In the spring of 2023, the Canadian New Music Network (CNMN) ran a series of regional consultations to find out what, how, and whether the creative music and sound community is thinking about sustainable futures for our practice. These meetings sometimes included a presentation, but were largely focused on gathering the responses of both individual artists and representatives from presenting and cultural organisations. CNMN’s goal with these meetings was twofold: to establish what would be most useful and suitable in terms of its next national event with a Sustainable Futures theme, and to determine what the community might need in terms of resources that CNMN could provide or help organize.
The following are short narrative reports of each meeting, with a very summarized account of what participants shared. For a substantial dive into the content, each summary is followed by lightly edited and anonymized transcriptions of participant comments.
Halifax meeting
Date: March 16, 2023
Location: The Music Room, 6181 Lady Hammond Rd, Halifax, NS B3K 2R9
Co-presenter: Scotia Festival of Music
The meeting was opened by CNMN board member and suddenlyListen director, Norm Adams, followed by a short presentation of the Sustainable Futures project and upcoming national gathering by CNMN ED Terri Hron. She also named SCALE/LeSaut’s three modes of engagement–Greening the Sector, Increasing Visibility, and Reauthoring the World–which CNMN is using to frame its activities and discussions around Sustainable Futures. She then introduced Kim Fry, director of the Canadian section of Music Declares Emergency.
Kim Fry shared her history as an activist and the event that led her to bring together a Canadian chapter of Music Declares Emergency, which was a concert to mark the 40th anniversary of the Amchitka concert that funded the maiden voyage of Greenpeace. She shared her vision for activist work: “What we need to do to create a society where we are not emitting large amounts of carbon is actually a beautiful world. It’s gardening more, it’s connecting with community more, it’s making more of your own food, it’s so many things that are actually a more beautiful world than the hyper-consumerist busy world of people feeling burnt out and working all the time and commuting for huge distances and disconnected from their families. So it isn’t that what’s being asked is a huge burden on most people. For most of the world, for most of the Global South, there’s the ability to actually raise their standard of living, it’s really only in for the wealthiest countries that we have to do a bit of adjustment. But I think that adjustment actually will strengthen community and make people fundamentally happier.” She reminded us that “climate is a huge feminist issue.” She also pointed out that within the publicly-funded creative music and sound community, we are lucky not to be as embedded within capitalism and therefore have more space to talk and think about these issues. Kim then brought us up to speed on what MDE has been doing, with its Climate Summit last October and the next one coming in November, as well as pointed us to other initiatives, such as Brian Eno’s Earth percent, which has not been integrated with SOCAN yet, but with some royalty-collection agencies, where artists can mark the earth as a co-writer, and the monies are then distributed by Earth percent to environmental causes.
The participants, which included local composers, performers, presenters and festival organizers then began to share their experiences and concerns. Issues that came up included:
- incentives for audience members to use green modes of transportation
- money to initiate incentives for audiences to use green transportation is needed. Where is this going to come from? Are funders thinking about this?
- small organizations are being asked to do a lot to curb their footprint, while the big emitters are less policed, as in society in general.
- llivestreams should continue with more support to integrate them into programming: increased accessibility and carbon footprint savings
- livestream offers remote work possibilities in high quality with artists/composers remotely. The Halifax meeting took place at The Music Room, which is a hall equipped for livestreaming that is used by local ensembles for remote collaborations as well as livestreaming concerts.
- a network of livestream venues would enable collaboration across the country and new modes of curation.
- longer and slower tours mean more time with artists and higher costs, which is not in line with funding allowances for per diems, etc. When are funding guidelines going to catch up? Does this mean there will be fewer projects funded? Where should we go to find the shortfall?
- disparity between actual costs for projects, especially with longer work periods and/or livestreaming, and no way to show this to funders.
- we need more meetings with funders in the room, “we all need to work on it together, all the parts of the whole”
“Our festival is in the winter. So you had mentioned people coming on bicycles, and walking and I thought, ‘Oh, my I can’t possibly get my audience do that’. But you know, we are pretty central and in Halifax, you could get people to consider walking instead of driving five blocks. And then, offering an award for the interesting way of getting to the festival, something like some incentive, as part of your promotional package, to just to get the word out, basically, it’s really just a way of getting the word out to people to consider the carbon footprint of just going to a concert. I think those are all the small steps we all have to take in our daily life.”
“Live streams would be my suggestion,even though they’re also consuming all this energy, but they have been immensely important, I think, for people like me, especially those who live in faraway places. I’ve been able to participate in events all over the globe because of this technology that COVID made possible.”
“We’re working with living composers, when we do a lot of back and forth with the composer, as we’re presenting as we’re getting ready to present the piece. We don’t have the budget to have the composer here. And you know, to your point about like making cross-Canada or international trips worth it, it’s a lot of work on top of a lot of money. It’s just not practical. But we’ve had composers from the UK, we’ve had composers up north, we’ve had from all over watching their work being presented”
“It’s an accessibility thing. Not just people who might not be able to go physically to concerts, but what about people who are living in places where they never have access to a concert. Suddenly, with organizations all across Canada, you could have a concert of different bits from different places that would be presented somewhere where there are no musicians, or maybe there’s just one ensemble, but they have a collaboration with other ensembles, and it allows us to be able to see things that are not physically present for us. But nobody says that we can’t organize events where people do gather, because I think there’s the gathering part of concerts that’s important. We can provide snacks, and maybe there are some musicians in the space, and then maybe you might be able to see something that’s happening across the country and be involved with those people. But we just don’t think about these things yet.”
“Pretty hard bullseye to hit: be environmentally conscious, come in under budget, make money and have a healthy audience.”
“I get angry because it’s being taken away, and it’s my lifeblood to go and sit in a theater: that’s my happiest place in the world. And that is being taken away. And I see the future. It’s taken away, because of what my generation, I suppose, has done to the world.”
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OTTAWA MEETING
Date: March 29, 2023
Location: Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre, 355 Cooper St, Ottawa, ON K2P 0G8
Co-presenter: Research Centre for Music, Sound and Society in Canada
For the Ottawa meeting, CNMN partnered with Dr. Ellen Waterman at the Research Centre for Music, Sound and Society in Canada (MSSC) in organizing a two-day invitation for Tanya Kalmanovitch and her Tar Sands Songbook. On March 28, MSSC hosted Listening Café 2: Listening to the Climate Emergency through The Tar Sands Songbook, where Tanya performed the songbook with pianist Andrew Boudreau, and thereafter they, along with dramaturg Katie Pearl, offered the audience a chance to respond and ask questions.
This powerful performance informed the consultation the next morning, which gathered members of Ottawa’s diverse music community. Once again, a mix of individual artists, educators, and musicians, as well as cultural workers from local and national music and arts organizations in Ottawa were present. These included representatives from Improvising & Experimental Music of Ottawa and Outwards (IMOO), Jazz Festivals Canada Network, Multicultural Arts in Schools and Communities (MASC), the National Arts Centre, Ottawa Chamberfest, the Ottawa Jazz Festival,Propeller Dance, Qu’ART the Ottawa Queer Arts Collective, and SCALE-LeSAUT (Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency/Leadership sectoriel des arts sur l’urgence de la transition écologique). We opened the circle with fulsome presentations and a short description of what sustainability meant to each participant and then moved towards a “popcorn-style” discussion of the complex issues guided by the questions we had sent ahead which included: How can music organizations respond to the climate emergency and its social impacts? How are people talking about the climate, emergency and music and sound? How are language and policy shifting around questions of sustainability? What resources might benefit music and arts organizations to engage with climate change? And how can arts organizations help to move conversations forward?
