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Table of Contents

-Arts Day on Par­lia­ment Hill 2012
‑CNMN Region­al Meet­ings 2012–2013
‑FORUM 2014 in Cal­gary, Alberta
‑Net­work­ing the Net­works: Nation­al Arts Ser­vice Orga­ni­za­tion (NASO) meet­ing 2012  – by Louise Campbell
‑Cana­da Coun­cil Change Agen­da – by Louise Campbell
‑Two Big Changes at FACTOR – by Tim Brady
‑Wel­come New Members
‑Did you know we’re on Facebook?
‑Two Ini­tia­tives of The Cana­di­an Fed­er­a­tion of Music Teach­ers’ Asso­ci­a­tions (CFMTA)

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15^th edi­tion CNMN Bul­letin – Win­ter 2013

Arts Day on Par­lia­ment Hill, Oct. 23, 2012: Louise Camp­bell (left), MP Denis Blanchette (cen­tre), Tam-Ca Vo Van (right), rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Asso­ci­a­tion des groupes en arts visuels fran­coph­o­nes. “The three of us shared an inter­est­ing and stim­u­lat­ing con­ver­sa­tion,” says Camp­bell. “I came away with a much bet­ter under­stand­ing and faith in Canada’s demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem — those MPs are real, live peo­ple, ready to talk about the arts and do what they can.”

Arts Day on Parliament Hill 2012

Arts sup­port­ers from coast to coast to coast – includ­ing the CNMN – gath­ered in Ottawa on Tues­day 23 Octo­ber 2012 to meet with their Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment to dis­cuss the key role that fed­er­al arts invest­ment plays in the eco­nom­ic and social health of Cana­da. Build­ing on four years of pos­i­tive momen­tum, Arts Day 2012 saw 130 arts sup­port­ers meet with over 110 Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, Min­is­ters, Sen­a­tors and senior offi­cials from all parties.

Par­tic­i­pants thanked the gov­ern­ment for pre­serv­ing invest­ment in the Cana­da Coun­cil for the Arts in Bud­get 2012 and pre­sent­ed two key pol­i­cy pri­or­i­ties for the upcom­ing year, as out­lined in the coalition’s brief to the stand­ing com­mit­tee on finance:

1. (1) That the gov­ern­ment renew invest­ments in the Cana­da Funds that it announced in 2009 (Cana­da Cul­tur­al Spaces Fund, Cana­da Arts Pre­sen­ta­tion Fund, Cana­da Strate­gic Invest­ment Fund and Cana­da Arts Train­ing Fund). Of the $120 mil­lion or so that the gov­ern­ment invests in these pro­grams annu­al­ly, near­ly $80 mil­lion (or 2/3 of the total) is com­ing up for renew­al and it is crit­i­cal that this lev­el of fund­ing be renewed.
2. (2) That the Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da main­tain fund­ing lev­els to the arts through the Cana­da Coun­cil for the Arts at $181 mil­lion in fis­cal year 2013–2014.

Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment across all par­ties sig­nalled their sup­port for the Cana­di­an Arts Coalition’s rec­om­men­da­tions. The CNMN is part of the Cana­di­an Arts Coali­tion, a col­lab­o­ra­tive non-par­ti­san move­ment spear­head­ed by a group of nation­al arts ser­vice, who orga­nizes the event.

“We are delight­ed that Cana­di­an New Music Net­work rep­re­sen­ta­tive Louise Camp­bell was able to make the trip to Ottawa in order to explain the impor­tance of fed­er­al invest­ment in the arts from the ini­tial moment of cre­ation until it is shared with an audi­ence,” said coali­tion co-chair Kather­ine Car­leton. “At just over $5 per capi­ta, the fed­er­al government’s invest­ment sup­ports an indus­try that is big­ger than forestry or bank­ing, pro­vid­ing jobs to well over half a mil­lion Canadians.”

Camp­bell, too was encour­aged by the event, espe­cial­ly with the results the day brought, stat­ing: “The Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da imple­ment­ed a clear change in pol­i­cy as a result of our Day on the Hill efforts, act­ing to main­tain the Cana­da Council’s bud­get over 3 years, when almost every GOC orga­ni­za­tion received sig­nif­i­cant cuts. Take-home mes­sage: engag­ing in con­ver­sa­tion works!”

