Archive for May, 2010

Finding a Venue

May 25th, 2010 by Aubrey Reeves

We’re hearing from some artists who would really like to participate in Culture Days but who are not sure how to find an appropriate space to host a public activity. Below is a list of helpful places to start your venue search.

Potential Venues in your community

Other Culture Days Activity Organizers  — A really good place to start looking for a venue is to approach the arts organizations in your area that are presenting their own Culture Days activities. Ask if they have some extra space (for instance in their extra studio, lobby, lounge, meeting room or in front of their building) to host you too. There is a much greater chance of attracting large crowds to sites where multiple activities are taking place. Of course, bigger crowds are good for both you and your host.

Libraries — Libraries are not just for books anymore! Increasingly, libraries are engaging in all sorts of educational and family events. Many libraries have meeting rooms, small auditoriums or courtyards that are appropriate to host Culture Days activities. Some libraries have already registered that they are organizing their own Culture Days activities – ask your local library if they would like to host yours!

Community Centres  — Community centres come in a range of shapes and sizes – some are owned and operated by municipalities while others are independent not-for-profit organizations. Some are focused on health and athletics while others deliver social programs. Regardless, all community centres are places for the public to gather, learn, share and play so they make great venues for Culture Days activities.

City Hall, parks and plazas  — Contact your municipality for information about permits and usage of City Hall, parks and plazas.  If you are planning an outdoor event, consider an indoor contingency site in case of rain.

Universities, Colleges and Schools  — There is a great range of facilities that universities and colleges can offer, from public spaces, large lecture halls, classrooms with multimedia tools, cafeterias or student common areas, studios and rehearsal spaces to performance halls. Likewise, some public schools districts allow auditoriums, gymnasiums and classrooms to be used by community groups after school hours. Contact your school district or your local school to find out more. 

If you are an artist who already works in the education system, Culture Days is a perfect opportunity to combine your teaching role with your artistic practice. Otherwise, Culture Days is a chance to start new relationships with schools in your community and share your artistic knowledge with students. Discuss with professors, teachers or principals how your activity could fit into their curriculum objectives.

Places of Worship  — In many neighbourhoods there are under-utilized churches, mosques, temples, synagogues and other places of worship. Their main halls usually have excellent acoustics for concerts and most also have smaller multi-purpose rooms.  Your activity does not have to be religious in nature since as community-run organizations, most places of worship welcome opportunities to be an active part of their neighbourhood.

Cafes, Bars, Stores, Malls and Other Businesses  — Talk to your favourite cafe, bookstore, bar or hangout about the work you do as an artist. Contact your local business improvement association to find out which of their members might be receptive to hosting your activity. Explain how your Culture Days activity could enliven their space and introduce their business to new customers. You might also be surprised how an unconventional venue sparks your creativity!

Empty Storefronts  — Contact your local business improvement association or the listed real estate agent to find out who owns empty storefronts in your community. Sometimes securing an empty storefront for a short-term project can be challenging but they make great venues so it can be worth the trouble. Explain to the BIA and storefront owner how Culture Days is a great way to revitalize a main street, downtown core or under-appreciated area. When empty storefronts are creatively occupied, even temporarily, business owners start to see the potential in a property and the neighbourhood.

Finally, When Making Your Venue Request….

Start by introducing Culture Days as a volunteer movement with the objective to encourage awareness, participation and engagement of all Canadians in the arts and cultural life of their own communities. Position your request for a venue as a partnership that will be mutually beneficial to you, their venue and the community at large. Be clear about what you need in a venue and what your expectations are for your activity. All publicly accessible buildings have liabilty insurance which should cover your need Culture Days activities. However, if you are dealing with a facility that is not normally open to the public, please check with them about public liability insurance. Most importantly — be respectful of their space and show your thanks and appreciation.   

If you’d like more tips on making a request for a venue, please leave a comment below.

Written by Aubrey Reeves, Ontario Arts Council’s Culture Days Animator/Coordinator.