Key points of discussion included:
- Rural/Urban Divides: Rural Strategies and Insights
- Funding, Access, and Universal Basic Income
- Language and Co-option: The Words We Use
- Pedagogical Strategies of Engagement: Grief, Empathy, Survival and Love
- Conflict and Relationships: Addressing Polarization and Binary Thinking
- Arts and Systemic Change: Different Ways of Being and Doing
- Community Engaged Tools, Climate and Arts
- Cultivating Relationships with Each Other and the Environment
- Logistics of Touring and Performance with a Climate Consciousness
- The Power of the Local and Local Action
There were many people present for whom activism and climate have been long-standing issues, and so the conversation ran deep and benefited from that broad range of experience.
MSSC assistant Gale Franklin did a wonderful job of transcribing and organizing what the participants shared under a number of topics.
Rural/Urban Divides: Rural Strategies and Insights
“I would suggest looking to leadership, from people in smaller markets and smaller orgs, who are working in extraction, heavy towns, and to see how people in those organizations, that can be people outside of music, see how they’re thinking about social relationships between their board, their fundraisers, their donors, their audiences.”
“I’m not an urban practitioner anymore. But as people who work in an urban context, it is important to also remember the rest of the country, that has a remarkable amount of political power, and a remarkable amount of voice. And in many cases it sounds different than the urban context, and so I have never been more aware of that than I have been in the last year.”
“I think we’re really missing models of rural. I listen to the CBC, and it’s all very urban, it’s people from cities talking about city issues. And where are the rural voices? I mean we need to hear those voices. And how get them out there? Because the hyper urban environmental experience is not something that connects with everybody, and nor should it be.”
“If you take what you know as being in from the depth of canonic, European art music centralist practice, you still know from that, what it is to work in memory, what it is to work in history, what is to work in empathy… But we know something of each other without needing to know language. So even in the depths of that field, we have capacity to be in relationship. So anyway, I guess I was just thinking like, who are we not hearing? Who do we not see when we say music? Whose music? Do we actually mean? And whose music do we not mean? And as music organizations, there’s something very extractive, I think, about the way that arts organizations, people who are funded by arts organizations, talk about doing community work, they talk about “our” partnerships, “our” communities, “our” Indigenous partners.”
Funding, Access, and Universal Basic Income
“Unfortunately, the climate crisis does threaten a lot of the work that has gone into making our world more accessible… [Our work] has an impact that are working to shifting people’s focus and bringing attention to accessibility issues, and accessibility lens to the climate crisis.”
“I just wanted to share an example of a project that I took part in which was released a data bag, song cycle with the no borders, arts, group choir, and during COVID. Because people couldn’t meet in person, they were meeting online, so practicing these choirs through Zoom over the internet. And what’s interesting about that is a new inclusivity where people could participate, who, even if they’re local might not, who have mobility issues, or were not able to otherwise participate were suddenly included. I think it created a community, a larger community through that choir, extended choir practice over Zoom. That was, in many aspects freeing and more inclusive. And that community lasted; those connections that people made lasted longer than the performance, in the end.”
I noticed we haven’t really talked about money. And we’ve talked a lot about accessibility, rural, urban, and that all intersects with economics, too. And I mean, I think how do we, how do we speak to that?”
“I would love to be able to make a living without leaving home, without having to go on tour. And I think that would be the biggest drop to my carbon emissions. And I think also for audiences, a lot of the “no one turned away for lack of funds” thing. Having small scale events and better partnering with local groups that are smaller, I think is really, really important. And not as a paternal ‘here you go.’”
“I am on the board of the Independent Media Arts Alliance of Canada, which is the National Organization of many art centers. So, it’s a national body, working with media artists across the country. And one of the biggest things that we’ve identified is universal basic income. And we actually have a UBI committee now that completely works on that. We actually have a national artists commission, where we have commissioners and artists across disciplines, but some across the country testify for three solid days, in regards to the issue of universal basic income… But that, as a national organization, is one of the key things that that we keep hammering away at. And I have conversations with people at Canada Council who are in those strategic planning departments, so not the grantors. And we’ve been floating the idea that, rather than having people compete for grants for projects, you need to start changing the system. And you need to actually allow people who are artists and working as artists to have an income that they can live on. So, one thing that we saw when we all got CERB… when I was director of a Media Arts Center in Ottawa, media artists are a whole bunch of very neurodivergent people who have their average income in Ottawa at $15,000 a year. These are people who live in crisis every single day, when they got $2,000 in the bank every month, their mental health was unbelievable. People actually becoming creative rather than having to survive. So, I think for all national organizations in the arts, this is a huge, important issue. While I’m supporting that in the wider world, too. I mean, our audiences, the people who go to shows, people don’t go to shows because they don’t have time. I mean, if people can be relaxed, and have a living that makes them more open to different ideas, makes them more open to different experiences. That’s sort of the biggest thing. So, I think you know, as a national organization from strike a committee, connect with the other national organizations, organizations, and then to get a critical mass.”
“I was really glad to hear the conversations [around sustainability] in Canada Council is happening. And something we can do is [recognize] that we are all just people. And these organizations that sometimes seem like they’re big organizations are still just people. And the more we can talk to people, the more likelihood there is of change, right? Because funding is a huge, huge thing. And it’s bottomed out. And I know a lot of the funding that comes to a lot of board arts organizations is, for example, tourism based. And that’s brutal, but it’s a reality that we have to deal with. So, it may be if the funding and that’s commercial funding, and if that could be actually put into more just like into Canada Council, or more funneled in ways where you don’t have to produce more numbers, bigger numbers in growth, as organizations, that would be fantastic. That would change a lot of things.”
Language and Co-option: The Words We Use
“Because I also feel like moving away from the word sustainable or sustainability, it has so many different applications, and it can be so easily construed, you know, financial sustainability. I think I have two main issues with that word. One is that it’s just too broad and can be misinterpreted or it can be interpreted in so many different ways that it is not useful. And secondly, it has this implication of like things staying the same, which is also really problematic. I love the word … regenerate, regenerative, or regeneration, which is feeling for me personally, is feeling like much more. Like somebody else also mentioned.… stewardship, regeneration, like these are the values that I want to move forward with. And I think, to me, regeneration speaks about healing, but healing the planet, about healing people. And so, so I really liked that language.”
“To me, regeneration is about recognizing that [creating a sense of belonging] looks different in different communities. And I think that one of our most important challenges, as artists and as arts organizations, is to find ways to create a sense of belonging for different communities, and that’s going to again, look very different for different communities, but to create that sense of belonging in a a regenerative future, or regenerative futures in the plural. And, you know, going in that direction, as opposed to the sort of dualism that often surrounds this issue, so that we’re actually creating energy, rather than having people shut down.”
“As I look around the world, you know, my trans friends, whose life expectancy in Canada is 32 years, are really at a point where sustainability doesn’t cut it anymore, as demonstrated last night at the Ottawa school board meeting around that, I mean, we’re right back.”
“I wanted to offer that whatever word you choose, we will find a way to turn it into something that is pallid and meaningless. So, what to do about that is to ask ourselves about what are the habits of thinking, and the habits of relating and the habits of action, that allow us to just sort of pawn off the things we should be doing differently on a word.”
