Head and short salt and pepper go t m awaring brown round framed glasses and a white button up shirt. I'm in my study today and behind me is a painting by Canadian artist and stands fed, which features stencils of a brown wolf gray deers, some white snowflakes and the words you're truly outlined in burgundy red. On the left of me you can also see some stock magazines on a bookcase. Before I introduce our panelists and invite them to introduce themselves actually and share their thoughts and reflections on the arts in sight Canada project. I'd like to acknowledge that I'm joining you today from Toronto, the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the credit, the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the wind up people who have had enduring presence on this land for time immemorial and tacoronte. Now today is home to many diverse First Nations, matey and Inuit people. This is also land that is dish with one spoon territory, a treaty between the Hon nashoni Confederacy and the nationality and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the land, waters and biodiversity of the Great Lakes region. As a settler whose family was displaced from their land. Due to both war and environmental crisis. I pay gratitude to these nations for the guardianship of these these forest resources and personally share in the responsibility of honoring the treaty and take accountability for these relationships. So a little bit of background on a ICS this was a project that was initiated by Hill strategies research and Kelly Hill and has been done in partnership with three foundations, the Israeli Foundation, the Rosae Foundation and the Metcalf Foundation, and has been guided by a national advisory panel to have who you'll have a chance to today. The purpose of AIC has been to provide high quality, meaningful and impactful database research of practical significance to both artists and arts workers. And there has been nearly a dozen pieces of research output that have come out of the project between October 2021 and march 2022. And it's taking taking again that data formed analysis approach through a critical lens and focusing on timely topics. And so we're here today to really look at those things. All those pieces of research that have come out all the insights that we've gained and continue that critical lens as we move forward a few points of housekeeping for today before I invite the panelists to share their words one is that today's session will be conducted in English. Your cameras and microphones will be off. So you're welcome to invite yourself I would invite you rather to identify yourself in the chat in the chat feature you can find at the bottom of your page. Closed captioning is turned on and I think Kelly's going to put a link in the chat box for those of us who would like to take advantage of that. I'm going to ask the panelists to keep their comments and remarks eight to 10 minutes each, so that we can leave room for lots of questions and you can put your questions in the q&a stream which Daniel find the button at the bottom of your screen. You also have the option to be able to upvote questions so if there's a question in there that you see as someone that's added, you really like it be sure to give it a like so that we can bump that to the top of the list and make sure those questions really get asked. But if we don't have time to get to your question today, please rest assured that we will be recording all of them and they will be addressed as we work through the final report for the pilot project. And with that, it's now my pleasure to welcome Kelly Hill from Hill strategies to get us kicked off. So Kelly over to you.
Thank you very much, Jason. And I've just been noticing that I'm doing a number of things as host of this session electronically and my internet connection is not 100% so let's fingers crossed that things will work fine. Including the recording, which I think is taking up some bandwidth. So if you see me running through my house during the session, it's to try to preserve some bandwidth to get a bit closer to the source. So good afternoon. Good morning. Good evening, everyone, depending on where you're joining us from. I am Andy Kelly Hill, president of Hill strategies research, a company that I created 20 years ago to provide research insights on the arts. For those of you who can't see me I am a 50 something white male with still a little bit of hair left on my head, a bit of gray on the temples. If you like color, you've come to the right place because I am wearing a yellow shirt and a blue blazer. Behind me is a purple wall and a very colorful botanical print from Matey artists Christi Belcourt. I am privileged to live and work in the traditional terrier territories of the Mississauga and the hognose shiny nations. I believe that we settlers have much to learn from our indigenous peoples who have resided here since time immemorial and those who currently reside on this land. The present company included like Jason mentioned and like Jason, I reside on the lands protected by the dish with one spoon wampum agreement. And I really appreciate that the dish in the wampum agreement represents the land that we all share. And the single spoon represents the fact that the people on the land are to share the resources, living peacefully and only taking from the land what we need, and that is a message that I think all of us could learn from today. Finally, I just want to note that I understand it from you, settlers on the prairies, Canadian Prairies of Ukrainian and Nordic ancestry, hence the penchant for yellow and blue today. So today I'm going to walk you through a few slides on the findings and gaps that we've got from the arts research, arts insights Canada initiative in its pilot year.