Further Resources

For more infor­ma­tion about the Cana­di­an Arts Coali­tion, please vis­it canadianartscoalition.com.

A Short Film from that day, where MPs share their per­spec­tive on the arts in the com­mu­ni­ty, and their own per­son­al arts expe­ri­ences: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxywHTtU9Pg

Arts Day Ral­lies All-Par­ty Sup­port for Key Pol­i­cy Pri­or­i­ties – by Shan­non Litzen­berg­er — http://www.shannonlitzenberger.com/arts-policy/archives/872

The coalition’s most recent details about Day on the Hill 2013 (from 20 Dec 2012): http://www.canadianartscoalition.com/2012/12/20/canadian-arts-coalition-plan-for-2013–2014/

From Kather­ine Car­leton, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Orches­tras Canada:

• http://orchestrascanada.org/2012/12/19/advocacy-update‑9/
• http://orchestrascanada.org/2012/10/31/arts-day-on-parliament-hill-and-the-spirit-continues/

Direct arti­cle link: Arts Day on Par­lia­ment Hill 2012
15th edi­tion CNMN Bul­letin — Win­ter 2013

The CNMN Region­al Meet­ings have been ongo­ing since Decem­ber 2012.  All in all, a total of 7 meet­ings make up this ini­tia­tive, whose set­up is run by the CNMN board member(s) of the region. A high pri­or­i­ty is to make sure region­al con­cerns and region­al real­i­ties are a big part of these meetings.

The Que­bec, Alber­ta, Atlantic and Ontario meet­ings have already tak­en place, and some ini­tial respons­es are avail­able fur­ther below.

The Man­i­to­ba Region takes its turn on March 10^th, while British Colum­bia and Saskatchewan are still in the plan­ning stages. Check back here as we con­tin­ue to update and add to the infor­ma­tion to each region’s event page.

Your region is still to come? We look for­ward to see­ing you there. We also warm­ly wel­come your col­leagues — feel free to speak with them or for­ward these links to fur­ther information: 

• Sev­en Region­al Meet­ings 2012–2013
• Full Sched­ule 

The Atlantic Region­al Meet­ing took place Jan 12, 2013 in Hal­i­fax at the Dal­housie Arts Cen­tre, dur­ing Upstream’s vibrant Open Waters Fes­ti­val of new and impro­vised music. In an age where so much com­mu­ni­ca­tion takes place vir­tu­al­ly, Paul Cram, CNMN board mem­ber who attend­ed the meet­ing, empha­sizes how the basic act of sim­ply com­ing togeth­er in-per­son was key: “Over­all and as usu­al, the Atlantic Region­al Meet­ing was a small gath­er­ing mod­er­at­ed by Nor­man Adams that brought togeth­er sev­er­al dis­tinct new music stake­hold­ers, from here and away, to think, talk and exchange ideas. It would be fine even if no one spoke. In the words of Woody Allen, ‘Half of life is show­ing up.’”

The Alber­ta region­al meet­ing, also on Jan­u­ary 12, attract­ed a live­ly mix of Alberta’s new music com­mu­ni­ty, with many rep­re­sen­ta­tives of orga­ni­za­tions and ini­tia­tives such as: New Music Edmon­ton, Epcor Cen­tre for the Per­form­ing Arts, Soundasaurus Fes­ti­val, Land’s End Cham­ber Ensem­ble, Rub­bing Stone Ensem­ble, Verisi­mo, New Works Cal­gary, Honens, Cana­da Music Week (CFMTA), the Cana­di­an Asso­ci­a­tion for Sound Ecol­o­gy, among others.

Each orga­ni­za­tion gave an overview and update of its man­date and cur­rent pro­grams. John Reid and Lau­rie Rad­ford informed those present of plans to hold the 2014 CNMN Forum in Cal­gary at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­gary in con­junc­tion with its annu­al Hap­pen­ing New Music Festival.