“Words get co-opted … and where it’s getting words to change meaning and I think what we really have to hold on to is the meaning that we have and the way that we interact with those words. I mean, you look at words like “woke” and what has happened in the last number of years. And what it means now to most people, not all of us, is very different from what it meant a few just even a few years ago. And so, I mean, I think the question of the wording is important, but I think part of it is we have to be super clear about what it means to us.”
“Now my feeling about regenerative though the idea of regeneration is this, it suggests that it’s putting forward something that was already was reached. That’s the re- argument. Which is, you know, like the whole notion of the climate emergency, like it’s an emergency for first world colonial perspective, but for many Indigenous communities, it’s just a continuation of something that’s been happening.”
“But I think the “emergency” thing, to me links back to that sort of more of a “first world” definition. It’s not as inclusive. For my own self, the challenge has been to try and question my patterns of dominant thinking. And it’s about identifying what those are, like, just in a, like an awareness, trying to find out what are those things? I don’t have sort of solutions for going forward, because I’m still in that finding out phase.”
“The discussion around emergency and its problematics, so that word is used to draw attention to the ways in which epistemology, knowledges around crisis are used to justify all kinds of acts of criminality. So, because it’s an “emergency,” we have to cut down these trees, right? Yeah, because it’s an emergency. This needs to happen so that the actors and actions taken in a space of crisis, it’s often used as cover. But I think we could just as wisely flip that. And think about using a space of crisis as a site that’s generative of wisdom.”
“Thinking about language, I wrote down here, there’s language that feels good. And there’s language that just right. And then, personally, I’ve been reading a lot about these things, and talking to people and stuff. And my own thinking is a term that makes more sense to me now is survivability, which is beyond one type of resilience. But, but that’s personal, you know, I dip into the Doomist world, because it’s so discouraging to look at the facts. But it feels more comfortable to be in a word or a concept that feels right, that feels like where we’re at where we’re really at. So, I put a spectrum and I said, you know, there’s mitigation to a lot of people are working on now they’re trying to reduce the footprint in any effort is worthwhile, we need to slow down the damage. And then there’s adaptability, that’s there are inevitable changes that are coming, we have to adapt, we have to anticipate climate, refugee waves, all those things. But really, what’s going to happen, unfortunately, is that we will get into a period where only certain of our species will survive what’s coming. And that’s not very comfortable thing to think about. And there’s not a lot you can do about it. Because you want to be working on mitigation and adaptation. And then this regeneration, which is a more hopeful space, but I think it’s going to come after this period of survivability. Inevitably, at least unless things change dramatically, that’s where we’re going. All of us all our collective behavior. So how does that help art? Well, maybe it doesn’t. But it helps me, because it helps me to figure out the language that makes sense in wherever I put my energies. So, I think we all have to think through what where we’re at and what constant the words and so forth. But what do they mean? How do they feel to where we want put our energy?”
Pedagogical Strategies of Engagement: Grief, Empathy, Survival and Love
“I think that if you want someone to protect something, you need to help them love it. What we do is, we combine poetry, poetic prose and music, and highlight what is very interesting about musically, we name birds, we name lichens, we do all those kinds of things and the work is really an expectation. Go and look at nature, go and find your own relationship to spend time, stretch time. You know, don’t just walk past the river, down to the edge, and start picking out, you know, what’s there, try to understand it. And I think that that’s the key to helping people find the relationship to nature.”
“I feel that during since the pandemic, people don’t care, individual people are in survival mode. I think people’s empathy has just run out because people are on this survivalist mode. They have eco grief. Teaching people how to love and how to take time, it’s a real challenge.”
“Through my work, both as a composer and performing artist and themes that I’ve been experimenting with are these themes of belonging and using music as a reflective tool. And so, as someone who goes into schools and communities, I feel like my part of my role is being a space holder, for people to ask these valuable questions. And so, I’m really excited to be here to talk about what is it look like for us to take valuable steps forward and giving people tools to say, what does sustainability look like in our communities? How do we move forward not just to talk about it, but to really concretely have these tangible steps of engaging with community in this way.”
“[We have] this piece … And it’s about the Rideau River, what’s in the river, and what you can observe, how you relate to it, from the mussels that have been torn apart by the raccoons to the graffiti on the cement around them. And before our concert, we did a lot of outreach to groups who, not just the music community, but also to people who are in canoe clubs and river and water protection institutions and things like that, the municipal councilors, on all the wards along the river. And we ended up with an audience which contained all kinds of people I’d never seen before at a concert. And I thought, this is interesting, these guys do not look like a typical audience, I think we have some success in bringing people in, to hear something different. And to engage with the ideas in, in the music and in the poetry… And so, there’s room for reaching people.”
“You said something right at the beginning that has been resonating with me the whole time: walk the land and pay attention to the ordinary.”
Conflict and Relationships: Addressing Polarization and Binary Thinking
“I’m interested in how is it that we live today? And how do we stand in sight of destruction and possibility? In terms of the idea of political polarization, for whatever moment we find ourselves its roots are continuous and deep. This is not something that just happened. It never went away. And so also, I think solutions, lessons for survival and resistance are also deep and continuous and everywhere around us. I hate when people just say like, let’s just be solutions focused, because I’m like, ‘No, we really need to talk about the problem for a minute.’ But I do like the question of how it is that we stand both inside of distraction and possibilities.”
“Just wanted to offer that there’s a a tension in the activist movement, of knowing, absolutely, without a doubt, who’s side you are on, and the importance of that clarity, that moral clarity against what it takes to dismantle the post-truth, polarization discourse, of understanding our interdependence. So, I think in this interviewer yesterday asked me, will I do my piece along the railway, or if I want to do it and like festivals and concert halls. I didn’t so much design it to be done in institutionalized art producing spaces, but I wanted to do it in spaces where people’s lived experience more directly maps onto the complexities that I feel in my own life. So that meant along pipeline, the truck rail routes that carry Alberta Oil into the global market. And he was like, ‘well, what are you going to do with this piece, and what if there’s some guy out there with steel toed boots, he’s driven his giant truck up and like, he’s going to tell you…’ And I’m like, well, those guys are my cousins, and my brothers and my uncles. And they are yours, too. Which seemed, you know, a preposterous thing to say to somebody, right? But you can unlock it by understanding that we are already all in this, and we are already related. And our fates are always dynamically interlinked, whether or not they can see it, it could just be that they’re just not ready for us, that’s what I like to think: that you’re just not ready for me. The other thing I was thinking about in terms of the struggles for the arts, and arts organizations, they are dominated by structures of funding and structures of support that are dynamically and directly linked to the very same structures that are dismantling our right to access to the land to clear water to a future, whole earth. And they’re in intimate relationships with fossil fuel industries, extraction industries.”
“As I’m listening, the thing that resonates is how important it is that we all actually are okay with ourselves because it’s so hard to live with integrity. You would dismantle the entire thing and just start from scratch, but we can’t really do that. If we can just be open to talking about it and realize like [a participant] was saying, I have Republican people in my family and it’s okay! It is important to be okay with everybody and be okay with yourself and, and to do your best within that capacity.”