Oops and I'm starting at the end. Why don't I start at the beginning? There we go. First of all, I want to thank the three foundation partners the Metcalf Foundation, there was a foundation and the Israeli foundation. Without their support, funding and guidance this initiative never would have taken flight. I also want to thank the other invaluable people the fantastic advisory panel that we have amassed for this project, two of whom you'll hear from shortly. Cynthia liqueur, sage and Pamela Uttara wala, as well as the four other members of the advisory panel. Renata, our look like Kimberly Rampersad and Sanjay Shah Hani. We had some really fruitful discussions early on, during which the advisory panel identified quite a number of key themes but eight key themes that we've tried to pursue research on into during the course of the year. I won't go through each one of these individually because I'm going to show you what we've done so far, basically, on each of those topics. We've tried to cover what we could during a very short first season. And we have as part of this work we have commissioned examined and synthesizing information from hundreds of sources, commissioned data, looked at data examined data from dozens of data sets, many of which have not been mined for their heart's content. So that is the the process of what we've done. In terms of the products that we have produced, we've summarized insightful perspectives about indigenous arts and ways of being that could be useful to you and thinking and imagining and working toward decolonization. We've looked at the accessibility challenges and arts practices of deaf and disabled peoples. We've looked at signs and effects of anti black racism in the arts. Some of some reports have talked about moving towards post pandemic regeneration rather than recovery to the pre pandemic state. We publish blogs on topics important topics like workplace sexual harassment and gender discrimination. We looked at the challenges and the potential changes in that sort of environment. We noted the inextricable link between the arts and the environment, both the positive and the negative impacts of the art sector on the environment. And we found that more could be done to align the arts with climate solutions. We looked at feelings of stress of burnout among arts workers and we delve into this database from the National Arts and Culture impact survey, and found that diverse respondents were more likely than others to identify stress and burnout as an issue among among themselves. That's just a few other findings from some of the blogs that we did. In terms of the statistical findings. We identified that yes, indeed, artists were more impacted by the pandemic than other workers. In Canada, in terms of a loss of hours worked, which we found to be the best measurement to compare between artists and other workers. And it was a measurement we were able to find for artists as well. Just always important in the arts. I'll get to some of the limitations in a second. We also found that self employed artists were indeed the hardest hit among the art sector with a really huge decrease in hours worked during the pandemic. We also found that that women represent roughly half of Canadian artists, but that less than half of the hours worked by Canadian artists. So women are not getting their fair share in terms of hours worked in the art sector. And in fact, during the pandemic, we found that there was a decrease in hours worked for women, and compared to an increase in hours worked by men artists. On the organizational side we took a look at some key statistics like sales and jobs, organizational stress, the impact specifically on the hardest hit sector, the performing arts and festivals. And if you're interested in in a longer than five minute take on these issues, please, by all means, yeah, there's links available to each of the individual reports that we've done list of here of what we've published in each category through the arts research, monitor, through the blogs, and through the statistical insights on the art series.
I do want to talk about the gaps and limitations and the biggest one being the lack of recent and reliable statistics on the arts related to artists related to public engagement in each province and territory and municipalities, small and large and rural urban areas. For women non binary and gender non conforming individuals for indigenous peoples black and other racialized people, deaf or disabled individuals. The list is long, official language minority individuals to us LGBTQI plus individuals. We really don't have much to go on. As someone who produces statistics on the arts on a regular basis for 25 years now, overall, I really know that we're lacking in some of these detailed bits of information that we could that we need on the other side, not just artists and engagement in the arts, but how are arts organizations doing how many survived the pandemic in which disciplines among indigenous black LED women, led groups and more. One thing that's always difficult to identify with through statistics and through research information, in general is beyond what actually happened trying to identify why did things happen? The why is always a really challenging question for us researchers. And it's one that we need to try to identify more often I think, in our research endeavors when we develop protocols. So what are the impacts of this? We do lack the ability to see the sector clearly. In our conversations about equity, transparency, accountability, it limits the information available for decision making. And fairly simplistic to say it's nearly impossible to find solutions for problems that we do not know exist. So thank you for your time and listening today. My slides are available in the presentation section. I have posted in the chat the specific link to the slides. And if you're interested in reading more on this topic, there's a blog post that we published last week on the same issue and it's in the blog section, not surprisingly, of our website.
Fantastic. Thanks, Kelly for doing that great overview, sort of how we got here what we what we learned what we didn't learn what we'd like to learn. With that I'd like to invite Cynthia licker stage to to provide her introduction of herself and also her her commentary and feedback on this pilot project.
