Toronto will take a fresh look at its official Culture Plan with the help of a blue ribbon panel announced by Councillor Michael Thompson (Ward 37 Scarborough Centre), Chair of the City’s Economic Development Committee. LiveWithCulture.ca will be the community’s conduit for updates on consultations and we encourage feedback via the site’s comment fields.
The Creative Capital Initiative, a partnership between the City and the arts and culture community, will provide expert advice and recommendations to update the City’s 2003 Culture Plan for the new term of Council.
“Toronto’s cultural sector employs nearly 133,000 people and annually generates $9 billion in GDP,” said Councillor Thompson, left. “Between 1991 and 2007, creative occupations grew at more than twice the rate of the general labour force. Given the changes that have occurred in the economy, Toronto’s city governance philosophy and the city’s cultural sector since 2003, it is time to take a fresh look at our Culture Plan.”
The Creative Capital Initiative will look for ways to enhance Toronto’s role as an international cultural centre, and recommend actions to amplify the sector’s economic and social contributions.
Co-chairing the initiative are three prominent members of Canada’s business and cultural communities: Robert Foster (CEO Capital Canada), Karen Kain (Artistic Director of the National Ballet of Canada), and former federal Cabinet Minister Jim Prentice (Vice-Chairman, CIBC). They are joined by an Advisory Council that includes Nichole Anderson (President and CEO, Business for the Arts), Cameron Bailey (Co-Director, Toronto International Film Festival Group), Claire Hopkinson (Executive Director, Toronto Arts Council), Che Kothari (Executive Director, Manifesto Community Projects) and Gail Lord (Co-President, Lord Cultural Resources).
The Creative Capital Initiative will be advised by Richard Florida (Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute) and Jeff Melanson (Special Advisor to the Mayor – Arts and Culture).
The initiative will hold a series of focus groups with invited members of Toronto’s cultural and business communities beginning in February. Three public consultations are also planned. The initiative will present its recommendations to the Economic Development Committee at the committee’s May 2011 meeting.
The 2003 Culture Plan recognizes that great cities of the world are all creative cities whose citizens work with ideas, are intensely mobile and insist on a high quality of life. Since its adoption, the Culture Plan has successfully shaped the City’s cultural strategy and supported the growth of the cultural sector. To date, 87 per cent of the Culture Plan’s 63 recommendations have been implemented. In August 2010, Council reaffirmed its commitment to the Culture Plan’s cultural investment goal of $25 per capita (currently at $18 per capita).
Bookmark this site for future updates.
Lead image: The Long Wave by artist David Rokeby for Luminato 2009, photo by Mario Reyes from the City of Toronto’s “Building a Great City – Together” photo contest
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In every age people have made their mark by the footprint of art as the legacy for the generations to come
Venues for public art are critical to a sense of community – theatre, music, visual arts, dance, sports, fashion… with funding to support it. Commercial art alone is insufficient in creating a sense of belonging.
I am happy to see that our City Councillors are interested in improving Torontonian’s access to arts and culture and I am especially pleased that feedback via the comments section of this website is being encouraged.
Hopefully the rationale for this will not be limited to cherry-picked statistics that tout only the economic value of arts. If we use this logic to underpin the desire to provide a rich and varied society to, then by this logic we should also not support the art that doesn’t generate a profit, tourism or jobs: So much for poetry, so long most indie theatre, novel that will be recognized as one of the greatest in thirty years time – you’re gone too.
In fact, by this logic the Black Eyed Peas are the most important musicians on earth, yet their last song could have been written by a robot. Time to dig deeper than the ideas expressed above. The immediate economic benefits of arts and culture to a society are but one partially viable reason to support it.
Best of luck to this panel and here’s hoping that it finds a way to concentrate on more than a reductive profit-based reasoning for a government to support the arts.
Best,
Michael
ps Please read more thoughts about this panel on praxistheatre.com
without arts and culture our city is soulless.
To give people the chance to not only see art but be a part of it, organize it, and do it themselves is crucially important.
A creative community is a community that is happy, healthier, more fulfilled, and can think out of the box.
It is the beginning of a chainlink to a better society, let’s make it stronger.
The creative energy in every person is different, so many of us keep this all inside and don’t persue it, to follow our western ideological type of life. With programming, at least we can keep that inner child live.
LIVE and LOVE.
The critical part of culture that never seems to be seriously considered is heritage.
Heritage is the foundation, or bedrock, of culture.
If you (or, for instance, the City of Toronto) have no sense of or link to the past, you have no reference point for moving towards the future. You are basically directionless in the dark without a starting point.
Heritage not only exists in built form, but also influences day to day life socially and in other areas (how we interact on a daily basis). However, its influence today has been greatly diminished and the impact on society is not necessarily positive as a result.