“There are just so many points of view, that it’s really hard to sort it all out and decide what’s right. And even myself as an individual, I need a bigger computer, because I’m working on more projects. I’ve been out to Banff for residencies of where the facilities are sponsored, the signs are up on the wall, by an oil organization. So, it’s just a very stressful time to be in and work through all these things. So, it’s really good to have these conversations and try to sort things out.”
“What I gather is that there’s a lot of irony. We have to comply with these systems in order to do the work that sometimes goes against the grain. Take an example just from within [a dance organization], we focus on plain language to make either audio description or to make work or anything that we put out a bit more accessible to folks who are neurodivergent, who don’t perceive things the same way that everybody else would. And yet, in order to achieve the funding to make that happen, we have to write this whole grant application, which is all this elaborate language that has nothing to do with the actual end result. So that’s just one irony. If I can just talk about the accessibility of the pandemic, it was great, we were able to reach a lot more people while not having a footprint ourselves, but then that’s based on the assumption that people have access to the technology in order for these things to happen. So, I think that action response to bias is to call out the irony, not to be afraid to say, ‘Hey, here’s this dichotomy.’ And maybe we do put on a festival and say, ‘guess what, this is the festival and we are the problem.’ I think it’d be quite challenging to see and to be confronted with that as an audience member, but also as local communities, and yet to see what are the positive things that can emerge from the urgency?”
Arts and Systemic Change: Different Ways of Being and Doing
“I strongly feel nothing will change, unless we change the system. And I think the arts community is an incredible example of how this system can be different. Because I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, I’m looking around the room, none of us are here to become rich, to amass assets, to control supply chains, and things like that. Our mode of living is already different from the system and outside of the system, artists generally have been marginalized as a group and as a demographic for eons. So, we actually have an incredible amount of knowledge that we can bring to system change. And I think that it is, requires artists as a critical mass to stand up and say, we are living a different system. So t the arts have played a huge role in the fight against AIDS, arts have played a huge role in civil rights. We actually know how to mobilize people, and we know how to work on mind shift within the general public. So, I think we have huge things to bring to this to this battle that is ahead of us.”
“I think that music or the arts can help people to recognize that it is that big an issue. And it’s really hard for people to recognize that their what they think is normal is actually a thing, that there are different ways of looking at the world. And I really believe that challenging our Western colonial perceptions is what’s required to affect change. I believe that decolonizing and looking at the environment are linked. I liked the words about listening and change. It’s about listening, listening differently.”
“Alternative musicians present different models of being just from the fact that we’re not in the popular cultural world. Because popular culture is driven through with capitalist messaging. And, you know, like, if we can create a space and a community, as musicians, also with audiences, with people, and do it in a way that, that presents different ways of being, I think that’s the best thing we can possibly do. It it’s hard to find space to be different. And it’s always been that way… How do we go about carving spaces and inviting people into them that are healthier than what we’ve got, even if they’re imperfect? Because it’s really, really hard to live an intact life of integrity. And in our system, some would say impossible.”
“It would be very cool if the arts took the lead in admitting exactly what their carbon footprint was, you know, and hold it up against other organizations. Who is going to be the first Arts Board festival to say, we unnecessarily flew in 20 people because that’s how we work is?”
“One of the one of the thought experiments that I’ve done in class, it’s been really useful for people is imagining that the price of oil goes up to $100 a liter, right. And so, it’s actually no longer feasible not just to tour but it’s actually not feasible to get your reeds from Amazon. Right. None of this is affordable. None of this is accessible and reachable. So how then do we music? Right. So then to understand, for example, that we must divest of our capitalistic colonialist practices, we must understand, for example, that we don’t know animals and plants as musicians and friends. I had a student in my class who actually was so blown away by this. He grew up in New Jersey, Korean immigrant family, and he’s clarinetist. And he went on to try to order a bamboo plant on Amazon and tried to grow his own cane. He did not know how long it takes for the plant to mature. He has no knowledge, this is not part of his experience. And he thought he could have it done as a final project for the class by the semester. And it said he ended up documenting the process and his process of discovering what he didn’t know but discovering the admission of what he doesn’t know, was his relationship to the plant his relationship to the cane, his relationship to his identity to what he was studying as musician, and was in the in the effect… But I think it was pretty liberatory because no longer did he have to accept that his value as a musician came from a system that was determined to destroy him. Right? So, this might mean you do things like maybe we make instruments out of like discarded, like paper towel tubes, or maybe we just sing together, maybe we have to think much more creatively, and much more empathically about who it is we wish to make music with.”
Community Engaged Tools, Climate and Arts
“I was going to bring up Creative Green Tools … And it is interesting, because it’s not a perfect tool, but it’s something. And it’s interesting, because I now work in a rural context, and when I look at the questions, a lot of it doesn’t apply to us, in so many ways. Iit’s really meant for an urban context around festivals and institutions. I think it’s only a matter of time before it’s adopted by quite a few of the Arts Councils, so, we may all have to familiarize ourselves with it soon. And, you know, again, it may not be a perfect tool, but it’s taking a step. But we’ve started to look for other tools and they may not be within the arts. For instance, one of the things that we’re most involved with is the Thompson Okanagan Tourism Association’s Biosphere Sustainability Commitment, which is, again, not a perfect tool, but it’s a way for us to actually access some really valuable capacity building and training to move us forward. And that’s through a tourism organization, it’s not through an arts organization. And so, some other networks are maybe a little further along than we are, and I think we need not be shy about reaching out or looking for those things that are adjacent or that speak to us but aren’t necessarily fully tailored to us.”
“In Imago: King of Chlorophyll, I was a musician in the ensemble, but the piece took place outside. And it was this interesting intersect between music and climate. The composer is an arborist, but also a composer and musician. And so, we were there, but then there’s the Outdoor School and the kids were there with their machetes, helping to clear the area. And then as a musician, I was there looking at Kim, who is in the trees doing this arbor informed dance. But it was a really interesting intersection, because before the audience members came to see the piece, they got to meet the local farmers and to talk about what we grow, this and how we grow it. And before they experienced the art piece, and I feel like there was an intersect of many different communities. And for me, as an artist, that was an example of moving forward and talking about the land that we’re on, and in really beautiful ways.”
Cultivating Relationships with Each Other and the Environment
“And just offer one little tidbit, which is that more lives are saved in natural disasters, and natural disasters, climate, or whatever, more lives are saved by ordinary people than by first responders or by government policies. So, it’s those relationships that save us to one another. And those relationships are what we should identify and defend.”
“I’m hearing so much that’s just about humans. It’s not about the arts. And I’m not extremely surprised by that, but at the same time, it’s an interesting situation that this group of people comes together based on their artistic practice or their relationship to an artistic purpose and ends up discussing humanity and crises or for lack of a better word, emerging issues that we’re seeing, from very different perspectives.”
Logistics of Touring and Performance with a Climate Consciousness
“I thought about that, as a musician, when honestly, I am on a grant funded tour, going from a gig that maybe wasn’t all that well publicized, and 15 people show up. The reality is this is such a waste of resource and footprint, but the fact is that in what we’re doing, it’s really important to bring people together. So, I still think there’s sort of viability within that.”
“One of the other things that I was thinking about with in terms of jazz festivals in Canada, that is actually a a cool thing, is we have consciously tried to work out routing. When somebody’s offered these gigs, they’re important for people’s careers. And if you do have that crazy touring, that routing, you’ll take it, so it is our responsibility to try go, ‘Hey, Calgary, do you mind if we actually just switch dates, like little things like that, to make this more viable for everyone?’”
