AGM 2023 Agenda & Reports

Sep­tem­ber 26, 2023 at 1 pm ET on Zoom

Zoom link will be pro­vid­ed the day of to pre­vent any hack­ing, and will be pub­lished in our newslet­ter.

To give your vote to some­one else, please fill in the proxy form.

Agenda

  1. Ver­i­fi­ca­tion of Quo­rum and open­ing of meeting
  2. Approve the Agen­da (vote)
  3. Approve min­utes from last AGM, of Octo­ber 6, 2022 (vote)
  4. Receive the President’s Report — Juli­et Palmer reviews the 2022–23 sea­son as CNMN president
  5. Receive the Com­mit­tee reports of the 2022–23 season
  6. Receive the Finan­cial State­ments for the year end­ed 30 June 2023
  7. Appoint the audi­tor for the finan­cial year 2023–24 (nom­i­na­tion and vote)
  8. Oth­er business
  9. Adjourn­ment

Reports

President’s Report

The work we do togeth­er plants us deep­er into our com­mu­ni­ties, build­ing resilience and strength for the chal­lenges ahead. Thanks to the tire­less efforts of the CNMN Board over this past year. We’ve wres­tled a new man­date into exis­tence and are prepar­ing to launch a new name (stay tuned!). We wel­comed five fan­tas­tic new board mem­bers — Lib­erté-Anne Lym­be­ri­ou, Mari­na Has­sel­berg, Eric Nor­mand, Jen­nifer Thiessen, and Chenoa Ander­son — and are already grate­ful for their con­tri­bu­tions of enthu­si­asm, crit­i­cal thought and cre­ative insights. We said farewell to Megu­mi Masa­ki, Lin­da Bouchard and An-Lau­rence Hig­gins this year. Thank you An-Lau­rence for your fresh ideas and per­spec­tive! Lin­da, it has been invalu­able to have your sup­port and crit­i­cal think­ing as we grow as an orga­ni­za­tion. Megu­mi, your wis­dom and ener­gy have been vital to our devel­op­ment, espe­cial­ly in our region­al part­ner­ships. And, last­ly, I speak for the whole board when I say that none of this would be pos­si­ble with­out our hard-work­ing and whip-smart staff. Thank you Ter­ri, Aurore, Louise, Kyran, Math­ieu and Jason for anoth­er year of ded­i­cat­ed work. What a fan­tas­tic team!

In the mid­dle of the win­ter I had the joy of join­ing a work­shop on cre­ative music and sound led by edu­ca­tors Doug Friesen and Kather­ine Fras­er. We lis­tened, learned, made sounds and shared ideas and sto­ries. We heard about Katherine’s stu­dents impro­vis­ing to the score the stream of the pass­ing cars out­side the win­dow: colours, sizes, and speeds prompt­ing a shift­ing sound­scape. Just one of many cap­ti­vat­ing approach­es to engag­ing stu­dents in the cre­ative pos­si­bil­i­ties of shared sound-mak­ing. Doug and Kather­ine devel­oped the PCM Hub Sec­tor Focus Guide for Edu­ca­tion: whether you’re an edu­ca­tor or not, the guide is inspir­ing for any­one look­ing to shake up their ideas about music and sound. Look­ing fur­ther ahead, Louise Camp­bell will be build­ing the library resources of the PCM Hub with guides focussed on health care, com­mu­ni­ty, and cor­rec­tion­al institutions

It’s pow­er­ful to gath­er in per­son and real­ize you’re not alone. That sense of sol­i­dar­i­ty and shared con­cern was pal­pa­ble in CNM­N’s region­al con­ver­sa­tions on sus­tain­able futures held this spring. From Hal­i­fax and Ottawa to Bran­don, Van­cou­ver and Mon­tre­al, par­tic­i­pants shared, lis­tened and found com­mon ground. While life may seem to have returned to nor­mal in many ways, the arts sec­tor is still recov­er­ing from the enor­mous impact of the past three years. We need col­lec­tive action to move us for­ward in new more sus­tain­able ways. 

