27, 2012

WINNIPEG — The weather gods are no longer smil­ing upon me! Freez­ing rain in Toronto and Ottawa means that I have at least three hours of leisure time at the Win­nipeg air­port: who knows at what time I’ll get home today! I may as well take advan­tage of this delay to blog on my short visit in Manitoba’s cap­i­tal. CCA Board mem­ber Nicole Mati­a­tion and Thom Spar­ling, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Arts and Cul­tural Indus­tries Asso­ci­a­tion of Man­i­toba (ACI) pre­pared a fully loaded agenda for me. Thurs­day morn­ing started with a meet­ing at the Cen­tre cul­turel franco-manitobain in Saint-Boniface where ten rep­re­sen­ta­tives of fran­coph­one arts orga­ni­za­tions gath­ered. Here again, the CCA is an unknown entity. I hope it was less so by the time the meet­ing was over.  While there is a clear inter­est in what we do and pro­pose, I see a com­mon theme between this meet­ing and one that took place two weeks ago with the franco-columbian com­mu­nity: how can we afford to con­tribute finan­cially to the CCA? There are only so many orga­ni­za­tions to which we can belong. How can we set pri­or­i­ties given our mod­est bud­gets? And how come we never hear about you through the umbrella orga­ni­za­tions you say are mem­bers of the CCA? This is a very good ques­tion, and we will have to find an answer if the con­clu­sion of my national tour is that the CCA does indeed have a unique role to play in the ecol­ogy of the cul­tural sector.

I met with a sim­i­lar set of com­ments dur­ing the after­noon meet­ing at the Folk Exchange in the his­toric quar­ter of Win­nipeg. Some 30 rep­re­sen­ta­tives from a vari­ety of cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions gath­ered to hear about the CCA and what it is putting for­ward to con­tribute to a vibrant future for the arts and cul­ture sec­tor in our vast coun­try. “How come the infor­ma­tion the CCA pro­duces does not trickle down to us?” The work the CCA does on files like pub­lic invest­ments in the arts, copy­right, cul­ture sta­tis­tics, for­eign own­er­ship of cul­tural indus­tries clearly res­onate here. Yet, a recip­i­ent of our bul­letins com­mented that they are too detailed and tech­ni­cal for most peo­ple; not every­one is a pol­icy wonk and the CCA should make sure its com­mu­ni­ca­tions are more appro­pri­ate for the broader audi­ence we say we want to reach and whose sup­port we seek.

On another front, some par­tic­i­pants dared raise some rather del­i­cate ques­tions. Faced with likely dif­fi­cult times, should we not realign our strate­gies as a sec­tor? Could it be that we spread our efforts too thin and that we have too many orga­ni­za­tions with a silo men­tal­ity which do not coor­di­nate their advo­cacy efforts and the con­fer­ences they organ­ise? A par­tic­i­pant declares, “I belonged to three dif­fer­ent asso­ci­a­tions and last year, each one wanted me to attend a Day on the Hill in Ottawa within the spate of a few weeks. I have nei­ther the time nor the bud­get to par­tic­i­pate in all those activ­i­ties, as impor­tant as they may be! How am I to choose this one rather that the other? Can’t we work more closely together?” This cri du cœur seems to res­onate with oth­ers in the room, which puts me in an awk­ward sit­u­a­tion: the last thing the CCA needs is to appear to under­mine other orga­ni­za­tions which deliver valu­able ser­vices to this or that sec­tor in par­tic­u­lar.  One must con­fess how­ever that the ques­tion is not irrel­e­vant: I have heard it asked in pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions, but this is a taboo topic rarely raised in public.

I can­not avoid cit­ing another par­tic­i­pant of British ori­gins, who spent years work­ing on cul­tural files for the city of Lon­don, who says emphat­i­cally that the cul­tural sec­tor in Great Britain would ben­e­fit greatly from hav­ing an instru­ment like the CCA. I am even hap­pier to report that a few hours later, I received an email inform­ing me that both he and his wife decided to join the CCA as indi­vid­ual mem­bers! Let’s hope many other do the same in the near future!

Between the two pub­lic meet­ings, I gave a long form inter­view for the Sat­ur­day morn­ing show at CKSB, CBC’s French radio sta­tion in Man­i­toba. How great to have some twenty min­utes instead of the usual thirty sec­ond clip one is given to explain com­plex and impor­tant issues! Then, lunch at the ACI offices with a group of cul­tural lead­ers who have been work­ing hard for over a year to cre­ate a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary alliance whose man­date and mem­ber­ship resem­bles very much on the provin­cial level those of the CCA at the national one. As National Direc­tor of the lat­ter, I can only applaud at this impor­tant ini­tia­tive. This focal point can only serve the com­mon inter­ests of Manitoba’s diverse cul­tural com­mu­ni­ties. It also pro­vides the kind of affil­i­ate net­work men­tioned in our pro­pos­als and which would allow the CCA to be ever so rel­e­vant in its national man­date. I give my full sup­port to this ini­tia­tive which I deem to be par­tic­u­larly timely given the changes in our environments.

I fin­ished my short stay in Man­i­toba this morn­ing in a very pos­i­tive meet­ing with Ms. Veron­ica Dick, Assis­tant Deputy Min­is­ter for Cul­ture, Her­itage and Tourism, with mem­bers of her staff and with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Man­i­toba and Win­nipeg Arts Coun­cils. Excel­lent oppor­tu­nity to review files of com­mon inter­est, par­tic­u­larly con­cern­ing cul­ture sta­tis­tics and copy­right, the CCA receiv­ing warm kudos for the work done on the latter.

So ends a very full week of meet­ings in Saskatchewan and Man­i­toba. On Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 30^th I hit the road again to go to Cal­gary and Edmon­ton. Let’s hope that the weather will be on my side!

Alain