“It’s the impossibility of a situation that we’re in where we’re having to be two worlds. So, like you say, you have to fly to do the gig because you need the gig. You fly to a conference because you need committed communication, you need face to face interaction. You need to prepare conversation. So, as we’re constantly trapped in these sort of like cycles of saying, “Am I doing the right thing? Is this okay?” And I think what I’m laughing at is sort of the Kafka-esque sort of absurdity of this moment where we’re trying to morally reason with ourselves inside a system that would just be happier to keep us spinning around.”
“My point is, pick your battles. There are art forms that are extremely powerful. They are the things that can transform people’s psyche, and empathy and all that. So, I think we have to do everything we can to mitigate that to continue our work, because what we need to do is transition out of this mad system that we live in. And it’s not going to be easy. In fact, it’s probably impossible. But we are going to have to move forward.”
“You know who the biggest footprint of big music festivals is? People coming to the music festivals, not the people performing. It’s everybody traveling to the festival.”
“To me, this still comes back, and I totally agree with you about this irony of the cycle, to the idea of what success is. The word success, of course, has many issues too. But we hear that you have to go to Montreal, why do you have to go to Montreal? Because the system says that, that’s something that means that you “made it.” And in a system where you are having to make it to get the funding, you have to go to the festival and to go to the festival, you have to have the funding. And for the festival to present you, you have to have an audience base. And for the audience base to be created, you have to have funding. And it’s this constant cycle. So to me, it’s about narratives, and if a different story is told, and you can relate to that story, it validates something for you as an individual, it validates something that’s community. And even hearing these ideas of 13 people showing up to a concert, why is that a problem? It doesn’t have to be a problem. There is a narrative around it for both the artist who’s presenting and also for the audience member who shows up and thinks, why am I here, if there are only 13 people?”
The Power of the Local and Local Action
“To answer your question, what can CNMN and other organizations do, last week in Florida there was a Parks Canada person who was there because of ecology, and he said, “we really need to live in the local.” You know, it just seems like an obvious thing, right? So, I think we need an Ottawa council, right, even though I worked at the Canada Council for a long time. So, I think we should continue these conversations here in one way or another, and bring more people in circles, tell stories. Yes, good stories. And but also share tools. Now there are some things that how these things work, bring somebody in from Green Tools here, here in Ottawa we care. We want to move things forward. We are aware of the fact and it makes me feel good just to think that we would work together, and we don’t have to do it but I think we all want to, I think we just don’t know how, and how is not hard.”
“I really love this, and I need this more. Because I do feel that on a day-to-day basis, I’m in a bit of a survivability mode like [only focusing on] economic sustainability. That’s very much what our board is talking about much more than climate, you know, or any of the other issues, right. So, the more that we do things like this, the more I’ll walk away with that going directly to back to the office, and it’s on the top of my mind, right, and we can act.”
Brandon Meeting
Date: April 21, 2023
Location: Queen Elizabeth II Music Building, Brandon, MB R7B 1L6
Co-presenter: Eckhardt-Grammaté National Music Competition
The meeting in Brandon was opened with a land acknowledgement by the E‑Gré competition director Megumi Masaki, who is also a CNMN board member. This was again followed by a short presentation of the Sustainable Futures project and upcoming national gathering by CNMN ED Terri Hron. She again referred to SCALE/LeSaut’s three modes of engagement and gave a short description of the previous two events. Thereafter, we encouraged participants in the circle to introduce themselves and give us their thoughts about how sustainability intersects with their artistic practice and life.
Although many of the participants at this meeting were there as competitors or collaborating artists, we were touched by how generous they were in their responses, and it was special to have so many perspectives from younger artists at the beginning of their careers. Topics that came up included:
- the hidden carbon footprint of online activities and sites.
- the intensity of the climate emergency for younger people
- insufficient funding for sustainability measure on top of everything else–where is the budget going to come from
- life choices and actions are as/more important than art choices
- most sustainability measures and policies are designed for urban rather than rural realities
- have we forgotten all the lessons learned from the COVID slowdown?
- should early career artists be expected to turn down gigs that require travel, when they are just trying to build their careers? What is fair in this sense?
- local is what is available. Not everything needs to happen everywhere.
- we need to change our mindset and values around local talent and audience numbers
“When we talk about sustainability, and in relation to the environment, particularly, yes, we are feeling the force field of our government agencies that fund us, and they are producing questions like, Okay, can you tell us about your environmental audit. And so we’ve done a few things internally as an organization. And surprisingly, I didn’t even think or I didn’t understand that websites even have a environmental footprint. And that’s when I really started to take action, because I saw how, in a sense, it was deemed a very dirty site, and not from the content, but just from the point of view that it has an impact.”
“When you hear the youth talk about the environmental impact on their lives, and what they feel for the future, that’s when you really move to do something, and seeing it expressed through their art and shared publicly means that, if I can’t do enough for myself, I need to do something so that there is a future for these young people.”
“When I hear the word sustainable, every arts worker just shrivels, because there is not enough funding for us to be to continue on that journey. And as we mentor young people into these roles are something has to shift, the energy has to shift, we have to work differently, we have to think differently. And, this is really becoming a psychological burden, because I’m having to support people, but also recognizing the money is diminishing, any way that we can advocate for the artistic space”
“In terms of sustainability, the first thing that comes to mind for me is, I grew up on an organic farm where my dad was very involved with lots of different organizations and projects about like, farm sustainability, and how to keep those going while giving back to the land so that we’re not depleting from it. But also, making life choices and various other things. So I come at it pretty much from that perspective, of having that personal connection of being out in the wide open being on the land, taking care of the animals and the crops and things. So in terms of how that intersects with, with music, and with what I do on that side, there’s certainly there hasn’t been a lot of intersection for me just yet. However, there are many things that we can do more moving forward and I’m curious to explore more of those things, but I just don’t have a lot of connection again.”
“Something that’s been at the top of the mind lately, both in terms of artistic sustainability and environmental sustainability is because I grew up in a rural area. And I’ve moved and lived in a lot of the Canada cities, I’ve just realized that a lot of the solutions that make sense in the GTA, or in other cities are not always available in rural Saskatchewan, and just trying to figure out how we can include the entire country in these conversations, and not just think of what people in Toronto can do to help, I think it’s wonderful, this conversations happening here.”
“As a creator, as far as sustainability, one thing I think about quite a bit seems to be pretty tied to community engagement. And because I’m a musician, the idea of music has some sort of communicative medium. So I am thinking about what sort of information music is potentially actually good at conveying and what is and what is relevant within that.”
“I think those of us who aren’t musicians or artists will be lost. Because there’s nothing better than going to a concert or hearing musicians, looking at art and it changes your perspective, tends to give you hope, involves an aesthetic sense and so very important to me.”
“I was thinking, okay, when the snow is gone, I’m going to pick up the garbage. Sometimes I walk with my grandkids, I’ll take a garbage bag and just pick up the garbage. It’s really hard to figure out what to do. But I’m thinking okay, that’s one thing I can do.”
“For me right now, there’s massive chaos in my head. When I think that I know what I’m doing and contributing to doing something positive. I turn the corner and face more questions and more anxiety and even more questions. I’m finding that the more I do, the more I’m confused. And that could partly also be the relationship that I have with the land.”
