Mt. Pleasant Community Centre Building – Convert to Arts Centre or Demolish?

Posted on March 31, 2009 by Judi

There are a number of projects that are gathering interest and momentum in Vancouver these days. The work of the City’s Office of Cultural Affairs to develop a Cultural Plan that will not only ensure a Creative City that is healthy for the arts but also for the economy, has engaged an incredible spectrum of stakeholders. The Creative Spacemaking workshop led by Artscape, the world’s leading experts in cuture-led regeneration, was a triggering event for action, which is now made difficult by the economic reality the City is facing.

The decomissioning of an older Park Board property has presented an opportunity that could ensure an interim measure of development while the bigger projects stall. There is a will on the part of the community to save the Mount Pleasant Community Centre building – and its outdoor pool – when the programs move to their new building on September 1, 2009.

The following article appeared in the Georgia Straight on March 12, 2009:

Mount Pleasant arts centre on shaky ground
By Jessica Werb
A battle over daycare facilities at the old Mount Pleasant Community Centre could make or break plans to convert the centre into an arts hub. The idea was first floated in March of last year by then park-board commissioner Spencer Herbert. The community centre is scheduled to move into a new facility at 1 Kingsway in September, after which the old facility (at 16th Avenue and Ontario Street) is to be demolished. A before- and after-school program for students at Simon Fraser Elementary School is currently housed in the building, and will be moved (to view the article online, go to: Arts Centre Article

My response to this item lays out the position proposed by a group of nearly 30 artists and arts organizations who have been meeting to build a strategy for re-purposing the old building. Continue reading →

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Artists are a renewable resource.

Posted on March 5, 2009 by Judi

Artists are a renewable resource. They often produce so much out of thin air that it seems like photosynthesis to me. And they seem compelled to produce creative ideas and objects regardless of the outcome, unable to resist some cellular imperative – kind of like salmon heading upriver to spawn and then to die. If given the right environment, an ecology of opportunity and assets, this creative potential – nascent knowledge capital – CAN renew and participate in sustainable growth and development for a lifetime. Or burn out and be lost.

Their diversity and resourcefulness make them adaptable to many environments, and they are good at camouflage – this makes it hard to spot some species.

Like many other resources, though, the creative output of artistic practice has been harvested by third parties who then resell or repackage it as their own. Many artists are complicit in their own exploitation. This is a story as old as time, and as clear as a wagging finger. Who you are and what you do are so tied up together that you can be overly vulnerable to the hooks of doubt, fear and desire.

How? By undervaluing our skills and our work, by believing that agents, commercial galleries, film producers, advertising companies, or broadcasters need us and thus have the artist’s best interest in mind. And through lack of self-marketing and career self-management skills – not taught or encouraged through the early years of career guidance in most systems – to ensure that a relationship with a third party is a partnership to be negotiated rather than a replay of the old Cinderella – Prince Charming fairy tale. And who knows how that really ended, anyway?

Stop clear cutting the creative sector. Stop overfishing the art product. Sustainability is possible, but knowledge and support, mentoring and training in marketing and management are needed. Where are the tree planters, the hothouse of culture? Why must nurturing artists be akin to a grow-op?

And where are the centurions of culture to guard the new plants as they grow?

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Do silos need busting?

Posted on January 15, 2009 by Judi

As I sat in a room full of creative thinkers, stimulated beyond belief by feeling connected and understood – hearing about the innovative projects that represented “Silo-Busting Strategies” from different parts of the world – I realized once again that there were assumptions in the room that needed to be challenged. Even here, especially here.

Once an illustrative concept has been applied to a problem area, used to describe something complex in a sort of shorthand, the reification of the concept’s shorthand into ‘the thing itself’ begins. Continue reading →

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Advice to an overworked arts manager

Posted on December 17, 2008 by Judi

Here’s the summary of a conversation I recently had with a member of an Artist-Run Centre’s management collective. I sit on the Board, and chair the HR committee:

To help you manage the interruptions in the open office:
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More opinion on the Creative Class

Posted on November 9, 2008 by Judi

(from a posting I made to the Sirolli Institute Public Forum on April 21, 2007, which generated a little bit of a buzz)

….I apologize in advance for the length of this rant, but here goes..