As an example, in The Lakeshore area of Etobicoke, we had 18 elected representatives up to 1966 who took direction from and served the people of our communities (Town of Mimico, Town of New Toronto, Village of Long Branch). The culture of community service to taxpayers and responsiveness to issues was impressive. Today, we have but one Councillor who is supposed to do the same job – with an even larger geographic area to deal with. We also have elected Councillors who only care about their personal pet projects.- not the community they are supposed to serve.
Because culture encompasses many forms, not just the typical focus on the commercial arts that we are typically exposed to, deeper thinking and more progressive action is necessary. A greater emphasis on heritage as a component of cultural activities locally in our neighbourhoods and communities needs to be considered.
In terms of protecting its built heritage, Toronto’s reputation is considered to be pathetic – at best. Far too often, as we have seen in recent years, built heritage is eliminated through “demolition by neglect”, “developer’s lightning”, or “spontaneous heritage combustion”. Every time that occurs, another piece of the City’s soul is lost. And that impacts our culture and society as a result.
Many feel that all hope is lost, given the City’s track record. However, there sometimes comes a glimmer of hope. The staging of “The Railway Children” at Toronto’s railway museum downtown is an example of raising the profile of heritage in live performance, which might be expected to have lasting positive effects for local heritage efforts – and consequently, various forms of our culture.
Someday, if the City of Toronto grows up, it may actually become “world class”. And that will be due to efforts to not only protect and preserve our heritage – but to raise its profile in our society. No “world-class” city demonstrates such callous disregard for heritage that Toronto has. And that must change before it really is too late.
Thank you for inviting me and regrets I can’t make the up-coming February’s Creative Communities Public Consultations meeting to enhance Arts and Culture over the next four years – please keep me posted.
As requested – here is a quick list of suggestions:
1. Develop Ward Art Councils to ensure city-wide cultural development.
2. Encourage BIA participation in public space cultural programming.
3. Discourage street level stores from going residential – replace reduction of taxes on empty stores with reductions based on hosting storefront artist exhibitions / projects.
4. Develop a city wide App for public art and cultural projects – maybe throw it at the City of Toronto Art For Public Places to start-up.
5. Create artist-in-resident programs with artist+ business partnerships – recall that Ian Baxter did one with Molson and introduced a first program to stop drunk driving in the 1970s (maybe even late 60s).
6. Give over empty school classrooms for artist projects with agreed open-door studio days to let students come in, see, discuss and maybe participate.
7. Use some development section 37 funding for more short-term public projects.
8. Have a concern – make it an art project commission and call-out to artists to resolve it.
And
Come to our Big-on-Bloor festival this July 24, 2011 – Lansdowne Ave to Dufferin St on Bloor – part of the effort will be to claim the soon-to-be-closed Kent school-ground as long term public space by installing participatory art projects on the site in the month of July – culminating with the festival July 24, 2011. Will have up more information on how to participate beginning March 1st on http://www.bigonbloor.com
Reminder Community Festival and Special Events application due this week – I did go to that meeting and was told not to expect much help from the City of Toronto now facing financial hard times. So it is important to come up with other ideas to make things happen and better use the spaces and places now on hand – that means schools, streets, and underused organizations, business…. – all can be better activated by cultural initiatives to build a vital city.
Very best and good luck with your meeting,
Dyan
Dyan Marie
dyanmarie.com
BloorMagazine.com
BloorFestival.com
Bloordale-bia.com
Bigonbloor.com
Please join facebook’s Big On Bloor Street Festival page
Why is Janice Price, CEO of LuminaTO, not on this committee? Has Toronto ever seen a more successful public-private partnership (heavy on the private) in action? I think that LuminaTO’s zoom into the echelons of phenomenal success in just 4 short years speaks volumes, and provides a wealth of experience from which Toronto’s new Creative Capital Initiative to learn from, and draw upon. If she is not there, then how seriously is the city taking this consultation?
Measuring and Valuing: this is a left brain approach.
Affordability and access: re-establish the studio training for artists and bypass OCA.
TO’s 5 yr plan: Talk to artists(real ones), stay clear of left brainers and avoid bureaucrats.
Big Opportunity Ahead: International Art/Architecture Symposium in Toronto for new approach to urban realm.
Quick Wins: Get Jeff Melanson to call me.
We are Hogtown in a country of hewers of wood and drawers of water; cold beer and Hockey Night in Canada with the Buds after a hard week of work. We’ve barely accepted that regular physical excersize can help us live longer and life-long learning enters our reality only as assignments from the Boss, or when we reach middle age, are laid-off and are staring heavy retraining in the face.
This is the caricature that we Torontonians, with a few exceptions, still paint of ourselves. It is the heritage we’ve chosen and the culture we experience.
If this Creative Capital Initiative is to be other than a PR and advertising campaign that benefits only small sectors of our city, and that only monetarily, it must seriously try to expand people’s perception of their lives to something more. A broader heritage, a broader culture. This is not an outward focussed campaign, but inwards; from the individual up, creating awarness of and desire for creative and cultural activities.