Yeah, we'll go with Jason. Thank you everyone. Cynthia Lickers-Sage. vinegar, Hagia from six nations in the Grand River, and I'm the Executive Director of the indigenous Performing Arts Alliance of Canada. I am a middle aged woman with brown eyes brown hair, and I'm wearing a red sweater that the Chicago Blackhawks logo wearing a warrior bandana over your mouth and there is a Bluetick Katie beside me with fluffy white feathers in the background, and that's for him. I am currently based on the Six Nations of the Grand River territory, which is my traditional territory passed down from generation to generation. So I'm honored to be back at the homestead. I'm happy to say I left Toronto just before the pandemic happened. So it worked out really well. Um, yes. And before I start, I'd like to preface that my discussion by saving what I'm about to talk about is based on my lived experience, and I'm open to hearing if people have other resources anything that they are available to share from their regions. Having said that, indigenous people have long been studied. And this is one thing that's been really, I guess, consuming and became really evident when the pandemic happened. We've been studied but for historical reasons and people just wanting to basically document us indigenous people. When I was going into these meetings when pandemic first happened, I was with a bunch of different organizations and this just became prevalent and noticeable from a lot of indigenous people that I work with and stuff that we we're all faced with this almost kind of embarrassing dilemma of hearing all these organizations talk and having being able to graph and chart the ebbs and flows and timelines and historic starting points and base points. And we don't have that. I've been in this position 30 years now. And it's one thing where I've been reaching out non stop trying to find stats on indigenous arts and culture for that matter, but it's almost impossible I can't find them. You have places like Canada Revenue Agency and even Canada which a lot of arts administrators would be familiar with. Present company including my OAC operating grant is due tomorrow. And all these other types of data collection agencies are gathering sets, but they're more for the mainstream and like the indigenous perspective. Having said that, I know that these agencies would face a little more difficulty because historically as indigenous people again, we've been over studied all of our lives. So it's been kind of complicated to embrace being counted as members again. So I lovingly say to the government, I'm not Cynthia, like your sage. I'm 257 zeros and anybody who knows their status card number, that's what it is. That's how I'm recognized by the government. So again, there's reluctance reluctancy to actually jump into that that pool of water per se. In one thing, it's, it's really again, become prevalent during the pandemic because we have in these conversations, it's hard to basically synthesize what's happening with indigenous, specifically a performing arts sector. Because we don't have that baseline. And I've, again, done research, research research and have found nothing. And again, this is it's not just me, I've had numerous discussions with like minded executive directors and organizational leaders, across Canada from indigenous organizations and we're all facing the same dilemma. Moving forward. For going the fact I would love to hire Kelly to actually help us to start to even start to create some stats and develop a baseline for us. Moving forward, it would be a matter of, I guess, all of us having to come together with what scraps and small pieces that we had to try and create this baseline. Now again, moving forward, it would be great if we could even engage different levels of the government to help us and because I know that there has I was the former executive or sorry, the former arts or business performing arts officer at the interiors college interiors Council. And one thing was, while I was there, it was again, even from that perspective, from the governmental perspective, it was hard to track these numbers. So there's been it's been something that's been ongoing that we've identified a long time ago and it just has never started so I guess I would end my little part of the discussion just saying every journey starts with a step and now we need to take that first step yum ago.
Thank you, Cynthia. Yeah, definitely some very important topics and issues to keep in mind as we move forward and a reminder that as we continue through our presentations that were welcoming questions, please be sure to put those in the q&a box so that we can answer your questions as they come to mind. And with that, I also would like now to invite Pamela tar Walla to share her thoughts with us what do you have to share with us today, Pamela?
