Halifax

Feb­ru­ary 16, 2012

I have always loved Hal­i­fax for its friendly atmos­phere, the qual­ity of its cul­tural life and its restau­rants. In fact, I must con­fess that I have a soft spot for Nova Sco­tia where, over the years, I have spent four sum­mer hol­i­days. But it is the first time that I set foot in the Nep­tune The­atre where, after a short inter­view for Radio-Canada’s tele­vi­sion ser­vices, I join the thirty peo­ple or so who have gath­ered in one of the rehearsal rooms on the third floor of this vast build­ing in the heart of old Hal­i­fax. Erika Beatty, CCA Board mem­ber and Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Sym­phony Nova Sco­tia, intro­duces me. She under­scores the fact that there would likely have been more atten­dants were it not for the fact that today is the dead­line for grant appli­ca­tions in the province! Unfor­tu­nate tim­ing on my part: many arts pro­fes­sion­als are dot­ting the ”i”s and cross­ing the “t”s of their requests for funding.

My pre­sen­ta­tion is received here with the same inter­est I have met so far across the coun­try. I am told that pretty much all of the activ­i­ties pro­posed by the CCA are impor­tant, but peo­ple are more pre­oc­cu­pied with how we intend to replace the money that the fed­eral gov­ern­ment will stop giv­ing us. I explain that we intend to diver­sify our sources of rev­enue and that our new busi­ness model will be based on project man­age­ment: a par­tic­i­pant warns me against the dan­gers of such a model, which often causes an orga­ni­za­tion to drift away from its core man­date and forces staff to con­stantly look for new projects, a never-ending pur­suit. I assure her that we are very aware of such dan­gers and that all our projects will have to be firmly aligned on the fours strate­gic pil­lars on which our new busi­ness plan is being devel­oped. I talk about our desire to broaden our mem­ber­ship base and the dif­fi­cul­ties we face in doing so. I relay the con­ver­sa­tions I have had with our col­leagues in Edmon­ton, who invite the CCA to become a mass move­ment and who offer to be the first to help spread the mes­sage to their mem­bers and sup­port­ers: could such an under­tak­ing be repli­cated across the coun­try? Could it find echo here in Nova Sco­tia? Evi­dently too early to say, but some pri­vate talks after the meet­ing make me hope it could!

Once the meet­ing over, five of us, includ­ing Erika Beatty and Andrew Ter­ris,  repair to the Bit­ter End Mar­tini Bar (I resist from read­ing too much in that name!). Many appe­tizer plat­ters and a cou­ple of aper­i­tifs feed our con­ver­sa­tion, which pre­dictably bears on the state of the arts in Hal­i­fax and on the future of the CCA. We hold an instant brain­storm­ing ses­sion on the name of the new CCA and reach a con­sen­sus on the Cana­dian Cul­tural Alliance/Alliance cana­di­enne pour la cul­ture which, in Eng­lish at least, has the advan­tage of pre­serv­ing the same acronym as now!

Next morn­ing, I have break­fast with Mar­cel McK­eough, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Divi­sion for the Devel­op­ment of Cul­ture and Her­itage. The con­ver­sa­tion is lively and we agree on a lot of issues. We part on the promise that Nova Sco­tia will become the eighth provin­cial or ter­ri­to­r­ial gov­ern­ment to sup­port the work of the CCA by becom­ing an Affil­i­ate member.

Imme­di­ately after, I have a cup of cof­fee with Shahin Sayadi, Artis­tic Direc­tor of the only cul­tur­ally diverse arts orga­ni­za­tion east of Mon­treal with sup­port from Canada Coun­cil, and of the newly estab­lished Pris­matic Fes­ti­val, the only multi-disciplinary arts fes­ti­val in the coun­try that presents the work of lead­ing artists of Abo­rig­i­nal and cul­tur­ally diverse back­grounds. We share views about the state of the arts, the need for greater unity in the sec­tor and the chal­lenges ahead. I con­firm to him that a rein­vented CCA must absolutely achieve its long-standing objec­tive to open its doors to mem­bers of the diverse cul­tural com­mu­ni­ties and to abo­rig­i­nals. We part on the promise that One­light The­atre will become a mem­ber and that we will keep in touch about the future ori­en­ta­tions of the organization.

I end the morn­ing with a series of con­fer­ence calls, includ­ing a brief­ing by the Depart­ment of For­eign Affairs and Inter­na­tional Trade the Canada/European Union trade nego­ti­a­tions and it is already time to go to the air­port to go to St. John’s, last stop of my cross-country tour!

- Alain