Over lunch, del­e­gates shared plans for upcom­ing sea­sons and dis­cussed mat­ters of poten­tial future col­lab­o­ra­tions. Con­sid­er­able aes­thet­ic dis­cus­sions also ensued. A good time was had by all, which augurs well for future region­al plan­ning discussions.

The Que­bec Region­al Meet­ing on Decem­ber 9, 2012 brought togeth­er some very strong voic­es in Que­bec’s new music com­mu­ni­ty, hail­ing from a great cross-sec­tion of organ­i­sa­tions, ini­tia­tives and ensem­bles such as Quasar, Le Vivi­er, DAME, Les Poules, Super­musique, Fiolûtröniq, SOCAN Foun­da­tion, DIM, In Exten­sio, among others.

Cléo Pala­cio-Quintin, CNMN board mem­ber in QC, chaired the meet­ing, with fel­low board mem­ber Stacey Brown. The meet­ing began with a dis­cus­sion cen­tered around the “100 moments” project pro­posed by Sandeep Bhag­wati and Karen Sun­abac­ka dur­ing FORUM 2012. “The pro­pos­al def­i­nite­ly gen­er­at­ed inter­est, inspir­ing gen­er­ous and detailed input from those in atten­dance,” says Brown. Par­tic­i­pants engaged in ani­mat­ed dis­cus­sion of the project and its poten­tial as a show­case of Cana­di­an New Music both dur­ing and after a brief pre­sen­ta­tion by Pala­cio-Quintin that sum­ma­rized some of the key ele­ments of the proposal.

What fol­lowed was an ener­giz­ing brain­storm­ing ses­sion around long-term strate­gies for improv­ing the dis­sem­i­na­tion and acces­si­bil­i­ty of new music, touch­ing on such issues as Cana­di­an Con­tent, the devel­op­ment of our Cana­di­an musi­cal her­itage, the ever-impor­tant ques­tion of fund­ing, and the impor­tance of Art for Art’s sake. The meet­ing closed with a short exchange of ideas and com­ments focussed on the upcom­ing CNMN FORUMs: Cal­gary in 2014 and Ottawa in 2016. All in all, an invig­o­rat­ing and inspir­ing after­noon, with fruit­ful dis­cus­sions thanks to every­one’s thought­ful and ener­getic participation.

Par­al­lel to the QC strat­e­gy meet­ing, CNMN and Brady­works co-host­ed a work­shop on career devel­op­ment for young artists.  The guest speak­ers were Tim Brady (com­pos­er, gui­tarist, artis­tic direc­tor), Jean Derome (sax­o­phon­ist, com­pos­er, musique actuelle and film music), Véronique Lacroix (con­duc­tor, ECM+) and Bar­bara Scales (agent, Lat­i­tude 45).

“We had 23 par­tic­i­pants, most­ly CEGEP and uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents, with a few young pro­fes­sion­als as well,” says Brady.  “The event was extreme­ly suc­cess­ful — for 3 hours, the sense of com­mu­ni­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the room was fan­tas­tic as we all dis­cussed a huge range of prac­ti­cal and philo­soph­i­cal issues around mak­ing new music in Cana­da in 2012.”

After­wards there was an infor­mal get-togeth­er for both CNMN and BW par­tic­i­pants, which con­tin­ued for anoth­er two hours.  “In the end, the secu­ri­ty guard had to kick us out; we were hav­ing so much fun!” says Brady.

Direct arti­cle link: CNMN Region­al Meet­ings 2012–2013
15th edi­tion CNMN Bul­letin — Win­ter 2013

CNMN’s nation­al FORUM comes again in 2014. This time we’re very hap­py to be tak­ing it to Cal­gary, Alber­ta. It’s sched­uled to take place Jan­u­ary 24 to 26, 2014 at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­gary in con­junc­tion with their Hap­pen­ing Fes­ti­val of New Music.

More info avail­able on the FORUM 2014 web page.

Stay tuned for lots more info as devel­op­ments continue.