I invite you to eaves­drop on snatch­es of those con­ver­sa­tions (see below). If you’re intrigued, curi­ous, wish you’d said it, dis­agree, or oth­er­wise want to engage, please join us online and in per­son in Feb­ru­ary 2024 at our nation­al gath­er­ing. Let’s dig deep­er together. 

Thanks for read­ing! Look­ing for­ward to meet­ing with you in Feb­ru­ary at Sus­tain­able Futures. 

Warm wish­es,

Juli­et

“Reduc­ing the need for tours and embrac­ing small-scale events can sig­nif­i­cant­ly cut car­bon emis­sions while enhanc­ing inclu­siv­i­ty with­out a pater­nal­is­tic approach.”

“Uni­ver­sal basic income is a key focus for nation­al arts orga­ni­za­tions, offer­ing artists the finan­cial secu­ri­ty to flour­ish cre­ative­ly and thrive men­tal­ly, ulti­mate­ly ben­e­fit­ing the wider world.”

“Local action and col­lab­o­ra­tion are essen­tial. We need to con­tin­ue these con­ver­sa­tions, share tools, and work togeth­er to make a difference.”

“I pre­fer ‘regen­er­a­tion’ over ‘sus­tain­abil­i­ty’ because it speaks to heal­ing the plan­et and peo­ple, offer­ing a more pro­found con­nec­tion and purpose.”

“Under­stand­ing our inter­de­pen­dence is cru­cial. I design my art in spaces where peo­ple’s expe­ri­ences map onto com­plex­i­ties. Those ‘steel-toed boots’ folks are fam­i­ly; we’re all relat­ed. They may not be ready for us, but we’re interconnected.”

“Growth at all costs is not the solu­tion; instead, we should focus on reach­ing the audi­ence region­al­ly and con­sol­i­dat­ing resources.”

“Artists have the pow­er to inspire hope and action through their music.”

 par­tic­i­pants in CNMN’s region­al con­ver­sa­tions on sus­tain­able futures

Sustainable Futures Regional Meetings

Report by Ter­ri Hron

Com­mit­tee mem­bers: ED, Juli­et Palmer, Nor­man Adams, Claude Schry­er, Tanya Kalmanovitch, Ellen Waterman

We have had five region­al meet­ings, all that were sched­uled until now.

In 2022–23, CNMN start­ed Sus­tain­able Futures, which will have a num­ber of projects, with Region­al Meet­ings. Above are some excerpts of par­tic­i­pant feed­back we col­lect­ed dur­ing these con­sul­ta­tions, which were aimed at under­stand­ing where the cre­ative music and sound com­mu­ni­ty are at in terms of sus­tain­abil­i­ty in light of the cli­mate emer­gency. Here is a list of meet­ings that took place:

Each meet­ing was quite dif­fer­ent, depend­ing on the par­tic­i­pants present. In Hal­i­fax, we lis­tened to a pre­sen­ta­tion by the direc­tor of Music Declares Emer­gency and dis­cussed the real­i­ties of small music production/presentation orga­ni­za­tions in less cen­tral areas of Cana­da. In Ottawa, we had many long-time activists and cul­tur­al orga­niz­ers in the room bring­ing a deep, expe­ri­ence-rich per­spec­tive. In Bran­don, there were quite a few com­peti­tors and their col­lab­o­rat­ing pianists, who pro­vid­ed per­spec­tives from those just start­ing out in their careers. Oth­er atten­dees who live and/or teach in Bran­don offered insights from what it is like for peo­ple out­side major cen­tres. In Van­cou­ver, we were joined by many artists work­ing in the city, who often have pieces that are influ­enced by or on envi­ron­men­tal top­ics. The con­ver­sa­tion high­light­ed how much has been done–also historically–by cre­ative music and sound artists to bring atten­tion to the cli­mate cri­sis and rela­tions with the land. In Mon­tre­al, we were offered pre­sen­ta­tions by the CALQ and the Con­seil québé­cois des événe­ments écore­spon­s­ables, who dis­cussed their cur­rent grant pro­grams to sup­port sus­tain­abil­i­ty. This was fol­lowed by a short shar­ing of con­cerns and ideas. Many of the par­tic­i­pants were Vivi­er mem­bers and so the role of umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tions such as le Vivi­er was also dis­cussed. Every­where, there was very vul­ner­a­ble and open sharing. 