Thanks, Jason. And hello, everyone. I am just a quick description. I'm a middle aged brown woman with shoulder length black hair that is starting to go gray but it's still relatively camouflaged by black over my left shoulder is a batik of I believe it's a Hindu god Krishna, but it's something that I used as a backdrop I brought from my Mum used as a backdrop for a lot of the online recordings I had to make through the pandemic and over my other shoulder are some cables because I'm a musician. on violin is trained in Western art music performance, but I also create composed and teach music. For most of my career, my income has come primarily from orchestral playing, which is not my favorite thing to do, but it is the only type of music making that pays professional fees and it allows me to indulge in my other musical endeavors, which includes trying to reconcile my personal ethno cultural background with my musical practice and those two are not easily reconciled. I'm joining it today from Vancouver. The unseeded lands of the Musqueam Squamish and slay or tooth people. I moved here three years ago, from after 25 years living in Toronto. This is the place where my grandfather was first brought as a 14 year old indentured labor for the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1907. And I often wonder how it was for my grandfather here. What I do know is that he had no desire to return to British India because of the way that women were treated there and he never wanted his daughter or if he'd ever known me his grown drop granddaughter I assume to live there or be treated unequally there. So in addition to being an F music, musician, sorry, I am also an ecologist and ethnomusicology is often mistakenly identified with the study of ethnic musics, it is and it can be that because musicology has co opted what should be a more encompassing term, but focuses only on Western classical music. ethnomusicology, though is a way of understanding and considering music that involves looking at the social the cultural, political, economic, and historical concepts and contexts that influence and affect the way that societies create performing use music. So as an ethnomusicologist I consider the big picture as violinists that focus on fine details. It definitely musicology prioritizes qualitative, over quantitative methodologies. And I'm bringing this up because a lot of what we've talked about in this group has been defined defining how those two kind of methodologies can work in changing our systems. So, qualitative theorizes from the complex depths of the personal rather than from statistical similarities across the many. And when I asked a number of my colleagues what data they would like to see many expressed his desire for the more qualitative and the personal. And what's interesting is that we often remember and are moved by personal stories yet it's the numbers and the statistics that are considered credible in our contemporary world and particularly for the funding bodies. As Kelly noted, the are incredible panel that it was such a joy to meet my co panelists and I wished we'd had more opportunities to actually speak about these issues, but we identified seven priorities for arts research. As we all know, the hiatus of the pandemic finally brought to the clear light of day with, I think, no shade of uncertainty. The long festering inequities that have kept multiple groups of people in our society on the margins, on the margins from having access from being able to participate fully or at all, and from having agency in our society broadly speaking, and correlative Lee in artistic culture. So while historically funded organizations have made overtures to excluded an equity seeking groups over the last decade, perhaps decades, but
I'll qualify that the gestures have been largely tokenistic. And in my world of musical performance organizations have, from what I've witnessed resisted, true and respectful integration. The historically excluded are invited as guests as to fit into traditional modes of performance or creation. And by traditional I mean, you're eccentric, but how often do they become intrinsic artistic members of the organ organization? And moreover, having been excluded in the past? Why would they want to join now, which is what many of them are being asked to do? So what, what I think has become clear in the last two years is that we're in a moment of aspirational change. artistic culture reflects the priorities of the society and the priorities of the geopolitical territory we call Canada has reflected European colonial priorities. Now though, we want artistic culture to match the promise of our politics, and of course of our demography. We want the expressive culture of this land to reflect the values that we who inhabit it aspire to equitable, ethical, respectful, irrespective of differences and pathetic, inclusive and in humble reconciliation with the indigenous peoples of this land with their ways and knowledges. This requires deep systemic change and the changes have already begun. I believe it is folly to think that things will go back to the way they were before the pandemic. But as we've seen, there are multiple shortcomings that hinder or move towards this aspirational culture change. First is a shortcoming in language, and this has contributed to the lack of granular data in the datasets available to us. In English, we use the words art and culture interchangeably, but the word culture encompasses all aspects of how societies function. Artists perhaps more meaningful or helpful word, but not necessarily sentiment that is valued or practiced similarly, across ethno cultural groups. And we have also had exclusionary ways of defining artists. How do we change that? at a practical level of systemic change, we have no data on the number of practicing artists from equity seeking groups. We do not know who has been under or underrepresented in Eurocentric arts practices and by example, I can say that in my discipline and genre, inclusion and access is focused on guest performers. But the research that I've attempted to do suggests that amongst professional orchestral musicians in Canada, there are fewer than 15 salaried and freelance orchestral musicians of black indigenous self in West Asian descent.