Julie’s Bicycle “have created these wonderful tools to measure your, your footprint. And when I use those tools, I feel very anxious, because I can see how much I use and how large of a footprint I am. And the way that I do balance it. And how I balanced it, is to create projects that raise awareness of climate change and use the power and the emotional power of music and art to sonify and to create a connection for listeners and performers on the scientific data that has been created on climate crisis. So that’s one way that I’ve been able to process it personally.”
“I think we all had a lot of time to think about sustainability, both artistically and environmentally because of COVID. And there are some very positive things to take away from that. I had a conversation with some artists just yesterday. We were talking about how the world stopped and now it’s started again, but it’s like 1000 times ramped up. And I’m wondering if this is not the time for these kinds of conversations, to have learned that the environment had a chance to heal for the two years that everybody wasn’t flying around and everybody wasn’t engaging in all sorts of activities. And now I’m experiencing this and I’m hearing this from colleagues that it’s so amped up now that we are going to do all of the damage again, and do it even worse, because we are also anxious to get back into work.”
“When is it good to say no, it’s one thing that I learned way too late. As young artists, we tend to say yes to everything because we’re just so grateful when that opportunity happens. But one thing to learn, perhaps is what is the most valuable for you? What has the greatest impact on your career?”
“presenters and performers need to really think about whether they need to do this concert there? Are there other ways that their art can be disseminated? Can that be supported appropriately? By arts organizations? I know at the universities, this has been a huge issue. Because traditionally, international events are more highly regarded than local events. But should they be? You could make the case that local community engagement is just as valuable. And that maybe we shouldn’t be always looking at international activities and hype as being a high profile activity. The same thing goes I think, when we look at whether symphonies need to bring in soloists from far away, when there are perfectly capable soloists locally, do opera companies need to bring in who they think are the best in the world. And I think that we need to sort of change our mindset about the performance, the whole scene of performance, we’re in a big country.”
“The question [of focusing on local] is for the privilege of larger cities where there are multiple resources, what about the rest of us? How do the rest of us sustain artistic practice with just being focused locally, is something I haven’t quite figured out. I’d love to have that conversation.”
“I didn’t know what to expect from this meeting here today. Certainly not this. Chaos is a very good word. Anxiety is a great word. Funding is a great word. Local is a great word.”
“I find that’s a particularly sticky issue, especially for people right at the beginning of their careers. I dream to one day be in a place in my career, where I can turn down that gig. But as you’re just trying to start out, you have to, just from a financial standpoint, there is certainly a pressure to say yes to everything, and also from the standpoint of trying to get to know people and make connections.”
“I’m finding that everybody asked that question at every level of that engagement, whether it’s writing that contract, booking the hall, booking the space, if Everybody just said, Wait a second, how can we multi package this so that it’s more sustainable? I think it would be.”
“So when you think about business, and what can you do locally, it’s incredible when you start hanging your shingle up there and offering this not just to the big cities, but you offer to the small, and they grow into these amazing musicians.”
“I think for myself, personally, I’m very concerned about the environment and consider stewardship of creation a really important part of my, my being and my purpose. How that intersects with my music, I don’t think there’s a very direct line at this point; there is concern for those issues. And I appreciate when ecological care is part of the subject matter. I worry that a lot of our efforts turn into guilt and anxiety instead of change. So when I think of sustainability, I want it to include action that makes things sustainable.”
“The challenge of local, I think is also the challenge of what we think we need to do in terms of performance. So we have to do we have a string quartet. So we have to have an opera. Maybe the music we make comes from the place that you are and the resources that you have, rather than insisting that we have an opera company or an orchestra center. So I think that’s something that is maybe part of the question, local is what is there.”
“And during the pandemic, there was this strange, strange phenomenon where all we can perform can go anywhere, etc. But suddenly, those collaborations happen between people that would never happen. It was actually very positive and innovative things that came out of it, some of which continues now, streaming of concerts, etc. But the gigantic server farms that are skewing our data all over the world for our concerts, for our emails to set up that concert, etc, etc, is very dirty. It’s very dirty. So this is a real anxious point is that fundamentally where we have come and it’s not just artists, the entire society and culture, world, human world, is that we’ve set up an infrastructure, which is, seems extremely challenging to transform.”
“Wayne [Shorter] Wayne saw that the role of the artists is to balance society. And some people would compare it to, in other societies, the role of the shaman, to explain things to the community… So Wayne would talk about, Perform, or write music, that is the world you want to see. Play your dreams.”
“I think that there’s no such thing as any one communication that doesn’t impair the environment at all, apart from what we’re doing right now. And even then, we have the lights on. And we’re still talking, but it’s I think this is about as low carbon as you can get right down. So every other form of communication, composing, creating notation.”
“I don’t agree with Western notation at any point in time, I just think that it’s an antiquated system, whether that again, my family system was far more antiquated. My grandmother was very much a communicator, and everything was tranferred orally. And so I give my students the option to do things like this in talking circles, and options to create music without score, or create music that doesn’t require 300 pages of Western notation to communicate with somebody. I think that as an artist, we have to communicate these ideas of climate.”
“Where do you get your money from? Because they’re an Alberta based ensemble. And if I heard oil at all, I didn’t want anything to do with that, because that’s not sustainable and completely goes against the viewpoint of my thesis. So why would I give up my artistic integrity for this. And I know I’m early in my career as well, too, but I don’t care, I stay with my principles. So I think that’s what we do at a local level.”
“something I really struggled with is how much is classical music engagement with the environment, in service of advancing a common interest in preserving the environment and how much of it is about making classical music relevant. So that’s something I grapple with as a musician performing music that has very much been bound up in processes of colonialism. The reason that I in Canada went to a Conservatory as a kid and studied classical music largely has to do with colonialism. And that’s intertwined with environmental damage.”
“And as we are all artists here, that’s the power that we have is the emotional power of music, no matter what we do, and how we do it, and how dirty it is or not. But we have the power to be artistic leaders, also listeners, great listeners, but artistic leaders in the fact of making art and, and then asking audiences for fellow musicians to consider what we are singing, playing, and how we’re listening to that, and how that hopefully will fill us all with hope and joy. So that we have the energy to act.”
“why is going to Germany for a concert of 100 people more valuable than the concert in Brandon for 100 people, and I think we have to sort of change our mindset about who we’re connecting with and who we’re communicating with. And maybe rethinking the values that are associated with that.”
Vancouver Meeting
Date: May 23, 2023
Location: Canadian Music Centre BC, 837 Davie St, Vancouver, BC V6Z 1B7
Co-presenter: Canadian Music Centre BC
The Vancouver Meeting was graciously hosted by the Canadian Music Centre, BC Region. ED Terri Hron opened the meeting and DB Boyko graciously offered a land acknowledgement. Once again, Terri offered an overview of the Sustainable Futures project, a summary of the previous meetings, and some details on the upcoming national event. The participants included many Vancouver artists whose work intersects with or is focused on environmental issues as well as representatives from the major new music presenters. The large majority of our time was spent with each person sharing their background and main concerns/experiences around sustainability and resilience.
Themes that came up included:
- collaboration with natural environments and habitats and how/whether to bring these into cultural spaces
- sustainability as a holistic practice, in opposition to the survival mindset. Health and rest sometimes come in conflict with exorbitant rents and pressure to accept work that might have less sustainable aspects, such as long travel.