The coveted Creative Class referred to by Florida, is that ‘class’ of knowledge worker whose earnings are large and whose skills are portable – we want them to settle in OUR city to dispose of those earnings. The desire is not for creative people, per se, but for access to the cash flow of those who are currently the economic stars.
Continue reading →

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The ‘Creative Class’: Did I Pass or Fail?

Posted on September 2, 2008 by Judi

There has been something bugging me amidst all the ballyhoo about the arts driving the economy, the rise of the creative class and the cult of innovation. I live in a city swimming in creativity, stuffed with artists, overwhelmed with visual stimuli, intellectual smorgasbords and art smarts.

Do you remember that old show Columbo, where the rumpled, seemingly inept detective played by Peter Falk, would come back again and again to the suspect with just ONE MORE little nagging question… that’s how I feel, it’s like a slightly rough edge on a tooth. Just won’t go away, and keeps bugging you until you do something about it. Continue reading →

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Money and mindset and the arts…

Posted on August 7, 2008 by Judi

money issues….
It seems to me that the people who were least interested in math and science, and perhaps who suffered failure in these because the methods used to teach them were not effective with us creative types, are the ones now wanting to offload responsibility for fundraising and financial management for our nonprofit organizations. It might also be at the root of the answer to the question – why so many nonprofit arts groups? Apart from the set-up by government to be nonprofit and charitable in order to access the investment $$ needed to produce the art, it could be the living embodiment of the financial fantasy many of us hold dear: if we are good enough, our cause is just, the work is important, then the donors/sponsors/grants/ticketbuyers will come.

The housewife syndrome….
People in the arts say they need more training in fundraising and money management – what they would prefer is that somebody else do all this and hand it over. This is what begins to evoke the image of the arts as the stereotypical housewife of the economy. Unpaid work is seen in our society as less important than paid work – so that even when this work is paid for the people doing it are at the bottom of the pay scale and their jobs less secure. Child care, cleaning, taking care of the sick and elderly – women’s work.

This work is essential and important, but as soon as it is done, it starts all over again. It is taken for granted by everyone, being appreciated most when absent or poorly done. When paid for, it is poorly paid. Opportunities for exploiting the dependence and insecurity of the worker abound.

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Leading your own life

Posted on July 6, 2008 by Judi

Leadership and entrepreneurial qualities are very similar. And career self-managers must develop these qualities in order to lead themselves in their own lives and livelihoods….

Leadership is generally assumed to be a set of skills and qualities that are applied in relationship to other people – peers, subordinates, family, work groups, etc. But those very same skills and qualities, if present and implemented in one’s own self-leadership (confidence in the leader is paramount!) that may be what helps a person exude leadership pheromones to help others perceive them as leaders. The ‘unknown factor’ of leadership is not mere self-confidence or charisma, but an ability to be empathetic, analytical and encouraging to oneself.

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Careers in the Arts

Posted on July 6, 2008 by Judi

It seems ironic to me – and reason for concern – that parents who have nurtured the creative and expressive nature of a child would still be frightened when the child says: I want to be a…. (dancer, an actor, a painter, a musician, etc fill in the blank with some artistic occupation here).

Despite all evidence to the contrary, there is still a prevailing belief that the best way to prepare your child for life is to put the fear of god into them that they must choose an academic stream robust enough to put them on track for a university education and that is the best way to a good life.
Continue reading →

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The Long Hallway

Posted on July 6, 2008 by Judi

It is important to make space where creativity can emerge, and where individuals can get help or share ideas not when and where the preset agenda dictates, but in the moment when the need or thought occurs. “The long hallway” refers to a comment made by a participant in a study of work in documentary film, who was describing the powerful influence of space – the hallway joining the offices of senior filmmakers at the NFB where young filmmakers could stop by and ask questions, get feedback, and trigger new ideas. Long gone, with downsizing of funds, and closure of the studios as we knew them, this emergent ecology was an invaluable part of learning and creative risk-taking. Continue reading →

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