Impor­tant: if you would like to help, or have an idea to present, please do not hes­i­tate to com­mu­ni­cate with us – admin@newmusicnetwork.ca

Direct arti­cle link: FORUM 2014 in Cal­gary, Alberta
15th edi­tion CNMN Bul­letin — Win­ter 2013

Louise Camp­bell

I rep­re­sent­ed the CNMN at the annu­al meet­ing of the Nation­al Arts Ser­vice Orga­ni­za­tion meet­ing held in Octo­ber 2012. This meet­ing acts as a ‘meta-net­work’: arts net­works from across the coun­try gath­er to bet­ter under­stand each other’s man­dates, share com­pe­ten­cies, iden­ti­fy issues, team up on projects, and brain­storm direc­tions and solu­tions for the future. The meet­ing was full of peo­ple rep­re­sent­ing orga­ni­za­tions ded­i­cat­ed to help­ing artists and orga­ni­za­tions do what they do, giv­ing an extra­or­di­nary rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the live­ly diver­si­ty of the Cana­di­an arts milieu. Hav­ing attend­ed the NASO meet­ing in 2010, the evo­lu­tion of the meta-net­work was clear: the buzz in the room was that of peo­ple not just meet­ing for the first time, but of on-going dis­cus­sions between peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions with things to talk about and projects under­way. One small exam­ple of the meta-net­work in action: CNMN is now in dis­cus­sion with the Asso­ci­a­tion of Cana­di­an Choral Com­mu­ni­ties to dis­trib­ute CNMN’s Cre­ative Music Resource list­ing to choirs across the coun­try, pro­vid­ing access to choir direc­tors and singers with lots of ideas for cre­ative music making.

The major com­mon­al­i­ty between the NASOs is that each engages in lob­by­ing gov­ern­ment and indus­try agen­cies in the inter­est of their mem­bers, and com­mu­ni­cates changes as they occur with­in these agen­cies to their mem­ber­ship. Coop­er­a­tion between NASOs lends far greater weight to lob­by­ing efforts, since the more cit­i­zens we rep­re­sent, the more elect­ed offi­cials take notice. The main top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion of the meet­ing was the Cana­da Coun­cil change agen­da and what this means for artists: more on that in the next arti­cle. At the end of the day, it was clear that we’re all nav­i­gat­ing the same waters, and work­ing togeth­er will help us all bet­ter weath­er some­times unpre­dictable seas.

Direct arti­cle link: Net­work­ing the Net­works: Nation­al Arts Ser­vice Orga­ni­za­tion (NASO) Meet­ing 2012
15th edi­tion CNMN Bul­letin — Win­ter 2013

Robert Sir­man, Direc­tor and CEO — Cana­da Council

Canada Council Change Agenda

by Louise Campbell

Much of the dis­cus­sion at the NASO meet­ing in Octo­ber 2012 cen­tered on the Cana­da Coun­cil Change Agen­da. As we all know, this change agen­da will have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the Cana­di­an arts com­mu­ni­ty. Coun­cil took great care to sit­u­ate the change agen­da with­in the glob­al con­text of accel­er­at­ed change, the cur­rent gov­ern­ment and the cur­rent Cana­di­an arts milieu. The ques­tion at all lev­els of gov­ern­ment is how to best serve the cit­i­zen­ry; Coun­cil is assess­ing how best to serve the cit­i­zen­ry through ful­fill­ing it’s man­date. Coun­cil invests in pro­fes­sion­al arts prac­tice. How best can the Cana­di­an cit­i­zen­ry be served through a pro­fes­sion­al arts prac­tice? Some of the major issues at play include pub­lic engage­ment, nation­al and inter­na­tion­al mar­ket access, equi­ty and Canada’s North.

What does this mean for the Canada Council?

Coun­cil wants an on-going dia­logue with the Cana­di­an arts com­mu­ni­ty as it pur­sues the change agen­da. This is being done through nation­al con­sul­ta­tions with advi­so­ry com­mit­tees through­out the 2012–13 sea­son, on-site con­sul­ta­tions held across Cana­da and use of webi­na­rs and social net­work­ing tools. The goal of this dia­logue is to learn where the arts com­mu­ni­ty is at in terms of the artis­tic prac­tice and the var­i­ous per­spec­tives on the change agen­da. Mod­i­fi­ca­tions will be made in response to and only after these con­ver­sa­tions take place.