So, the question is in this decade, do people from equity seeking groups still want to be part of your centric arts practices? Many from post colonial cultures are reclaiming previously suppressed expressions of culture expressions the previous previously did not accord with European valuations art practices that were devalued as primitive or exotic than non art. So I think we need to consider these things. Also are the various agencies that collect art Stata, reaching out to the social groups where we will find equity seeking artists who are working outside of Eurocentric and or ableist forms of art making. What I've noticed is that we tend to rely on Foreign Studies for this information. Canadian politics and demographics are unique though and Foreign Studies don't capture the situation here. Can we better connect perhaps with post secondary institutions and finding our local qualitative stories? There are numerous numerous self reflective ethnographic studies that have been taking place over the last decade. Can we connect with these somehow? When we examine or audit arts organizations for inclusivity is there an imbalance between the staff and the artistic makeup? How often are gender imbalances? Directly related to positions of power? And that's reflected the patriarchy. Where do freelance music artists go for human resource challenges? In tracking arts jobs over the course of the pandemic, Kelly relied on the monthly labor force survey. The survey though does not account for freelance artists, and it is especially problematic for those who support their art by working in staff or management positions in smaller or arts organizations. And how many of those arts workers would prefer to be making art full time but can cannot afford to do so? Why are salaries higher for management than for artists? And then there's this big question of the environment. While we are all collectively aware of our responsibility to the land, I have also already noticed about two usual mode of operation operation for touristing, sorry, touring and artistic exchange. And this is something I have discussed with my colleagues who work in opera, and there's a collective sense of concern mixed with guilt. They know that they need to do this, but it comes at a price. So how do we bounce balance locality with the artistic exposure and exchange that comes from traveling? So these are some of the questions that have been rattling around. In my heads through the last year. And as I have been absorbing the material that Kelly and the group have provided to us. Thank you
fantastic. Thank you. Pamela. It's a really deep reflection and broad inquiry, where we've been over the past year and very, very welcome. I can see in and provocative for some of our, our participants today as the questions start coming in. So maybe I can invite Kelly and Cynthia to come back on camera. For us. And we can start tackling some of the questions that we're seeing coming in. Before I get directly to the q&a, I just want to there was one question actually that came in through the chat and before I lose track of that, I just wanted to jump on that. So it comes from Brenda Leadley and she's saying I agree with Pamela I would like to add that one of the biggest gaps in arts research in Canada that I see is the lack of qualitative research about the impact of the art and creativity on wellbeing and overall health. The UK has been strongly focused on this connection which has led to significant changes in their arts funding policies. What can we do to change that? So maybe I will, I will leave that open. But what can we do to change that to all of the panelists, but seeing as it was a question that was posed to Pamela maybe I'll ask her to try and write.
I think there are studies and again, they they seem to live in the academic world, but don't come out. And that's why I think we need to have a deeper relationship between artists. I mean, I tend to hear a lot of things a lot of very different things. When I'm at an art space conference, or amongst artists, then when I'm at an academic conference, and I just think why are these two groups of people who are all concerned about this thing that we call art? Why are they not speaking to each other? How Why is the information not crossing? So that the the information is absolutely there. McGill University, there's a lot at University of Toronto, McMaster there's a lot of work that's been done and yeah, we just need to be in communication.
Thank you. Yeah. And I would tend to agree, because I've noticed, it's been a point of conversation, I think amongst us as well, as we were preparing this webinar, the question of discoverability of data and where is that data discoverable? Where are those research reports discoverable? It's been a real challenge with the lack of bodies like Canadian conference for the arts, no longer existing, the Canadian cultural observatory, no longer existing and many other bodies that have attempted to come into being to create a national repository for research and for some reason, not being able to sustain or continue themselves. So I think that's another another point of conversation down the down the road. But in the meantime, I'm going to come back and now the questions are coming in fast and furious. This is great. So the top ranked question right now is Has there been any consideration to being able to break out information across indigenous First Nations, matey and Inuit groups? I'm not aware of any I don't know if our panelists are aware of any or even I should say we have a lot of experts with us today. There are about 100 people with us today if I put pose these questions and people in the participant group have answers, please throw those into the chat so that we can take record of those.
I think if I could just comment on that. We would, we would love to be able to do that and that would certainly be the ideal. Recognizing the important differences and distinctions that exist within the quote unquote indigenous community in Canada, the indigenous communities in Canada. I often find that we are lacking data on indigenous communities. writ large. So to even go to the finer points of trying to separate First Nations, matey Inuit, and then specific first nations would be also ideal, because there's no you know, they're all lumped together terms. They're all collective terms. That can certainly be broken down more finely and it's it's a challenge to get the bigger order data. So it's even more of a challenge to get more specific information from that. So that's my two cents on that.
I have seen some organizations trying to do that. But it was based on mostly um, I guess, geo tracking. So where the person was located, so in the north, they be considered a new week, but we as indigenous people were migratory. So for instance, my traditional territory is around a big lake here. So it's kind of hard to say which kind of regions and then they overlap too. So it would be really I'd be really excited to see this information and it would actually really helped me in my job a lot, but I haven't seen it. So again, if anybody has please please please drop it in the chat and I would love to follow up. Yeah.
On the urban indigenous population is so significant that, you know, trying to identify on that basis. Indigenous people what, what sorts of indigenous people reside in larger cities. Is impossible, really. So?
