CHRC and Canadian Heritage is offering this Respectful Workplaces in the Arts workshop to encourage better workplace practices and behaviours. This workshop will cover information on Ontario Provincial legislation, definitions of harassment and bullying as well as case-studies to navigate the complexities of problematic situations. This workshop is not a legal nor therapy clinics, it is conversations facilitated by experienced cultural sector leaders. Resources are discussed to help individuals and organizations towards contribute to better work environments and/or to develop their own policies/codes of conduct.
This program will be in English however, French sessions are available. For further information contact info@artsconsultants.ca. / Ce programme sera en anglais mais des sessions en français sont disponibles. Pour de plus amples informations, veuillez contacter info@artsconsultants.ca
Leverage the Arts Ecosystem to Influence Local Prosperity by Cate Proctor
Artists are the creative germ of the arts sector. Without artists, the arts ecosystem would simply not exist. Period. Yet, the ripple effect of a vibrant arts sector—within economic and creative industry terms—often overshadows fundamental components of creative cultivation. If we truly understand the drivers for artistic creation, we easily recognize artists’ implicit and explicit influences on social, economic, and community development. Applying this knowledge shifts value to the front end of the value chain, to artists, whose work both spawns local arts scenes and drives scalable impacts for creative industries and non-arts sectors.
Artists bring unique perspectives and insights to their work. In many cases they hold a mirror to society showing the rest of us ‘what really is’. Can this be this intimidating? You bet!
Come join the conversation to learn how we can better integrate unique voices that exist in our communities. We will explore potential ways and means to appreciate and activate artists’ presence. We will discuss how their creative role is a fundamental pillar for the arts ecosystem, and when nurturing artists’ creative capacity, we also cultivate social, well-being and economic benefits.
The Programming Committee is currently waiting for answers regarding funding for projects that we could undertake for the membership of ACCA. In the meantime, we have a suggestion, but we need your feedback.
There are many technical tools out there which can make things easier in working with our clients: we need to know which are being used by the membership, and how they are being used.
Many of us already have technical tools that we use regularly with clients, but there are other members that are not as tech savvy.
We are asking you to go have a look at the list linked below and see what is there (and this is by no means an exhaustive list). Is there one, or a number of these that you would be interested in learning more about, to add to your “tech stack”, and would you be interested in taking part in a workshop or workshops that we could set up with the creators of these programmes?
In order to give us an idea, please send your comments to jane@jneedles.com and the programming committee will take them to heart and figure out the best way to get this information to you.
We hope that you are all well and thriving, as we finally begin to return to a cultural world that is coming back to life slowly.
Tuesday, March 8, 2022 at 7pm EST / 4pm PST / 8:00pm AST
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know by Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell has written some fascinating books such as “Outliers” and “The Tipping Point”, with lots of content that is applicable to our roles as consultants. This one challenges us to consider our instinctual tendency to trust. It’s a fascinating collection of stories about the disastrous results of miscommunications between people who are strangers to each other. Making sense of the stranger, Gladwell writes, “requires humility and thoughtfulness and a willingness to look beyond the stranger, and take time and place and context into account.”
Tuesday, October 5 at 8:00pm AT / 7:00pm ET / 4:00pm PT
Our latest book is a celebration of gatherings! There is every indication from across the country that audiences can’t wait to return to live events, to experience music and dance and theatre and just about anything arts related as long as we can be together again. In this book, Barbara Ehrenreich explores the cultural traditions of collective joy throughout history. What draws people to festivals, dance rituals, rock and roll concerts and the recent carnivalization of sports? As with many things, understanding our past informs our future.
Dancing in the Streets explains what Netflix in our living room cannot provide – the common desire to dress up, head out and experience events together in a crowd!
Please join us for our next ACCA Book Club meeting on Tuesday, October 5 at 8:00pm AT / 7:00pm ET / 4:00pm PT.
On March 10, 2021 ACCA presented a virtual Open Forum to discuss the key drivers of change in the evolving arts ecosystem in Canada with panelists Kelly Hill, Hill Strategies, Valerie Sing Turner, Artistic Producer of Visceral Visions Society and Creative Director of CultureBrew.Art and Jane Needles, Consultant.
Join us on March 5th as we discuss Drive by Daniel H. Pink.
Drive is all about motivation. In the arts, money is not usually the first motivator for everything we do. The secret to performance and satisfaction is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things and to do better by ourselves and the world. True motivation is autonomy, mastery and purpose. Pink offers some smart and surprising techniques for putting these motivators into action. No doubt, part of our conversation will be how best to deliver those motivators to our board, staff and ultimately to our audiences.
ACCA’s Book Club is open to everyone in the arts so please feel free to invite your clients and spread the word through social media. There is no obligation to join us for every book in the series. Once you register for this meeting online, you will be sent the coordinates to join what promises to be, as usual, an interesting discussion.
Please join us for our next ACCA Book Club meeting on Wednesday, December 9 at 8:00pm EDT / 5:00pm PT.
Our next book is one of the most entertaining books about arts administration ever written, Making the Mummies Dance by Thomas Hoving. It is an older book (1994) and therefore may take some planning if you wish to borrow it from the library but it is still easily available online.
No museum in the world is like the Metropolitan Museum of Art – and no one has ever run it, or revolutionized it, quite like Thomas Hoving. In a decade, Hoving changed almost everything people had grown accustomed to from the Met, shaking the institution out of royal repose and transforming it into the most vital cultural presence in the country. Now, the irrepressible former director delivers a fearless account of his life at the pinnacle of the art world – a modern Vanity Fair, a true story of masterpieces and money, society and scandal, intrigue and international theft.
The Met is more than a dazzling art showplace. The museum is a vibrant if quietly influential community, inhabited and run by singular sorts of people: trustees and curators, connoisseurs and conservators. It is steeped in history and tradition and seems to move in a serene and elegant world of impeccable manners and the finest taste. Behind the proper social veneers and pristine marble galleries, Hoving reveals the cutthroat precincts where the real business of the Met is carried out. From seducing important patrons like Robert Lehman, Nelson Rockefeller, Walter Annenberg, and Brooke Astor to spiriting ancient treasures across international borders; from striking secret agreements with the world’s most powerful dealers to sidestepping rivals; from securing blockbuster exhibitions, like “Tut” and “The Glory of Russian Costume,” to seizing the most phenomenal Velazquez portrait, Hoving shares not only the nimbleness and brashness that made him so effective, but also the zeal and passion that made the Met so exciting.
Making the Mummies Dance is told in the head-on, even naughty, way that is trademark Hoving. This is an important, shocking museum story and more – an unforgettable tale of power struggles and one-upmanship, fame, big money, and, of course, great art.
The Book Club is free and open to everyone in the arts. There is no obligation to join us for every book in the series. Once you register for this meeting online, you will be sent the coordinates to join what promises to be an entertaining and hopefully, inspirational discussion.
Simon Sinek starts with a fundamental question: Why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their success over and over?
People like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers had little in common, but they all started with WHY. They realized that people won’t truly buy into a product, service, movement, or idea until they understand the WHY behind it.
Start With Why shows that the leaders who’ve had the greatest influence in the world all think, act, and communicate the same way — and it’s the opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.
ACCA’s Book Club is open to arts consultants and arts administrators who can manage the time to read a few books about non-profit management, leadership and adventures in the arts. You are welcome to join us for one or all of our meetings, depending on your schedule and your interest in a particular book.
There is no charge for ACCA members to participate. Non-members of ACCA are welcome for a $10 fee payable online previous to the book club meeting.
