Mayor’s Culture Summit - Toronto

City of Toronto’s Mayor Olivia Chow held the first ever Cultural Summit, aligned with the strategic plan “Culture Connects”. Guess who was in the room, me! A little background why this was exciting. I genuinely enjoy policy discussions, strategic planning, industry-wide brainstorming, convening with peers. I was raised up by a civil servant Mama who would explain what the news from the government mean to our lives as citizens. I was the child who would read the newspaper from cover to cover and multiple publications. I was then trained as a print journalist, and today I work in the arts but in municipal government. Looking back this was cultivated for a long time.

Now as an adult, I understand the implication of policy and governance. I know they have a direct effect on our lives but many of us in the arts pay little attention to this area of our sector.

This culture summit took various snapshots of our industry and through talks, mentorship, think-tank focus groups, networking gave us a day to review critically our industry, the past and the future. It brought together artists, leaders of arts institutions, various workers in the sector, people from sectors that intertwine with the arts. My favourite sight was when people would gasp and hug each other, “You are here!?”. The arts scene in Toronto is very collaborative and you’d meet at least five people you know, and five whom you’ve worked with their organization in some capacity.

I found the live discussions vulnerable in a way that makes you trust the process eventually yields to something. These were held by leaders of various institutions with decades of experience yet here they were, talking about their failures, challenges and acts of resilience so openly. My favourite story was by Soulepper’s Executive Director, Gideon Arthurs, reflecting on news models for culture making.

They were facing a tough financial crisis and noticed TTC drivers of the King streetcar used their bathrooms before turning for another trip. They asked the cafe staff to start giving them free coffee. Word spreads, soon the drivers started using the cafe for lunch. During their season opening that year, without being asked, these TTC drivers announced on every trip that passengers should pass by the theatre at the end of the ride. That year they made thousands of dollars out of this in-kind partnership they didn’t expect. They used to lock the doors during Christmas markets at the Distillery District, again people would want to use the toilets which comes with maintenance costs. They decided to open their doors and sell hot chocolate and sold hundreds to families wanting to keep their children cozy. This summary doesn’t explain the chills we all felt while he was describing how their financial help came from such unlikely places.

At the mentorship table, I had a chance to chat with Joe Sellers, the Director of the Humber Cultural Hub. As these were group sessions, coincidentally two of us were Humber alumni and one a student at the Arts Administration and Management program. This turned our chat to general reflections of our individual experiences working in the arts in various sectors. Where would you get to have these priceless conversations with total strangers?

I was also in the mentoring session led by Onika Powell, Senior Manager Outreach and Access at Toronto Arts Council. Of course we asked her a lot about funding for art projects but I enjoyed our discussions on other avenues for funding projects. The truth is our councils have only so much for very few artists annually. I shared that in Kenya the arts is mostly funded by corporates under their community social responsibilities. I will put this in a separate post because we need to bring more players in arts funding in Toronto.

The Solutions Lab was exactly that, a place for brainstorming actionable solutions for our industry. The handbook used for this session should be made available as open data because it ignited your critical thinking but in a way that feels attainable. The value was in the people taking part in the focus groups. I sat next to someone from Mass Culture which does arts and culture research. On my other side was a professor with a background in music business. Across the table was a staff from a local arts service organization and Business for the Arts. Do you know those very great team meetings at the beginning of a project when you are putting together your plans and everything feels right? Yeah, it felt like that.

The rest of the day was spent saying hello because that is all you needed to end up with one more useful person in your network. The organizers had put titles of someone’s organization on the name tag which made it easy to strike conversations because we know each other via email addresses, newsletter signatures or season releases. To connect in-person and deepen those relationships was valuable.

I kept looking around and being so hopeful in our industry in Toronto. These people were not just conference attendees, they were keepers of our sector. These people would probably be making lots of money in other sectors, need to sleep a few more hours, deserve an overdue vacation - and yet they choose a sector that is not perfect but matters so much to the fabric of Toronto.

So if you are reading this and work in the arts in any capacity, I hope you know how significant your role is in the collective sector. I hope beyond creating you start getting curious about governance and what drives our sector. I hope when there is another gathering to think of how to move our sector forward you’ll move it up on your priority meetings.