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Local Working Group Starts Up In Peterborough

May 25th, 2010 by Aubrey Reeves

On Thursday, May 13 I attended an info session about Culture Days in Peterborough, organized by Simone George of 4th Line Theatre and Ray Marshall of Show Place. The organizers invited arts managers, city cultural planning staff, local media and individual artists to learn more about Culture Days and to discuss how it could unfold in Peterborough. This info session was a perfect example of how a group of arts workers can come together to build the Culture Days movement in their region. If you would like to organize a similar Culture Days information session in your own community, I can facilitate and provide resources to Ontario-based artists, organizations and municipalities. Email me at on@culturedays.ca or call 1-800-387-0058 ext. 5077.  In other provinces, please contact your provincial Task Force.

With the fourth annual Peterborough Artsweek overlapping dates with Culture Days, we discussed how the two events could work together to achieve maximum benefit to the community. Peterborough Artsweek is an eight-day celebration of the arts, featuring innovative contemporary arts programming.  At first, a few Artsweek presenters were worried they might be too busy to add Culture Days events. However, once they learned more about the movement, people got excited about the opportunity to complement their existing performances and exhibitions with activities that invite the public to go behind-the-scenes and appreciate the creative process. Artsweek and Culture Days share similar aims to raise awareness about the arts. As a result, the group also welcomed linking Artsweek with events happening across the country within the Culture Days public awareness campaign.

It was a very productive meeting where arts managers bounced ideas off each other, the city staff asked how they could be involved and artists talked about the type of activities they could offer. By the end of the meeting a working group was formed to continue planning and coordination of Culture Days activities in Peterborough and the surrounding area. With so much energy and teamwork going into their activities, I’m sure that Peterborough is going to be an exciting place on September 24-26!

 Written by Aubrey Reeves, Ontario Arts Council’s Culture Days Animator/Coordinator.

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What can municipalities do for Culture Days?

May 25th, 2010 by Aubrey Reeves

Municipalities, both urban and rural, can play an important role in the growth of the Culture Days. Whether you are an elected councilor, reeve or mayor, band council leader or municipal staff, here are a few things that you can do to support the movement in your own community:

1)      Get the word out about Culture Days to your local arts and cultural sector. Encourage your local artists, artisans, arts organizations, festivals, galleries, museums, heritage sites, community arts groups, choirs, libraries, community centres, universities, colleges, schools and cultural groups of all stripes to join the movement by registering an activity on the Culture Days website  www.culturedays.ca

2)      Contact your provincial Task Force about hosting and organizing an info session in your community about Culture Days. Invite representatives from your local arts sector as well as business improvement associations, local media and politicians to work together to creating an amazing Culture Days weekend. (If you represent a municipality in Ontario, contact me – Aubrey Reeves, OAC Culture Days Animator/Coordinator – to organize an info session).

3)      Provide space on September 30, October 1 & 2, in municipal-owned or operated facilities to artists and cultural groups that want to offer Culture Days activities. Some artists and cultural groups would like to take part but don’t have their own spaces that can accommodate the public. Examples of ideal municipal-owned facilities for activities include: parks, community centres, libraries, town/city hall, town squares, empty storefronts, heritage sites and museums. Be creative: Consider opening up a space that is not usually open to the public; this tends to draw crowds.

4)      Help to concentrate activities within walking distance of each other into “hubs.” You are likely to draw bigger crowds to Culture Days activities if people are able to browse and sample a variety of drop-in activities all in one easily accessible area. It’s a great way to revitalize a main street, downtown core or an under-appreciated area of your community.

5)      Discuss Culture Days with your local business improvement association (BIA) and how the arts and culture strengthen your community and economy. Encourage businesses to sponsor local Culture Days activity by providing in-kind donations of space, materials or promotion. The Creative City Network of Canada and the Ontario Municipal Cultural Planning Inc. offer some valuable resources that can help you describe the social-economic impacts of supporting cultural development to business owners.

6)      Develop partnerships with local media including community newspapers, regional radio stations and local bloggers. The main components of the Culture Days national media campaign will roll out starting in August on multiple national and provincial platforms. Local coverage can complement that campaign with a focus on what’s happening in your own backyard.