We found out mid-May that we received our FACTOR fund­ing for this project, so three more meet­ings will be tak­ing place before the end of sum­mer 2024.

Find a full report, with anonymized tran­scrip­tions of par­tic­i­pant com­ments here. 

Communications & Membership 

Report by Aurore Blonde­lot
Com­mit­tee Mem­bers: ED, PR, Juli­et Palmer, Andrew Miller, Jen­nifer Thiessen

The 2022–2023 sea­son of the Cana­di­an New Music Net­work was marked by a return to face-to-face activities.

After two sea­sons of Con­ver­sa­tions broad­cast online, CNMN pre­sent­ed a series of region­al con­sul­ta­tions (in Hal­i­fax, Ottawa, Bran­don, Van­cou­ver and Mon­tre­al) around Sus­tain­able Futures – as a pre­am­ble to its next Nation­al Gath­er­ing on the same theme. The con­clu­sions of these Region­al Meet­ings were brought togeth­er in short descrip­tive reports, avail­able in a bilin­gual ver­sion on the CNMN web­site, and will sub­se­quent­ly be dis­sem­i­nat­ed in a con­densed man­ner on the CNMN social networks.

Con­tin­u­ing its activ­i­ties for the third con­sec­u­tive year, the Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry Cre­ative Music Hub ini­ti­at­ed its first work­shop in hybrid for­mat (online and in per­son), with the pre­sen­ta­tion of its new resource ‘Cre­ative Music in Edu­ca­tion’, at the Cen­ter of Cana­di­an music in Toron­to. This work­shop was pro­mot­ed in the CNMN newslet­ter and on social net­works and the video clips pre­sent­ed dur­ing the work­shop are avail­able for free access on the RCMN web­site and YouTube channel.

The PCM Hub also launched a new call for projects (tak­ing place in social and com­mu­ni­ty ser­vices) and the CNMN con­tin­ued its Con­neX­ions men­tor­ing pro­gram to sup­port artists in their musi­cal and sound cre­ation projects. All of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion cam­paigns and the result­ing projects and men­tor­ing were shared on CNMN social net­works with 2–3 pub­li­ca­tions per week and in bimonth­ly newsletters.

This year, CNMN con­tin­ued to pro­mote its new Pay What You Can mem­ber­ship mod­el and deployed a mar­ket­ing cam­paign to update mem­ber pro­files. Vot­ing mem­bers are always encour­aged to share their activ­i­ties to ampli­fy them on social media. To this end, and in con­nec­tion with the ques­tion of eco-respon­si­ble futures, CNMN notably pro­mot­ed the Con­scious Pod­cast of Sus­tain­able Futures com­mit­tee mem­ber , Claude Schry­er, as well as that of SCALE/LeSaut and Tar Sand Song­book by Tanya Kalmanovitch, guest pre­sen­ter of the next Nation­al Gathering.

To con­clude, the num­ber of sub­scribers to the CNMN mail­ing list remains con­stant, with a newslet­ter open­ing rate of around 50%. The num­ber of sub­scribers to the Face­book page and the X‑Twitter and Insta­gram accounts is still increas­ing slight­ly and the num­ber of inter­ac­tions with the con­tent of the pub­li­ca­tions is main­tained despite a reduced reach. In order to main­tain good vis­i­bil­i­ty, CNMN con­tin­ues to cre­ate dynam­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion con­tent, in par­tic­u­lar by devel­op­ing the video/reels for­mat, to con­tribute to the influ­ence of its var­i­ous activities.

 

Sustainable Futures National Gathering Planning

Report by Ter­ri Hron
Com­mit­tee mem­bers: ED, Juli­et Palmer, Andrew Miller, Lib­erté-Anne Lym­be­ri­ou, Joseph Glaser

The first meet­ing of this com­mit­tee took place in March, with two con­sul­tants — Yang Chen and Lind­say Dob­bin — to deter­mine how pro­gram­ming would take place for the Sus­tain­able Futures Nation­al Gath­er­ing. The con­sul­tants were brought in to speak to equi­ty and inclu­sion prac­tices, and we have adopt­ed their rec­om­men­da­tions (post­ing detailed infor­ma­tion about the selec­tion process, point­ing to our Equi­ty and Access Pol­i­cy and Action plan, pro­gram­ming more than 50% through the Open Call). 