- climate grief and anxiety can be debilitating. Mental health issues are rising. How can we transform these through creativity?
- how do we move forward when all productions seem to create so much waste?
- personal and organizational unraveling and unlearning on a daily basis
- listening practices as an antidote to partisan thinking
- how do we reframe the skills and practices we were taught from a colonial mindset towards something that can keep serving us?
- what is community? Does it exist to protect what we have, or to encourage working with less and renouncing the personal for the benefit of all? Who is in the community?
- relieving the scarcity and precarity mindset (through UBI or rent control) will allow people/artists more space to connect with their environment
- embracing the local. Sharing resources: Community Centered Fundraising
- are the arts councils spending the majority of their resources on sustainable projects (i.e. symphony orchestras and opera companies) or do they think they can force large, currently less unsustainable organizations to improve their footprint? How do we come into dialogue with them?
“Since becoming more and more filled with this need to come to engage with the climate emergency and particularly with wild habitat destruction from anthropogenic sources, I’ve sort of moved my attention now to habitat. And so a lot of the work that I do now has to do with local habitats such as urban forests, and also wild, even old growth forest. And that includes doing work with specific forests that are on the cut block. For me, it’s really critical to gain some more momentum around preserving forests and trees, because if we don’t help them, they’re not going to help us with climate. So you know, forests and trees are great as carbon sinks, as well as being an incredible habitat for biodiversity. And we now know that BC forests used to be carbon sinks, but now they’re actually carbon sources, because there’s been so much logging and particularly clear cutting.”
“I’m exploring what sound events can be created, either in a forest with trees, so it’s very much a collaborative sort of approach, but also can those methods be adapted into indoor situations that we are more familiar with, like galleries and music venues.”
“Sustainability in a holistic sense, in my practice, is a lot about small things like having a system to recycle, reuse materials, like building and sharing things. Also try to think of sustainability in terms of health, that if you don’t have health and rest, time and space that you can’t make decisions that consider the outcomes or the effects of your choices on other people and artists to get into a survival mindset. It’s really difficult to consider things beyond yourself, because you’re just scrambling to make rent or to get to the next gig or to secure the next opportunity. So in that sense, I think conversations like universal income could give artists a lot of agency in the conversation and sustainability, I think it’s also you’re speaking from a position of privilege when you are able to, like, say no to flying to this festival gig for one day and the next one. And so artists often are stuck taking opportunities that don’t necessarily work for us.”
“I’ve noticed as my career is developing, that it’s easier for me to get opportunities abroad. Oftentimes it’s easier to get gigs in New York or San Francisco, across the country than it is to get something in the city. And so I think there’s still really a lure to the out of town artists. I’m glad to hear that there might be changes in terms of festivals and programs. Because I think there’s a lot of room to embrace and explore what’s in our communities before flying artists in.”
“There’s a lot of climate anxiety, a lot of mental health stuff going on right now around climate obviously, and what pops up for me is just being a mom of a small child and trying to picture the future.”
“My latest project had really strong environmental themes. I was researching whales and connecting climate grief and family histories. A lot of climate grief and anxiety came up during the creation of that project. And, of course,it was great to get that out into a project, but then at the end, it never ends. You can get it out on a project, you can explore it, you can try to work towards something, but I find myself again, in these periods, getting almost paralyzed with that. And so I’m really interested right now in trying to find a way to transform that paralyzing anxiety into action. Because that’s the point where it’s just way more productive and helpful for everybody, and also a more creative state, where it’s more comfortable to everybody, and can actually create some change. So I think working with emotions and things like that, and trying to transform both personally, creatively, organizationally, is very helpful.”
“I’m interested in how to move forwards in an organization, because every time we do something, it just seems like there’s so much waste involved. And again, how do we create things without using things and adding to the problem?”
“I’m in this stage of unraveling everything that I’ve ever learned. And which is, I keep saying my most favorite word is to be uncertain. The unraveling is really difficult because you have to reposition yourself every single day and it does make you feel alive and it is disconcerting at the same time but I think that’s the only way that we’re gonna make some changes, is to be in that space.”
“What I’m mainly doing in all these fields, both personal and institutional, is to try and foster a sort of political activism that is not related to partisan position or ideological way of thinking, but more regaining, through listening practices, an honest, community, a way of living together. But not just as humans but in a context of holistic and ethical perspectives, which is actually something we are learning more and more when we pay attention to indigenous philosophies and phenomenologies So that means instead of declaring a specific position or ideology, creating spaces for people to have an opportunity to listen in a different way, to activate their body and their senses of sound through movement, within an ecological setting, within a listening setting, that can be an environment–and not necessarily a natural environment–because we know that we can learn many things from anywhere. And in doing so, hopefully creating more awareness in the community, Changes can only happen if a larger group of people are synchronized on similar ideas and sensitized to similarity. I hope people will take action, that we take action. We don’t need political discourse, we need a form of living that enhances ways of regaining touch among ourselves, where human beings know humans, the stones, the plants, the waters and so forth. And so it’s all very utopian, but that’s what I’m trying to link towards, in everything we do now.”
“The pandemic has been really good, because in creating lots of alienation, it demonstrated the fact that actually we need to be working in forms that are way more consolidated around sharing, because it’s about brotherhood or sisterhood with anything and everything around us.”
“Everything I’ve been doing in the past, from my youth and growing into this idea of becoming a musician and composer was driven by a capitalistic form of thinking. It’s not driven by the idea of focusing on your being as a form of energy that can be shared and can be produced to the benefit of everything else, not just yourself, but the community you live within. And that practice means that I have to reinvent all things that I’ve been doing, rejecting the aesthetic discourse around the practice I was doing before and, while not trashing the skills and the knowledge I’ve been accumulating, re-evaluating all this knowledge and technique and skills from a different perspective.”
“But there are other forms of taking people out and about, in which they will be, in a way, more attuned to themselves and more able to release their anxiety of needing to approve or disapprove, once the processes are shared and the space is not restrictive, and is actually the common space on our lands. Not even our lands, of lands and oceans. And so I want to foster more of this activity and it has been inspiring to see people coming out without being told to do this or that and allow them to discover their own path into a space that offers sound movement, images, or just simply listening to each other.”
“Another thing that really strikes me is the local focus. For me, having two kids, right out of school, forced me to become a really locally active artist. I didn’t really have the wherewithal to figure out how I could travel with young kids. And so most of my career has been really locally focused. That’s been a bit of a barrier, for sure. But there’s also a flip side to it, that this community is such a rich place. And also my work is so rooted in all of this, in this space, this nature. And so it’s a wonderful thing when we embrace it.”
“As an organization, we also present and make sure that local artists and organizations and composers are also a major part of how we structure our seasons. Since we’re talking about intersectionality and so, from a sustainability point of view, one of the intersections I’ve noticed is the ongoing trend with donations and looking at how we can actually fund this work. donations or down over all charitable giving, within the last two years and will continue to go down as the economy shifts. How can we afford to be able to continue to unravel and remodel and do what we want to do and how we want to do it in a sustainable fashion, if we don’t have the funds to do that. So as developers, and that’s one of the intersections, but also, through Community Centered Fundraising, and those guiding set of principles. I don’t remember all of them off the top my head, but one of the main guidelines is that there are enough funds for everyone, why do we have to keep them all to ourselves, and making sure that we’re able to disperse them. And as an organization, we can say, ‘We also encourage you to donate to other organizations.’”