7)      In September, please invite your municipal councilors and Mayor or other elected officials to attend Culture Days events in your community. Culture Days events will make for fun photo-ops and give politicians a chance to demonstrate active support and participation in the local arts and cultural life of their communities.

8)      If you work for a municipality or a regional community, encourage your municipal cultural planning department to make Culture Days part of its annual programs. In Québec, where the inspiration for Culture Days originated, 276 municipalities have signed the official Declaration of Journées de la culture and 234 municipalities directly organize cultural activities during the weekend-long celebration of local arts and culture.  Download the simple, 1-page official Declaration of Journées de la culture and let us know if you think this would be a useful tool to help bring every municipality and regional community on board as a Culture Days collaborator.

Written by Aubrey Reeves, Ontario Arts Council’s Culture Days Animator/Coordinator.

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Four Great Insights into Outreach and Arts Education

May 25th, 2010 by Aubrey Reeves
workshop

Attendees at the Opera.ca Regional Roundtable take part in a mock Culture Days activity workshop. From left to right: Stephen Bye, Opera Hamilton, David Speers, Opera Hamilton, Caitlin Coull, COC, Calista Biermans, Toronto Summer Music and Cecelia Paolucci, Toronto Summer Music.

On Friday, May 14, I attended a regional roundtable on arts education and outreach presented by Opera.ca the nationally association for opera in Canada.  Following several other speakers on arts education, I had the opportunity to introduce the Culture Days movement to leaders in the Ontario opera scene. Three arts education staff from the Canadian Opera Company, Tapestry New Opera Works and Opera Aterlier led a group exercise designed to help organizations understand the value of arts education and to brainstorm ideas for potential Culture Days activities.

Arts education programs are often called “outreach” but Christina Loewen (Opera.ca Executive Director) floated the idea that we should in fact be calling it “inreach” since the idea is to welcome the public inside our arts organizations and within the creative process. “Inreach” conveys many of the goals of Culture Days. With a mission to develop new opera works by Canadian and international creators, Tapestry invites the public to “inreach” during every step of their creation and production process throughout the year. The reason is simply, said Amber Ebert (Tapestry), “Artists are our best spokespeople.” The passion of artists positively reflects on their company and imparts to the public a great appreciation for their art form.

Many arts managers wonder about the value of doing outreach when resources are tight and staff limited. Outreach is often justified on the assumption that consumers of free programming will eventually become ticket buyers but the transition is never so simple. When companies invest in arts education, especially when it is aimed at children, the return on that investment could take 20 years or more. Therefore, Katherine Semcesen (COC) explained the priority of outreach should be to promote your art form first, your company second.  Collectively, outreach will build a greater arts-aware public, which will in turn produce a stronger arts and cultural sector.

Nancy Hitzig (Opera Atelier) reminded us all to think back to that one influential arts education moment that inspired us to pursue careers and lives in the arts. Most of us can recall an awe-inspiring school trip to a museum or a special music teacher who shared her enthusiasm for the violin. Each Culture Days activity has the potential to be one of those special moments for someone else. You can be the artist who inspires the next generation to pursue their artistic potential and play a hand in shaping their life-long love of the arts.

The roundtable concluded with the arts education staff leading us through an opera creation workshop, where groups had to write and perform their own 5 minute opera with the aid of an accompanist and some simple props. Suddenly put in the position of performers, many of the executive directors and managers were nervous and reticent. With a bit of encouragement and teamwork, we brainstormed some ideas and produced some very silly short operas. The arts education staff pointed out how we were feeling uncomfortable, which will be the same for the public during Culture Days. Participating in the creative process is outside of many people’s comfort zones. We have to be prepared to deal with the public feeling silly or nervous. As activity hosts it is our responsibility to make the public feel safe and welcome within the creative process. If achieved, both the public and the activity hosts will be rewarded with new ideas and stimulating interactions.

Written by Aubrey Reeves, Ontario Arts Council’s Culture Days Animator/Coordinator.

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