Indeed. And the great thing now, as we've been talking about discoverability of research, people are dropping lots of things into the chat as well. referencing our good friends at mass culture and their data thons. We also had I think, it's Ariane will they're working on research with MI T artists. I believe earlier, I saw something from Allison story about a book that she's reading on data bias. And from a gender perspective, lots of great things that are filtering in now. Some stuff from Ken at the Council on the quality of impacting work that had been developed there. So thank you so much for everyone who's dropping those things in the chat. question here from em Sharon Jannat. About the last in the last budget, the Department of Finance announced an initiative to better measure quality of life in Canada and there's a link there for all of you who can see it. Has anyone in the cultural sector been approached to participate in this? So I'm not sure that that's an answer our panel can answer but maybe we'll throw that out to the participants. If not, perhaps it's worth pursuing. Certainly we need to do better on qualitative data in regards to culture. So I don't know if anyone knows maybe Kelly, is this something you know about and have a sense of,
I know about it, but haven't been involved in it. There. There are and have been quite a few as I think Pamela was referencing quite a few quality of life indicator type initiatives that have largely flowed out of university settings. And they, they tend to come back to some fairly simplistic measures because that's all we've got of the arts and it's not really an in depth view of the impacts of the arts on communities across the country, and defined in many different ways. So because that's, that's largely what's available, is the big summary. kind of indicator on how many people participated possibly or how many artists are there. So there are there are challenges but there are initiatives that are going on, and I've tried to try to keep abreast of them, to the extent possible, but I haven't been directly involved in that specific kind of study.
Thanks. Yeah. So something for us to take note of here. How am I feel this one might be for you? And I'm seeing, of course, just trying to track the chat here as well. So we have Justin from Arts pond, jumping in and mentioning some of the projects that they've been doing and the platforms they're creating fantastic work over art spawn for sure. I know from hearing from Victoria steel in the chat as well, what data have you been able to find read climate change in the arts? There's a lot of discussion on this topic and guidance lessons. That would be useful. And like there's a note from Amelia Earhart, and in the q&a section that relates to this too, so I'm just going to link those up, but I'll put the question out about that in a second. In regards to touring in the environment, which you raised Parmalat that was a just interviewed 40 Canadian musicians and Hall pro policy change read the environment carbon offsets in the light please check out Canada Council strategic initiative fun regarding greening the arts. So that's a resource there that we can look for. But yeah, what what other data do we know? I mean, in the greener arts blog, I know we identified some but what other things do we know about climate change in the arcs? Were there things that you weren't able to cover in the blog Kelly, when that when that came out, or
of course you can cover everything in the blog. There's there are some podcasts in Canada that are available regarding that look at this specifically. There. There are other resources and we tried to point to them most of what I know regarding that was put in the blog. So that is the my findings were largely published there. I don't have a lot to add to that. So I would refer people back to the blog section of Hill strategies.com. If you're interested in that, and that issue, have to read through that. But I will open it up to the other panelists if they would like to comment on any other resources or perspectives that they've got on that specific issue.
Well, at the indigenous Performing Arts Alliance, we actually did B study to try to develop a virtual touring network throughout Northern Ontario. It's a pilot project. So we do have those findings. And it was really interesting because it was met again regionality geo tracking and everything trying to figure out what kind of impact it wouldn't cause from point A to point B and how we could offset that through virtual but then we hit this roadblock again, for like internet access all these other entry points which are limited for rural remote communities. Also for it's financially challenging to especially for our friends in very far north like Newt for instance, up any candidate. You can burn through your unlimited plan in a day kind of thing just to be on for like a zoom call. Like this. So it becomes financially not feasible next, so I'm really curious on that conversation to
promote anything you wanted to add from your perspective as a practicing musician is toward and is mindful of these things.
Yeah, I just I appreciate that. There's the touring and there's also the artistic exchange, and then also how we build our our reputations as artists, which is very much reliant upon going outside of our local community. And as I mentioned, my conversations recently had been with opera artists, for whom leaving to and it's not necessarily to tour but it is to be in different locations developing new repertoire or or, you know, working in the process of putting in work on stage. Um, opera artists don't stay in one place. They're constantly moving and that is the nature of what they do. Can we change it so that the stays are in the longer place? I think, if we're truly going to be mindful of climate change, we need to have longer stays with perhaps a greater diversity of artistic things that were projects that were involved in when we're in one location. Then on the other hand, what does that say about home and and our responsibility to our home or place of residence so I don't I don't know it's it's very complicated and I'm as an artist, I am challenged by this. I completely appreciate Cynthia's comments about internet access. You know, we started I started an organization last year that was about networking across using the internet as a way of networking across the country. And when we got up into northern Alberta, yes, we absolutely had problems with some of our artists. And yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the answer is. I honestly don't know. But we have to figure it out.