“when you’re unraveling something in the middle, can you call it riveting. Sometimes you have to soak, reconcile the piece that you’ve unraveled and let it reform before you can move into something else. So part of that, the knitting back into something else, takes a lot of time, takes a lot of energy, takes a lot of focus and wanting to make it into something else. And so I see a lot of positivity, just being able to have these conversations, and also having so much of these conversations also simultaneously with the idea of sustainability, the idea of justice, justice, equality, diversity, inclusion and accessibility, but as well as reconciliation and about the idea of how can we reconcile or change”
“Rent is just overwhelmingly problematic. Now also, basically food, groceries, everything. So it’s a huge cloud over my community here. That’s a problem. When these things are in place, is there a security, comfort, and the basic needs are taken care of, then we can more easily even spend more time in nature ourselves. The artist can be more connected to environment.”
“I’ve been thinking very much about the climate and the ethics of what I do, even how my ego was involved in trying to pursue this career. I think about the ethics of touring. As much as I would love to get a tour of Europe again, I actually find that it’s an epically irresponsible thing. Even touring in Canada, such a big country. I would still like to be able to go back and forth. But again, I don’t know that it’s ethically responsible for me to keep doing. So I think about this all the time.”
“Thinking about community centered fundraising, how do we allow there to be more interweaving of the tools and resources that we have. Thinking about the safety of the artist: so for me, just trying to survive I have actually found it quite difficult to make enough money and so again, I’ve been doing a lot of these stupid extra gigs which I don’t really like. But people have been flying me to Prince George and Kelowna, Kamloops and I just think, why are there all these orchestras? Why is there so much money spent with flying or, or paying musicians from Vancouver to travel to these places? That, again, why, and I understand that for the communities that live in those places„ but it’s also self-sustaining.”
“I was told by some colleagues in the jury, for some people in Canada, Beethoven is an asset for Canadian culture. And if you look at the budget this year, what the council is spending for symphony orchestras and opera companies in this province is 85% of the music budget.”
“There are 20 companies in this world that make the majority of the pollution.
Every time they tear down a house in Vancouver, it’s 70 tons or more of waste that goes into landfill. If I recycled for my entire complete life, which I have, it’s not going to make a dent in that. It has to be a change that’s going to be bigger than everybody just doing one thing. It’s not that that lets us off the hook, we should still do our one thing. But we’ve got to get together and put pressure on the big, big polluters, because they’re the ones that are really going to be able to make a difference.”
“We have to look for a completely different framework. I mean, we are too spoiled. Really. Everyone here used the word community. Great. What is this? What is a community? Not just because you’re living geographically in the same space, is there a community. And the community on the Sunshine Coast is a community of spoiled middle class people like me, that go in the shower and have the opportunity to change the temperature of the water at any time they want. A community is a place where you renounce something to the benefit of everyone, Renouncing is something we are not accustomed to doing, because we are enslaved by this idea of acquiring, acquiring, acquiring or capitalizing on this, capitalizing on that. Generosity is something we can cultivate more and more.”
“We’re holding all the resources, we’re holding the gold, we’re holding all that stuff. I think that there is actually something really positive in terms of what we have as experience, everyone in this room has that. And how do we go back and unravel the knitting and all of those things to come? To just keep that fire going, and be the best that we can with that. And then all the other pieces will figure themselves out. Clearly the networking, who you partner with, to know how to start moving walls. I work for the city is the most headbanging place to be. It’s very disillusioning. But if I can just keep carrying that… there are days where it’s terrible, but there are days where it’s great and you move forward. We have to carry that light within us. And I’m really not even trying to think on any spiritual level. We’ve already done our work. And now we have to work again. Just gotta keep carrying it on.”
Montreal Meeting
Date: June 14, 2023
Location: Goethe-Institut, 1626 Boul. Saint-Laurent Bureau 100, Montréal, QC H2X 2T1
Co-presenter: Groupe Le Vivier
Like the previous meetings, our host and collaborator, Groupe Le Vivier, opened the meeting with a word from Gabrielle Blais-Sénéchal. CNMN was particularly grateful for this welcome and Le Vivier’s efforts, given the fire that devastated their offices and meeting places only a couple weeks prior, and of the Goethe Institut, which offered us their space for the meeting. ED Terri Hron continued the introduction with a land acknowledgement and a short summary of the Sustainable Futures project, these regional meetings, and the upcoming national event. We had two guests come to talk to us about actions and possible support in Quebec for sustainable actions and transformations: Caroline Voyer from the Quebec Council for Eco-responsible Events, and Christine Dancause and Nathalie Rae from the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec (CALQ), who presented the environmental policies and tools put in place for the community.
Caroline Voyer, Executive Director of the Quebec Council for Eco-responsible Events, stressed the importance of calculating carbon footprint before creating a coherent and adapted action plan. It encourages any cultural entity to try this exercise. The calculation is possible in particular using the Creative Green platform, which offers cultural organizations a self-monitoring tool for measuring their carbon footprint.
The representatives of the CALQ, Christine Dancause and Nathaly Rae presented the territorial partnership program which allows cultural entities to benefit from support and assistance in their action plans, both in terms of production, dissemination, promotion and consolidation.
Specifically targeted for members of Le Vivier, the meeting continued with exchanges that brought out avenues of reflection in the creative music and sound sector and that Le Vivier could work on. These included:
- Encourage slow-creation/slow-production
- Promoting the notion of “sustainable creation” and increasing the number of shows in the region
- Questioning single/one-off performances, considering all the logistics and the hall coordination/conflicts that this generates
- Limiting “growth at any cost” thinking
- Making works last longer thanks to digital technologies (but what is/are also the impact(s) of digital on the environment?)
“In programming, we often tell ourselves we should slow down the pace of the cycle of creation, production, distribution, but right now, organizations are forced to maintain an intensive pace.”
“There is something that basically seems very difficult to me: we are production organizations, we always have to make new works, so there is a designed obsolescence in our work. A creation four years ago is no longer a creation. There are questions to be asked here, about sustainable creation. But then when we are asked to reduce, but my company’s mandate is to create, to produce. All my efforts are towards trying to produce more, and to cut costs. The most effective way for me to reduce my footprint would be to produce less, that’s for sure.”
“In Montreal, during the pandemic, there was “Quand l’art prend air” [CAM program]. Especially for children, when you think about reducing energy, it essentially worked just acoustically. [Projects] that can be done without equipment, without infrastructure and modestly, those would be great projects to propose, to create beautiful partnerships, and these programs could be produced more regularly. »
“The other thing is growth at all costs. I actually think that we shouldn’t go in that direction, that’s precisely what we’re trying to slow down in many spheres of society, and especially in the cultural field, where increasing the offer is not no longer a solution, but it’s much more about reaching the public, and in particular regionally.”
“We should put emphasis on recovering and consolidating resources.”
“From what I hear of our needs in terms of sharing resources towards a concern for eco-responsibility, I think that Le Vivier can really be an important vector for its members at this time. I think it’s very important that we work together.”
“We are working on our digital plan. Of course, we wonder if digital technology can help works have a longer life cycle. There are many members who made exceptional projects in the hall and also online, and so, what do we do with this content, so that it continues to live? So that’s a real reflection that we have internally, the discussion in relation to data. How do we archive all that and how do we create a center for the circulation of works and artists.”