Council’s under­stand­ing of their cur­rent posi­tion is that their fund­ing enve­lope is sta­bi­lized, mean­ing no cuts or growth in base fund­ing from GOC. In addi­tion to under­tak­ing a thor­ough assess­ment of the ever-evolv­ing arts prac­tices in Cana­da, Coun­cil is under­tak­ing a major self-assess­ment, mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant inter­nal changes to update and stream­line their own way of operating.

Cana­da Coun­cil direc­tor and CEO Robert Sir­man gave a per­son­al goal of want­i­ng to give artists more of a sense of con­trol over their own des­tiny. Ulti­mate­ly, Sir­man feels that what hap­pens in the arts com­mu­ni­ty fol­low­ing the change agen­da will deter­mine if the change agen­da has been successful.

What does this mean for music?

Music as a dis­ci­pline was cit­ed as being well posi­tioned in terms of the major issues, par­tic­u­lar­ly with regards to pub­lic engage­ment. Plac­ing pub­lic engage­ment as a pri­or­i­ty will aid Coun­cil in inter­nal GOC pol­i­tics, as it makes more clear the impor­tance and role of pub­lic fund­ing for the arts in serv­ing the Cana­di­an public.

Spe­cif­ic pro­grams under review include the Oper­at­ing fund­ing and Fly­ing Squad pro­grams. Nation­al and Inter­na­tion­al mar­ket access has received a larg­er fund­ing enve­lope for the 2012–13 season.

While not specif­i­cal­ly a part of the change agen­da, Coun­cil is under inter­nal pres­sure to strict­ly assess orga­ni­za­tion­al effi­ca­cy and respon­si­ble use of funds. Giv­en this pres­sure and the increas­ing com­pe­ti­tion for funds, it is impor­tant to respond to fund­ing guide­lines in a time­ly and appro­pri­ate manner.

Further Resources

Find more infor­ma­tion on the change agen­da on this page of the Cana­da Coun­cil web site, where you can down­load their PDF doc­u­ments, such as:

• Council’s cur­rent Strate­gic Plan (2011–2016) – direct link (PDF)
• Council’s Dis­cus­sion paper on Pub­lic Engage­ment in the Arts – direct link (PDF)

Read the Director’s mes­sage from Cana­da Council’s 11/12 Annu­al Report here.

Read Kather­ine Carleton’s take on the change agen­da here.

Direct arti­cle link: Cana­da Coun­cil Change Agenda
15th edi­tion CNMN Bul­letin — Win­ter 2013

Two big CHANGES AT FACTOR

by Tim Brady

Change #1

Three years ago, Cana­di­an Her­itage ter­mi­nat­ed the “Spe­cial­ized Sound Record­ing” grants pro­gram. At the time, Cana­di­an Her­itage min­is­ter James Moore said: “We already have pro­grams in place – turn to FACTOR and Musi­cac­tion” – just don’t ask the Cana­da Coun­cil for the Arts anymore.

Musi­cac­tion is FACTOR’s fran­coph­o­ne coun­ter­part. They already had some ini­tia­tives to help record new music, but FACTOR had almost nothing.

So we start­ed meet­ing with FACTOR’s pres­i­dent and staff in Toron­to and Mon­tre­al; we invit­ed their vice-pres­i­dent to our FORUM 2012; we met with MPs and the senior man­age­ment at Cana­di­an Her­itage; we orga­nized con­fer­ence calls, and so on.

Now, three years lat­er, FACTOR has added a “Specialized/Experimental” cat­e­go­ry to its struc­ture, and they will cre­ate a jury specif­i­cal­ly for this music. There isn’t more mon­ey for the records though, but at least the appli­ca­tion review process has been improved. Futher­more, FACTOR is inter­est­ed in spon­sor­ing the CNMN’s next edi­tion of FORUM, Cal­gary 2014. Rela­tions between our com­mu­ni­ty and FACTOR – a major grantor – have sig­nif­i­cant­ly improved.