While we were ini­tial­ly hop­ing to have the event in Novem­ber, in tan­dem with Music Declares Emer­gen­cy’s Sum­mit, we moved the dates to Feb­ru­ary 16–19, 2024 so as to be able to ben­e­fit from FACTOR fund­ing. To that end, we sub­mit­ted an appli­ca­tion to FACTOR for the Sep­tem­ber 15 dead­line for Col­lec­tive Ini­tia­tives. FACTOR has con­sis­tent­ly fund­ed our Nation­al Gatherings/FORUM in the past. 

Invi­ta­tion have been issued and accept­ed to Casey Koy­czan, Jes­si­ca McMann, Rory McLeod/Paolo Grif­fin, Tanya Kalmanovitch, the PCM Hub and Kat Esta­cio. There will be:

  • two con­certs, one for Open Call pro­pos­als and one carte blanche curat­ed by Kat Esta­cio for Toron­to-based artists.
  • two pan­els with pre­sen­ta­tions and mod­er­at­ed con­ver­sa­tions, one on Ecol­o­gy and one on Economy.
  • 3–5 work­shops
  • a facil­i­tat­ed presenter/arts orga­ni­za­tion round table
  • two impro­vi­sa­tion sessions
  • participatory/experiential par­tic­i­pant shar­ing and listening

The Open Call for Pro­pos­als is accept­ing sub­mis­sions until Sep­tem­ber 30. Select­ed par­tic­i­pants will have their trav­el and accom­mo­da­tions orga­nized and fund­ed by CNMN and receive a small fee. 

An access fund will be announced in Novem­ber to facilite par­tic­i­pa­tion for those who wish sim­ply to come to the Gath­er­ing, with finan­cial sup­port for trav­el, accom­mo­da­tions, child care, acces­si­bil­i­ty needs, etc. 

 

Mentorship 

Report by Helen Prid­more
Com­mit­tee: Nor­man Adams, Müge Büyükçe­len, Ter­ri Hron, Juli­et Palmer, Helen Pridmore

The com­mit­tee received eight Con­neX­ions Men­tor­ship pro­gram appli­ca­tions for the 2022–23 sea­son. The sub­mis­sions received were for devel­op­ment of com­po­si­tion­al work, learn­ing new tech­no­log­i­cal skills, out­reach pro­gram­ming (in care homes), or for per­son­al per­for­mance men­tor­ing.  We were dis­ap­point­ed that there were no sub­mis­sions from peo­ple in arts admin­is­tra­tion or oth­er, less “typ­i­cal” men­tor­ing areas of the cre­ative music com­mu­ni­ty.  How­ev­er, the sub­mis­sions received were strong.

The com­mit­tee received award­ed men­tor­ships to the fol­low­ing six peo­ple: Lau­ra Gillis (Toron­to) — men­tor Ruth Howard; Lance Mar­cus Samp­son (Hal­i­fax) — men­tor Michael Dono­van; Sarah Rossy (Mon­tréal) — men­tor Myr­i­am Bouch­er; There­sa Thor­dar­son (Win­nipeg) — men­tor Zohreh Ger­vais; Gabo Cham­pagne (Mon­tréal) — men­tor Marie-Annick Béliveau; and Thomas Gau­thi­er-Lang (Mon­tréal) — men­tor Noam Bier­stone. 

For the next round of appli­ca­tions, hap­pen­ing now, the Com­mit­tee dis­cussed some new ideas.  Some adjust­ments to the word­ing of the Con­neX­ions descrip­tion have been made, and fur­ther detail added, for clar­i­ty.  There had been a sug­ges­tion that men­tors and mentees could apply as teams, but the Com­mit­tee decid­ed to rec­om­mend against this:  as stat­ed in the project descrip­tion, “…the spir­it of the pro­gram is in cre­at­ing new connections”. 