Yeah. And I think it's something we're trying to figure out and some of there are some of our friends that are trying to figure it out. So I know Michael Trent from Metcalf foundation. Hi, Michael, thanks for being with us today. brought forward the David mags paper David Mack being an Machop fellow on arts and society which was the paper that was featured in the arts research monitor arts in the world after this. We have Robin Sokolowski with us from mass culture who's commenting on the health and well being and arts and culture piece and mentioning the study that's going on right now between Canada Council and Canadian Heritage. I believe Stats Canada involved in that the vitality stats have that is going right now. So I've downloaded that I've been participating in that study. Lots of other great resources coming through so we're doing some discoverability as we speak in real time, this is fantastic. Really great stuff. But I want to turn back to our questions and there was one I think I might have skipped over here from Scott carry, which was asking what what role critical and social theories are having and helping us understand the why certain patterns or trends are observed in data so what I guess that's the critical lens, why is it that we see certain things in the data? We don't see other things coming through data. I see Kelly nodding there, maybe he he has a response for us.
It's pretty sure it could it be helpful because those theories be helpful. Yes. I believe so. I'm not an expert on critical theories like that social critical theory. So I might try to throw this one over to our ethnomusicologist to see if she might have a comment on
all I can say is more communication with our, our post secondary institutions because there is a plethora of critical studies in social social theory about expressive cultural practices. And that's the other thing I didn't I didn't get into in my kind of preamble is that in anthropology, we don't use the word art or culture. We were talking about expressive cultural practices, and there was a lot of it and we Jason as you said, discoverability how are we going to change this? I do want to mention that within the discipline of music Carleton University has recently created the Research Center for Music in Canada. And I think one of the attempts with this organization is to bridge this great divide. And they've managed to get funding I think, both from Canada Council and from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. So these are two big funding bodies that also tend not to overlap. So I think this is partly where our there's a disconnect also with our information. And you know what, there are not a whole lot of people like myself and like David Maddux, who are both who live in both of the academic and the performance, creative worlds. And I think that also needs to change.
Yeah, and you just reminded me of something that Wendy Reed who teaches at Ashley, say at the University of Montreal they equal these are the two key RCL talks about scholar practitioners. We don't have a lot of scholar practitioners active in the field or they're hard to identify that you know, and maybe not as well networked as maybe we'd like them to be maybe that's another thing we need to look at. In Canada, for sure. Jumping back to Cynthia Cynthia have a question for you. And it was from Michael Metcalf. It was also one that I had sparked in my mind when you were talking. Can you speak more about the baseline that you were mentioning and that in what kind of what would that baseline look like? What kind of data elements are what would you like to see in that baseline of research that you mentioned?
One thing I was hearing so there's for all the both official languages whenever I go in these conversations, they would talk about their baselines and how they were impacted during COVID. We don't have one of those. So I don't know but I don't know because we don't have it. So but it would basically be almost trying to emulate all the different conversations like our Francophonie counterparts from L'Oreal would have amazing data. Starting Points and could grasp things quite easily. Having that kind of starting point would be fantastic. So just kind of basically taking a snapshot I guess of the state of the field right now. And seeing how even starting now after COVID is a wonderful starting point. I just Yeah, Michael, if you want I can sit down and I can spend hours with you talking about the ideal and pulling in several different people from across Canada who we've had these conversations. It's just it's a really in depth long conversation about especially pulling in our indigenous practices and our protocols in our culture and everything. We have a different way of graphing and different things than what the I guess the colonial institutions would want to be capturing. It's not it's more quality or is not so much qualitative it is for so that preference. It's not so much quantitative, it's more qualitative. And again, what would that look like in the grand scheme of things when I'm having conversations with organizations both nationally and internationally? How would we present that and that again, that colonial lens to be able to talk about that, Kelly?
I didn't mean to cut you off or or get that much attention for way. They just got an excited
there, Cynthia? Yeah. Well,
it dovetails with what I was thinking about when both Cynthia and Pamela were speaking, related to representation of course, being important appropriate representation in research protocols, development of research protocols. Getting beyond tokenism, I think was something that Pamela was was talking about and started to give us some clues as to as to what to do, and you know, working with different communities. You know, I am not a member of the teachers community in Canada. So for me to be a researcher on a project like that would be incredibly challenging in some ways. It would have to start with as Cynthia just talked about, looking into the expressive culture and and how the cultural practices and how how do you want to measure yourselves? It's not just, here's the boxes that we allocate towards to you. That is that is tokenism. It's we want you to fill in our forms and have it exactly defined the way we want it to be defined. The more interesting and important and challenging question is to ask what's important to you? And then how could we maybe measure that? How could we look into that at least? So those are, those are huge issues that we could spend our whole lives dealing with, let alone five or 10 minutes but those are just some things that I was thinking about and I don't know if anybody else wants to comment on that it wasn't a question as much as it was a comment but hugely important issues.
Sorry, please.