They saw us as a seri­ous inter­locu­tor because we rep­re­sent THE WHOLE com­mu­ni­ty. I esti­mate the cost of adding 2 (cru­cial!) words on a form at 100 hours of work and $1,000 in trav­el expens­es. I see it as a vic­to­ry – a small one, but a vic­to­ry nonethe­less. So, it seems that the CNMN’s mis­sion – to make changes for the new music com­mu­ni­ty – is work­ing out on a con­crete level.

Change #2

FACTOR is chang­ing how it funds record­ings, and how sub­mis­sions are evaluated.

This is an even big­ger change.  These changes are pri­mar­i­ly in response to the very rapid death of the com­mer­cial music indus­try thanks to MP3s/iTunes/YOUTUBE (though our voic­es have had their effect on these issues as well).  It seems that all but the biggest acts (Justin Beiber and com­pa­ny) are los­ing mon­ey — even mid-sized rock and indie bands can’t sell records or make mon­ey the­ses days.  But this change will affect us, and pos­si­bly for the better.

- The appli­ca­tion process is being made all paper­less, much more user-friend­ly (mul­ti­ple users), and updateable.
— Unit Sales will no longer be the only way to get mon­ey for Tour­ing, Video and oth­er programs
— Mov­ing to an Artist Rat­ing, peer-assess­ment system
— Fund­ing will now be a sub­sidy (grant) – NOT a loan

Con­tact FACTOR for more infor­ma­tion. We strong­ly sug­gest that you also con­tact FACTOR to ask to be put on the “Specialized/Experimental” music jury list – vis­it this page for more information.

Direct arti­cle link: Two big CHANGES AT FACTOR
15th edi­tion CNMN Bul­letin — Win­ter 2013

Since Sep­tem­ber 2012, CNM­N’s mem­ber­ship has grown by 18 mem­bers. More mem­bers in our net­work means stronger rep­re­sen­ta­tion and con­nec­tion for our com­mu­ni­ty. We warm­ly wel­come all our new mem­bers, and we hope this marks the begin­ning of a long-last­ing and fruit­ful collaboration.

The new mem­bers are list­ed below, many of which have web sites for fur­ther infor­ma­tion. We also hope all our mem­bers get a chance to check each oth­er out – you can access a full list of mem­bers on our web site, view­able by cat­e­go­ry, region or name.

Who will be the next new member?

New Voting Members

New Supporting Members

Not a lot of activ­i­ty has hap­pened just yet on the Cana­di­an New Music Network’s Face­book page, but in efforts to build more oppor­tu­ni­ty for you (the mem­ber­ship) to con­nect with each oth­er, we high­ly encour­age you to “like” our page, and we high­ly wel­come you to post your announce­ments there:

https://www.facebook.com/CNMN.RCMN

We are pleased to wel­come The Cana­di­an Fed­er­a­tion of Music Teach­ers’ Asso­ci­a­tions (CFMTA) as one of CNMN’s newest members.

The CFMTA has two upcom­ing com­pe­ti­tions that could be of inter­est to you.

One is a Nation­al Essay Com­pe­ti­tion on any top­ic relat­ed to music teach­ing, ped­a­gogy, or per­for­mance prac­tice. Wouldn’t it be won­der­ful if they received many sub­mis­sions with a New Music inter­est? Dead­line: May 1, 2013.

The sec­ond com­pe­ti­tion, dead­line March 1, is a Call for Com­po­si­tions for per­for­mance dur­ing Cana­da Music Week. Novem­ber 17–23, 2013. There are three cat­e­gories: (1) piano solo grades 3–4, (2) piano solo grades 5–6, (3) junior choral work.

Feel free to con­tact Po Yeh at canadamusicweek@cfmta.org for questions.

Direct arti­cle link: Two Ini­tia­tives of the Cana­di­an Fed­er­a­tion of Music Teacher’s Asso­ci­a­tions (CFMTA)
15th edi­tion CNMN Bul­letin — Win­ter 2013