More Budget Cuts to Culture and some news from the CCA

CCA Bul­letin 32/08

Ottawa, Sep­tem­ber 2, 2008

New cuts to fed­eral pro­grams for arts and cul­ture have sur­faced just before the long Labour Day week­end. It has been con­firmed that the gov­ern­ment has put an end to the Canada New Media Fund designed to fur­ther the devel­op­ment, pro­duc­tion, and marketing/ dis­tri­b­u­tion of high-quality, orig­i­nal, inter­ac­tive or on-line Cana­dian cul­tural new media works, in both offi­cial lan­guages, at home and abroad. The New Media Fund was a decade-old grant and advance pro­gram admin­is­tered by Tele­film but funded by the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage, oper­at­ing under one and two-year renewals. This lat­est cut ($14.5-million) brings to $ 60.6 mil­lion the total of recent bud­get reduc­tions to the cul­tural sector.

On the other hand, it was announced late on Fri­day after­noon that the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Her­itage would not meet after all this week: the Chair of the Com­mit­tee, Con­ser­v­a­tive MP Gary Schel­len­berger, stated that there was not enough time to sum­mon wit­nesses to appear in front of the Com­mit­tee this week and that it would be unfair to House of Com­mons staff to ask them to forego their long week­end in order to pre­pare for a hear­ing which Oppo­si­tion crit­ics wanted to start today. Given that the Writ for the elec­tion will likely be dropped at the end of the week, such hear­ing, if it ever takes place, will have to wait for sev­eral weeks, depend­ing on the date and results of the elec­tion. Like so many other cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions, the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts (CCA) had pre­pared a short pre­sen­ta­tion in case we were called to appear: we think appro­pri­ate to put it on the pub­lic record, fail­ing the pos­si­bil­ity to put it on the Par­lia­men­tary one.

News from the Secretariat

I am glad to announce that the CCA has a new Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ager. Helen Bobat joined our office on August 11. Helen comes to us with con­sid­er­able expe­ri­ence in mar­ket­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and fundrais­ing. With three B.A.s (one in Mod­ern Lan­guages, one in Project Man­age­ment and one in Project Design), Helen has worked for var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tions, notably in Zimbabwe.

We are also proud to announce that Guil­laume Sirois, our Cul­tural Pol­icy Ana­lyst since May 2007, is one of the ten recip­i­ents (out of 140 appli­ca­tions!) of a pres­ti­gious Wal­ter and Dun­can Gor­don Foun­da­tion Global Youth Fel­low­ship. Guil­laume will explore the roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties of West­ern coun­tries – espe­cially Canada – in fos­ter­ing the estab­lish­ment and the con­sol­i­da­tion of viable arts and cul­ture sec­tors in devel­op­ing coun­tries. This means that as of this week, he will be work­ing with us two days a week only, until Decem­ber, when he will be leav­ing the CCA for good to pur­sue his research. While he is still with us, Guil­laume will spend most of his time on work lead­ing to the March 2009 National Pol­icy Con­fer­ence (details about which will be announced later on this week), as well as devel­op­ing our Cul­tural Pol­icy: Next Gen­er­a­tion Pro­gram. Guil­laume has done excel­lent work since he joined the Sec­re­tariat and he will be missed by us all.

The com­fort­ing news is that start­ing next week, we will wel­come his replace­ment in the per­son of Jes­sica Litwin. Jes­sica comes to the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts after com­plet­ing a post at the Getty Foun­da­tion in Los Ange­les. There, she coor­di­nated the fund­ing for an inter­na­tional group of arts orga­ni­za­tions through research, pub­li­ca­tion, and cura­to­r­ial grants. Prior to the Getty, Jes­sica held posi­tions with sev­eral gal­leries, muse­ums, and auc­tion houses in Canada and Eng­land. She earned a B. A. from McGill Uni­ver­sity in Art His­tory and Polit­i­cal Sci­ence. Jes­sica also holds a M.A. from the Cour­tauld Insti­tute of Art in Lon­don, UK, in the His­tory of Art. Her pri­mary research focuses on the impact of arts and her­itage on mul­ti­cul­tural societies.

Finally, we are also wel­com­ing this week our new intern, Heather Rob­son. Heather comes to us after hav­ing com­pleted a research intern­ship at the Ontario Arts Coun­cil and worked briefly as Pro­gram Sup­port at the Depart­ment of Cana­dian Her­itage (Ontario Region). She has a B.A. in Fine Arts from the Ontario Col­lege of Art and Design and an Arts Administration/Cultural Man­age­ment Diploma from the Hum­ber School of Cre­ative and Per­form­ing Arts. Dur­ing the six month she will spend with us, Heather will assist Jes­sica in a vari­ety of files.

Please join me in con­grat­u­lat­ing Guil­laume and wel­com­ing Helen, Jes­sica and Heather!