Yeah. Um, that's that's half of the half of the project right there. The other half is understanding the validity of how we gather and the importance of what we we want to present and having that same kind of impact. Because, again, something that we capture might be like, Okay, no, that's more culture based or that's more but no, as indigenous peoples, we do not separate arts and culture. It's one of the same. It's part of our DNA. It is who we are. So to say, like, we got to guess like, level up the playing fields with the metrics and make everything kind of almost like a linear equality through our stats and stuff like that. Or if we even call them stats, I don't know gathering points. I can I, I love naming things. So I can sit down for hours and try and figure out different ways to like describe it. But yeah, it's basically creating that validity that that importance that whatever we say is important, has the same impact as what stats Canvas is important.
I guess maybe we could rename things to gathering points, insights on the arts. I would just I like, like that phrasing. I don't know that. It doesn't bring the same way. For some but the gathering points is an interesting concept in that sense.
Excellent. I'm mindful of time or only five minutes to the end as being very lively conversation. Lots of fantastic questions. Lots of great stuff happening in the chat, obviously. Sean Newman at Toronto Arts Council and Toronto Arts Foundation, Pamela would very much like to be in in touch with us in regards to the academia, industry, partnership, academia, sector partnerships, lots of love for the idea of one national national center to house arts research. Seeing that bubbling through a lot, lots of other really great comments and dialogue going on amongst people. This is fantastic. But I do want to try and see if I can type a one more question. And there seem to be from what I can see a group of two, at least two questions that I can see that connect around data on this concern about the data that we're able to get in the data. We're not in regards to be tracking freelances versus full time positions also, non paid work, volunteer work. And how a lot of belief that a lot of government policy and related arts funding draws on quantitative data as a decision making tool. With and whether that has a tendency to perpetuate the status quo. And does that continue? So what I guess the question is, what we are data, what data we have, what data we don't have, how this is influencing culture, policy and arts funding and what can we do just to like question to end and maybe everybody wants to take a quick stab at what their idea might be for how we move this agenda forward. Now, I'll start with Kelly and maybe we'll work our way around. Oh,
well I think we just need to start by thinking a bit differently. That's all incorporating different worldviews. Being open to different worldviews. And not being always focused on statistics, says the statistics guy, but that you know, recognizing that qualitative is important as well and that different perspectives are, are entirely valid. So and from the government standpoint, yes, funding is important if there's a quality of life study that was done differently and wasn't an indicator based study. That capture diversity appropriately, went beyond tokenism. That would be a fantastic, fantastic thing. But it does take quite a bit of funding to do that. So the opportunities are relatively rare and they're dictated by the person holding the purse strings.
care enough what gets counted gets done, as they say. Pamela, any comment on that closing words?
Well, yeah, I mean, we live in a society that's about numbers. It's about you know, the our economy is about numbers. And I think we, the way that we think has been motivated by numbers and so that's why I believe we who again, Kelly use the word who's got who's holding the purse strings, purse strings about numbers about funding, which is a gift you know, so it's a numbers game and we Brenau until we can appreciate qualitative studies differently. We have to rely upon statistics. I just wanted to make one comments you you'd mentioned practitioner scholars, and we, we don't respect that. And again, the two funding bodies that support either the academic or the, the artist, they they don't merge for except for the indigenous peoples which is wonderful, but they don't merge for anyone else. And that makes it incredibly difficult for somebody like me to, to earn any kind of living doing both of those things, and to really do those things properly and in in tandem, such that they become a Unison you know, they're not, they're two very divergent paths in my life. And it's, we need to change that attitude if we want to, if we want to have better studies that way.
Great, thank you. That's an important point to me. Cynthia, any closing points you'd like to share?
I would love My dream would be to have a gathering of like minded individuals who are on this call to kind of develop that baseline because I feel like we have, we're scratching the surface of a large conversation. And yeah, so I see that Jessa said that she might even have some funding to help that so. Thank you.
Yes, very good point just to throw that out. There's clearly a larger and much deeper and longer conversation to be had here. Thank you to everybody who participated say thank you, especially to our panelists for spending the time thank you all for being here and sharing all your great thoughts and and being engaged with this. And this will continue I'm sorry, we couldn't get to every question. But if you'd like to know more about arts inside Canada, absolutely visit heal strategies website that still strategies.com Or follow Hill strategies on Facebook and Twitter. If you have further questions, you can funnel those through info at heal strategies.com. So that's emailed to us. Otherwise, we encourage you to keep your eyes open for next stages of what this might be now that we're closing this pilot project and obviously so much work left to do. Thank you everybody, and goodbye.