 

Organizational Transformation

Report by Helen Prid­more
Com­mit­tee: ED, Juli­et Palmer, Helen Prid­more, Julie Richard, Jen­nifer Thiessen

This com­mit­tee began to meet in Feb. 2023. The aims of the com­mit­tee were to deter­mine the next steps for CNMN and the Board, includ­ing a new name, and a new mission/mandate.  It seems that CNMN is ready to move in a new direc­tion, some­thing dif­fer­ent from the CNMN goals cur­rent­ly in our mis­sion state­ment.  CNMN is mov­ing more in an activist direc­tion, seek­ing real change in how art works in soci­ety. The com­mit­tee dis­cussed key issues here, includ­ing a def­i­n­i­tion of “cre­ative music and sound” that can hold the net­work togeth­er; a need for sus­tain­ing artis­tic well-being, as well as com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment; and a desire for a net­work of shared learning. 

For the next few months the com­mit­tee met online and via email exchanges, and worked hard to craft the new ideas into a name and a mis­sion that can be sup­port­ed by CNMN mem­bers.  Ideas were shared at Board meet­ings and Board mem­bers assist­ed with editing.

After much delib­er­a­tion, the Com­mit­tee pro­pos­es the new name:

Réseau de cre­ation musi­cale et sonore / Cre­ative Music and Sound Network 

RMCS / CMSN

Ter­ri has reserved the domain names:

    • Creativemusicandsound.ca

    • Creationmusicaleetsonore.ca

The new Mis­sion State­ment can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zly5BBRrJKD2fy66BO_pmYGIJz5bQY4euGDSqs5G9So/edit

 

PCM Hub 

Report by Project Lead Louise Campbell

In 2019, CNMN received fund­ing through the Cana­da Coun­cil’s Dig­i­tal Strat­e­gy Fund to cre­ate an on-line Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry Cre­ative Music Hub. Par­tic­i­pa­to­ry cre­ative music is a vari­ety of prac­tices in which all peo­ple involved have active input into the process of cre­at­ing music. A facil­i­ta­tor may guide and par­tic­i­pate in the process, and deci­sion-mak­ing and author­ship is shared. The Hub is full of inspir­ing, inno­v­a­tive projects hail­ing from the fields of edu­ca­tion, health, com­mu­ni­ty, social ser­vices and incarceration.

The key achieve­ment of the 2022–23 sea­son was a suc­cess­ful Open Call for project with a focus on projects occur­ring in the sec­tor of Com­mu­ni­ty, and pos­i­tive response and vis­i­bil­i­ty gained at two major con­fer­ences in the area of Arts and Health and the peer-reviewed jour­nal Per­for­mance Mat­ters. Con­sul­tants have been con­tract­ed for Sec­tor Focus Resources in the areas of Rehab & Incar­cer­a­tion, Health and Com­mu­ni­ty, for deliv­ery of mate­ri­als in fall 2023.

Hub activ­i­ties in 2021–22 sea­son included:

  • 15 con­sul­tants hired to pro­vide expert advice 

  • Open Call with a focus on projects occur­ring in Community

  • 8 suc­cess­ful Open Call projects com­plet­ed and uploaded by Saman­tha Tai, jashen edwards & Patrick Mur­ray, Lau­ren Best, Frédérique Dro­let, Jen­nifer Lang, Kathy Kennedy, Shu­maila Hemani, and Shifra Coop­er (pend­ing)

  • Dis­sem­i­na­tion through
    • pre­sen­ta­tion at con­fer­ences includ­ing ACFAS Con­grès: Arts et réadap­ta­tion (keynote speech) and Music and Health Research Insti­tute Con­fer­ence (round­table ‘Social Pre­scrip­tion Mobi­liza­tion for Music Mak­ing and Men­tal Health’)

    • part­ner orgs such as Cana­di­an Net­work for Arts and Learn­ing etc

    • Beta test­ing to assess the func­tion­al­i­ty and con­tent of the Hub web­site, and sub­se­quent adjustments

For more infor­ma­tion, and to be part of the Hub, please con­tact Louise Camp­bell at mlouisecampbell@gmail.com.