The National Director’s Blog — On the way back from Edmonton

Feb­ru­ary 2, 2012

EDMONTON — My too-short visit to Edmon­ton was a fit­ting con­clu­sion to a very excit­ing week in Alberta. I arrived in the provin­cial cap­i­tal Tues­day night on the Red Arrow bus from Cal­gary (what high qual­ity travel on board of those buses, some­thing to shame Voyageur ser­vices back East!). Tom McFall, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Alberta Craft Coun­cil and CCA Board mem­ber, was wait­ing for me at the sta­tion and after drop­ping my lug­gage at the hotel, we went out for din­ner to pre­pare the meet­ings he lined up for me: not a minute of my day and a half here will be wasted!

We begin on Wednes­day morn­ing with a meet­ing with the Direc­tor of the Alberta Foun­da­tion for the Arts (AFA), Dr. Jef­frey Ander­son, musi­cian by train­ing and cur­rently Chair of the Cana­dian Pub­lic Arts Fun­ders net­work. For close to an hour and a half, we talk about the CCA, its con­tri­bu­tion to the cul­tural and her­itage sec­tor and its future plans. We review some issues of com­mon inter­est: the copy­right file, cul­ture sta­tis­tics and Rev­enue Canada’s con­sul­ta­tion on arts orga­ni­za­tions and char­i­ta­ble sta­tus. Before we leave, Dr. Ander­son gives us a quick tour of the impres­sive AFA col­lec­tion of Alber­tan art and crafts. And we will see again soon since he intends to attend the after­noon ses­sion which the Edmon­ton Arts Coun­cil is host­ing for the CCA.

But before we go to that pub­lic meet­ing, Tom brings me to the Alberta Craft Coun­cil offices where he arranged a “bring your lunch” meet­ing with a small group of provin­cial arts ser­vice orga­ni­za­tions includ­ing the Pro­fes­sional Arts Coali­tion of Edmon­ton (PACE). This infor­mal gath­er­ing pro­vides for a lively exchange about the CCA and I am pleas­antly sur­prised to hear that many of the par­tic­i­pants also plan to attend the for­mal ses­sion in the Prince of Wales Armouries, for­mer mil­i­tary drill hall con­verted into space for the munic­i­pal archives and for the Edmon­ton Arts Coun­cil (a very nice build­ing by the way, in the grand tra­di­tion of mil­i­tary archi­tec­ture, with crenel­lated bat­tle­ments). Some 50 peo­ple fill the room and I am stunned to see half of them raise their hand when I ask if any­one has ever heard of the CCA! This is the first time since the begin­ning of my tour and, come to think of it, it is not so sur­pris­ing since I was a guest speaker at the Arts Council’s AGM last June. Dou­ble joy: not only did these peo­ple lis­ten to what I said then but they are ready to hear more!

This famil­iar­ity with our orga­ni­za­tion cer­tainly facil­i­tated the con­ver­sa­tion that fol­lowed my pre­sen­ta­tion; some­thing I was wor­ried about with such a large group. I should have remem­bered that Edmon­to­ni­ans are not shy about express­ing their views! And they pos­sess a trait char­ac­ter­is­tic of Alber­tans: cut to the chase and look for solu­tions to iden­ti­fied prob­lems! So we had a very active exchange for more than half of the meet­ing, a first dur­ing this tour. Peo­ple are gen­er­ally inter­ested in the CCA’s activ­i­ties and pro­pos­als and call them essen­tial. The roles of con­vener, consensus-builder and cat­a­lyst res­onate well here. More and more peo­ple seem con­scious of the fact that the frag­men­ta­tion and dis­per­sion of efforts in our sec­tor greatly hand­i­cap our capac­ity to influ­ence decision-makers. Con­ver­sa­tions fol­lowed that line of thought. Of the four pil­lars on which the CCA is build­ing its strate­gic plan, it is engag­ing the pub­lic in cul­ture that draws the most com­ments. I am told that the CCA must break its anonymity and it is sug­gested that we posi­tion our­selves with the broader pub­lic as a national action group, which is also the path to bring­ing money to the orga­ni­za­tion. But how to become a pop­u­lar move­ment when so few peo­ple know about the CCA? Answer: you must mobi­lize your mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions to sup­port you in that effort. I counter that this is eas­ier said than done: it is not obvi­ous to ask our orga­ni­za­tional mem­bers, most of which have finan­cial chal­lenges of their own, to invite their own mem­bers to sup­port us! Maybe it’s the mil­i­tary past of the room, but some­one pro­poses a strat­egy of attack­ing both at the top and from the base: the CCA has obtained expres­sions of sup­port from its mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions, let indi­vid­ual mem­bers of those orga­ni­za­tions con­vey the mes­sage from within the ranks! Two par­tic­i­pants promise they will do so: well, that’s a beginning!

The same theme dom­i­nates din­ner con­ver­sa­tion with John Mahon, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Arts Coun­cil, Tom and our Past Pres­i­dent Denise Roy. We waste no time build­ing on the ideas expressed dur­ing the after­noon meet­ing. John sug­gests that the Arts Coun­cil could indeed invite its numer­ous mem­bers to become a CCA sup­port­ing mem­ber or to make a dona­tion. Tom chimes in and pro­poses to do the same with the Alberta Craft Council’s mem­bers and presto!, we have the begin­ning of a fundrais­ing campaign!

The trend car­ries on Thurs­day morn­ing dur­ing the last meet­ing where Tom con­vened lead­ers of some of the largest Edmon­ton arts orga­ni­za­tions. It is with plea­sure that I see for­mer Sen­a­tor Tommy Banks, renowned musi­cian, long-time cul­tural activist and sup­porter of the CCA. Here again I am told that we must posi­tion the CCA as the national cham­pion of cul­ture, not only in Ottawa but all over the coun­try. While our mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions may cer­tainly appre­ci­ate our pol­icy devel­op­ment work, our analy­ses and our sup­port for col­lab­o­ra­tive lead­er­ship, this will not bring us the kind of bud­get we need to be self-sufficient and have the resources required to deliver our man­date. I am told that it is only by turn­ing the CCA into a pop­u­lar move­ment that we can achieve our objec­tives. Just imag­ine, they say, that you reach ten thou­sand sup­port­ers across the coun­try who com­mit to giv­ing you $5 a month: that’s $ 600,000 right there! And this is con­ser­v­a­tive appar­ently! Fine, but how do you get from the cur­rent 150 indi­vid­ual mem­bers to thou­sands? We will start here in Alberta: rep­re­sen­ta­tives of three orga­ni­za­tions present at the meet­ing under­take to solicit their mem­bers on our behalf, as soon as I send them the short and catchy mes­sage they need.

This is obvi­ously a com­mit­ment I make whole­heart­edly and it is with my head full of dreams about what could be that I take the flight back home. Two and a half days in Ottawa, and then I hit the road again to visit New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, in the penul­ti­mate week of my country-wide consultation.

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