IMPORTANT BOARD AND STAFF CHANGES AT THE CANADIAN CONFERENCE OF THE ARTS

Bul­letin 28/05

Ottawa, June 24, 2005 — The Board of Gov­er­nors of the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts is

pleased to announce that Andrew David Ter­ris has been appointed as Interim National

Direc­tor of the CCA. In order to accept this key posi­tion, Mr. Ter­ris has stepped down as

CCA Pres­i­dent and resigned from the Board. The Board has filled the vacancy by electing

Vice Pres­i­dent Robert Spick­ler as Pres­i­dent and Karl Siegler, Chair of the CCA’s Pol­icy and

Plan­ning Com­mit­tee, as Vice President.

“With the depar­ture of our National Direc­tor, Jean Malavoy, the Board wanted strong

lead­er­ship in the national office”, stated Mr. Spick­ler. “Mr. Ter­ris was our unan­i­mous choice,

based on his thor­ough knowl­edge of the CCA and his broad expe­ri­ence in Canada’s culture

sec­tor.”

In accept­ing his new posi­tion, Mr. Spick­ler said that “I have always had great respect for the

Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts and its many achieve­ments over its 60 year his­tory. Being

Pres­i­dent of such a dynamic orga­ni­za­tion will be a chal­lenge, but one which I am pleased to

accept.”

Mr. Siegler noted that “The CCA has been a leader on many cul­tural pol­icy issues over the

past 60 years. Our job as the Board of Gov­er­nors is to ensure that the CCA con­tin­ues to

pro­vide such enlight­ened lead­er­ship on an ongo­ing basis. I am delighted that Mr. Ter­ris has

agreed to assist us in this impor­tant work.”

Mr. Ter­ris accepted the posi­tion of Interim National Direc­tor with the fol­low­ing state­ment: “I

am deeply hon­oured that the Board has trusted me with this impor­tant tran­si­tional position.

The CCA has gone through some pos­i­tive, if dif­fi­cult, changes over the past few years, and it

is now very well posi­tioned to assume its proper role as an arts lead­er­ship orga­ni­za­tion for all

of Canada. My job is to ensure that we main­tain momen­tum towards that impor­tant goal.”

Con­cur­rent with this appoint­ment, the CCA will be launch­ing an aggres­sive search for a new

National Direc­tor. To that end, a Search Com­mit­tee, chaired by Past-President Denise Roy,

has been formed. The committee’s goal is to have a new National Direc­tor in place sometime

this fall.

Robert Spick­ler, the incom­ing Pres­i­dent, has over 35 years of expe­ri­ence as a senior manager

of cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions, and he brings an impres­sive wealth of knowl­edge and lead­er­ship to

the CCA. He has held senior man­age­ment posi­tions at the Canada Coun­cil for the Arts, the

Mon­treal Sym­phony Orches­tra, and the Cana­dian Cen­tre for Archi­tec­ture. Mr. Spick­ler has

also been chair and spokesper­son for cul­tural agen­cies on the domes­tic and international

scenes. He is cur­rently Asso­ciate Direc­tor of the Cana­dian Cen­tre for Architecture.

Karl Siegler, the new Vice Pres­i­dent, is pub­lisher of Talon Books in Van­cou­ver. He was one

of the found­ing mem­bers of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Book Pub­lish­ers of British Colum­bia and

served three times as pres­i­dent. He helped to start the Lit­er­ary Press Group of Canada in 1975

and has twice been pres­i­dent of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Cana­dian Pub­lish­ers. As a representative

of the ACP, Mr. Siegler played a sig­nif­i­cant role in cre­at­ing the “Cul­tural Industries

Exemp­tion” in both the FTA and the NAFTA. He has also cre­ated count­less pub­lic policy

briefs on book pub­lish­ing, includ­ing one on the neg­a­tive effect that Chap­ters has had on the

retail book sec­tor in Canada.

Andrew David Ter­rishas worked as an artist, designer, researcher, writer, admin­is­tra­tor, con­sul­tant, and

activist over the past 35 years. He was the author of Pub­lic Pol­icy and Cul­tural Devel­op­ment in Nova

Sco­tia, a 1990 report which even­tu­ally led to the cre­ation of the Nova Sco­tia Arts Coun­cil. From 1992 to

2002, he spent five years as Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Visual Arts Nova Sco­tia and another five as founding

Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Nova Sco­tia Cul­tural Net­work. Since then he has been prin­ci­pal of his own

com­pany, ARTS NOVA Cul­tural Research and Consulting.