Outgoing President’s Report / Season 2015–16, Kyle Brenders

Kyle Brenders

Report sub­mit­ted at the 2016 AGM (Octo­ber 2016)

This is the final report I’ll be doing dur­ing my tenure as Pres­i­dent of CNMN. I’ve been hon­oured and hum­bled to take the helm of the orga­ni­za­tion. I real­ly hope that the work I’ve put in will have a last­ing effect on the future of the network.

This years activ­i­ties were cen­tred main­ly on our FORUM in Ottawa this past Jan­u­ary. I was incred­i­bly pleased with the activ­i­ties that hap­pened dur­ing the FORUM and was impressed by the scope of mem­bers that attend­ed. I hope that con­ver­sa­tions were start­ed there and have con­tin­ued, that friend­ships and pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ships were estab­lished or strength­ened, and that we all felt a lit­tle clos­er to one anoth­er even though we’re spread across this mas­sive coun­try. Please read a more sub­stan­tial run down report in the FORUM report.

By the end of last sea­son, our total mem­ber­ship was up by 44, which is more than dou­ble the rate of growth from the pre­vi­ous sea­son (at the end of 2014–15, it was up by 19), which tells us mem­ber­ship engage­ment and CNMN as a col­lec­tive force con­tin­ues to grow.

Anoth­er ini­tia­tive, the enor­mous and long-term Dig­i­tal Con­tent Ini­tia­tive con­tin­ued its efforts, and this will be cov­ered in more depth in the DCI report.

2016 was an elec­tion year. We say good-bye to long-time board mem­bers Stacey Brown, Louise Camp­bell, Jim Mont­gomery, Hei­di Ouel­lette and myself. It was also the first oppor­tu­ni­ty to imple­ment By-Laws revised in Sep­tem­ber 2014, allow­ing board expan­sion from 12 to 15 mem­bers. This meant a sec­ond seat for the B.C. region and two new seats specif­i­cal­ly for non-region­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion, allow­ing for more flex­i­bil­i­ty. A record num­ber of eight new mem­bers will join sev­en return­ing mem­bers. We did not actu­al­ly hold a bal­lot vote – all 15 self-nom­i­nees were received by accla­ma­tion. The new board will mark the first time in CNMN’s his­to­ry that women out­weigh men 8 to 7.

Some of you may know we were recent­ly suc­cess­ful in obtain­ing core fund­ing from the Cana­da Coun­cil, after hav­ing project fund­ing for some time. This mile­stone will hope­ful­ly pro­vide some finan­cial secu­ri­ty for all of the future activ­i­ties we take on. It’s a sol­id base and a good sign of sup­port from one of the coun­try’s largest fun­ders. I’m incred­i­bly please that I can leave CNMN know­ing that this sup­port is in place. Always remem­ber if you need infor­ma­tion about fun­ders that you can reach out to the board. CNMN is an arts ser­vice orga­ni­za­tion and one of our ser­vices is to advo­cate for fund­ing and sup­port for our members.

There were also day-to-day mat­ters such as mem­ber­ships, Bul­letins, apply­ing for grants, bud­get man­age­ment and book­keep­ing, oth­er ongo­ing admin­is­tra­tion as well as future planning.

Thank you to the mem­bers of the board and staff, mem­bers of the net­work, and to all our col­lab­o­ra­tors and fun­ders for what you do to ensure that CNMN con­tin­ues to work for new music in Canada.

Dur­ing my time as pres­i­dent I’ve tried to under­stand the full scope of our orga­ni­za­tion. The inclu­sive nature of CNMN is some­thing we should be proud of. We must remem­ber to con­tin­ue to be inclu­sive and equi­table to all mem­bers. It’s a chal­lenge to make sure we keep our con­ver­sa­tions rel­e­vant and open to every­one. We should reach out to each oth­er and try to sup­port one anoth­er’s work. Go see a show, buy a record­ing, any­thing that we can do to sup­port each oth­er across the coun­try can go a long way to feel­ing more con­nect­ed as mem­bers of the network.

Thank You
Kyle Brenders

 

Direct link: Out­go­ing President’s Report / Sea­son 2015–16, Kyle Brenders
Return to full Bul­letin – Octo­ber 2016