“Industries” exist to collapse.

“Leaders” in the arts have long fought to have them thought of as industries. (I guess they wanted to be Leaders of Industry.)

Congrats, we’ve proved it! Industrial collapse!

To take the waves of lay-offs and closing personally is to ignore the social and economic systems we are entangled in.

Public Funding – Mixing stability and agility

A little twitter back and forth with Praxis folk plus a desire to respond to Shannon Litzenberger’s Metcalf report, Choreographing Our Future: Strategies for Supporting Next Generation Arts Practice has inspired me to post some thoughts on public funding models. I’ve been thinking lots about this and below is an edited version of some writing about this for a […]

Policy, politics, Rhubarb

The Rhubarb Festival did not receive Department of Canadian Heritage (DCH) funding. Read the letter and response here. Nothing New The DCH is an arm of the government in power. That was true under the Liberals and PC’s when it was used to promote “Canadian” culture abroad and in Quebec. (oh for the ¿golden age? […]

Otherwise it’s not a change.

I just returned from participating in a meeting convened by the Edmonton Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council that had fifty of us discussing the future of arts research, advocacy and topics spreading out from there. It’s the beginning of a conversation. Here are the notes I spoke from. Who has a relevant voice […]

Slow down with those numbers.

For the record: I believe that going out can have a positive effect on a persons life. I believe that going out to meaningful and delightful things should be part of peoples lives. I believe a function of art might be ease alienation without denying complexity or difference. I belive the simplifying tendancy of lobbying […]

Factory: Unthrowing my name

[Background] I am revoking / not going to submit my application for the position of Artistic Director of Factory Theatre. There are some very practical reasons.[1] but more than those – My application was made in an effort to have a conversation. This hasn’t materialized. I’ve had some interesting private chats with people I run […]

Factory: Public Application

On the day that the situation is back in the news, Here is a draft of my Letter of Experience for the position of Artistic Director of Factory Theatre. I’ve broken it, for the purposes of the blog, into three posts plus the older cover letter Lots of people have asked if I expect that […]

Factory: Theatre without ruling

Some thoughts spurred from a few Michaels comments. I’m not looking to run an arts service or research organization – I’m a theatre director. I believe in leadership. I believe in curation and position taking. I’m not looking to run an “open-source theatre”, or a broadly defined “shared stake holder” art space [1]. Nor am […]

Pro and Am – Running back and forth

On the verge of starting our first workshop for non-identifying artists –  I’ve been thinking, and really beginning to work towards, the ability to move between professional and amateur.This appeared in my inbox today (Via You’ve Cott Mail) “Among the consequences of our fetishism of professional status, it strikes me that we have relegated ourselves […]

Letter to my Councillor

Below is a letter I sent Monday to my city councillor. He’s both on the Executive Council and not quite a Fordist hard-liner.On Thursday some of the cuts, including to the arts, were pulled off the table [read about it.] Which is better. I am grateful for the people who wrote and called their councillors, […]

A responsibility (and a privilege)

Another thing that I particularly like about the Pomegranate Center is that they clearly see community improvement as their mission. Their work then flows from that belief. I would argue that any 501(c)(3) organization has that view as a responsibility (and a privilege). How is the work of the arts altered or adjusted if that […]

Not just America, not just journalists

99 Seats is talking about media complaints about the media in Most Everything That’s Wrong With American Journalism.The specifics are helpful and the analysis right on – and connects with a thread I’ve been thinking about for a while. In a large group discussion about, I think, politics and theatre from a year or so ago, […]

No one is going to do it for us.

Artist and writer Chris Dupuis has taken some well aimed swings at a side bar in this weeks NOW. The “who’s the next… Peggy Baker, Wayne Gretzky, Michael Jordan” form is generally a trite move to force a connection. At best it might be an understanding of working in tradition and a way to contextualize […]