professional development

  • ACCA’s Open Forum: Change in the Canadian Arts Ecosystem

    Arts Consultants Canada (ACCA) invites you to attend a virtual Open Forum to discuss what appear to be the key drivers of change in the evolving arts ecosystem in Canada.

    March 10 @12 pm EST

    Panelists will be:

    • Kelly Hill, Hill Strategies – Critical recent research on key drivers of change in the arts ecosystem
    • Valerie Sing Turner, Artistic Producer of Visceral Visions Society and Creative Director of CultureBrew.Art
    • Jane Needles, Consultant – Key drivers identified by the Cross-Sectoral Recovery Round Tables (CHRC)

    The moderator for this session will be Annalee Adair – A. Adair & Associates Consulting Inc.

    Each panelist will present a very brief overview, allowing you the participants the most time to share your thoughts and observations.

    Space is limited to 100 participants. This discussion is open to everyone.

  • March Book Club: Drive

    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.

  • ACCA October Book Club: Made to Stick

    The next book in ACCA’s online book club meeting (on Wednesday, October 28 at 8:00pm EDT / 5:00pm PDT / 9:30pm NDT) is Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.

    Pour yourself a cup of your favourite beverage and join us from the comfort of your own home. To sign up for the October 28 meeting please register in the form below. Once you register online, you will be sent the meeting coordinates. This book should be widely available at your local library or for download from your favourite book vendor. It promises to be an easy read and an engaging discussion.

    Mark Twain once observed, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus public-health scares circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas-businessmen, educators, politicians, journalists, and others—struggle to make their ideas “stick.”

    In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the human scale principle, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating curiosity gaps. Along the way, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds–from the infamous “kidney theft ring” hoax to a coach’s lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony–draw their power from the same six traits.

    Made to Stick will transform the way you and your organization communicate. It’s a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures): the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of the Mother Teresa Effect; the elementary-school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice.

    Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas–and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.

    The ACCA Book Club welcomes everyone who works in the arts. There is no cost to join and no obligation to read every book in the series.

  • New Date! ACCA Book Club: So You Want to Talk About Race

    ACCA’s next Book Club meeting will be Thursday July 30, at 8:00 pm Eastern / 5:00 pm Pacific.

    Our next book will be Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race.

    Ijeoma Oluo is a Seattle-based writer, speaker, and Internet Yeller. Named one of The Root’s 100 Most Influential African Americans in 2017, one of the Most Influential People in Seattle by Seattle Magazine, one of the 50 Most Influential Women in Seattle by Seattle Met, and winner of the of the 2018 Feminist Humanist Award by the American Humanist Society, Oluo’s work focuses primarily on issues of race and identity, feminism, social and mental health, social justice, the arts, and personal essay. Her writing has been featured in The Washington Post, NBC News, Elle Magazine, TIME, The Stranger, and the Guardian.

    Our guest facilitator will be charles c. smith, the Executive Director of Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario and Artistic Director of the wind in the leaves collective.  Charles is a poet, playwright and essayist who has written and edited fourteen books. He studied poetry and drama with William Packard at New York University and Herbert Berghof Studios, drama at the Frank Silvera’s Writers’ Workshop in Harlem.  He won second prize for his play Last Days for the Desperate from Black Theatre Canada, edited three collections of poetry and his poetry has appeared in numerous journals and magazines.

  • Notes From ACCA Members “Let’s Talk About It” Response To COVID-19 2020.05.27

    In Attendance:        Erika Beatty (Dartmouth), Diane Davey (Toronto), Candace Elder (Toronto), Roger Gaudet (Ottawa), Cate Proctor (Ottawa), Lindy Sisson (Vancouver) Victoria Steele (Ottawa), Sandra Thomson (Nanaimo), Leslie Thompson (Vancouver)

    • Sandra welcomed everyone and asked Victoria to give a brief update on the actions taken so far by the ACCA COVID-19 Working Group.

    Victoria thanked Lucy, Roger and Cate for all their help getting the application in to Canada Council for the May 6 deadline. The application was for $65,000 for ACCA consultants to provide assistance to small and medium sized, underserved arts organizations (budgets under $1 million) in rural and smaller centers or with disciplines/artists/programming for diverse populations. We should hear sometime in late September. The months of May to August are to be spent “listening and learning” how the sector/clients are doing and clever solutions that are being tried to deal with the multitude of issues created by the pandemic.

    Victoria reported that an application by CHRC (a registered charity) is now being prepared by ACCA members to the McConnell Foundation to their COVID-19 response fund. This application will go in by the end of this week (May 30).

    • Everyone then shared what they have been hearing from clients, from other networks, from webinars and panels being organized by others. It was agreed that Victoria would work with another volunteer to create a platform for gathering this knowledge/wisdom for access by ACCA members this fall. LEAN volunteers are gathering knowledge. ACCA hopes to access the summary documents so that the information will be shared with the sector going forward, not just the funders.

    ACCA members are not able/willing to continue providing services without being paid

    Topics of interest going forward –

      • Mergers/acquisitions/partnerships/collaborations
      • Change management
      • Young people ready to gather/attend events before older people
      • Older volunteers retiring – creating openings for younger volunteers
      • Re-creating Boards and dealing with new Board responsibilities
      • Winterizing an org. rapidly when the second wave of virus arrives and requires another shut down
      • Reinvention by eliminating/dealing with some of the chronic issues that plagued an organization pre-COVID-19.
      • Working towards a Universal Guaranteed Income for artists/workers
    • Sandra shared a happy story – a local musician who used to earn her living by playing piano in Seniors Homes was able to access CERB. She is considering the $2,000 per month “like a Canada Council grant” to stay home and score the musical she wrote. It will take her 6 months and she’ll have the full orchestration done, ready to shop her work to presenters/producers.
    • It was agreed that the hour was well spent, good information shared and a plan of action for ACCA is evolving. It was agreed that there would be another “Let’s Talk About It” when Victoria can schedule Janet Sellery to present information about Health and Safety issues pertaining to COVID-19

  • Notes from ACCA Members’ Let’s Talk About It Response to Covid-19, 2020.04.22

    Notes from ACCA Members’ Let’s Talk About It Response to Covid-19

    April 22, 2020

    In Attendance:  Roger Gaudet (Ottawa), Linda Gorrie (Vancouver), Kate Proctor (Ottawa), Victoria Steele (Ottawa), Sandra Thomson (Nanaimo), Lucy White (Toronto)

     

    1. Short Term actions:

    • Bi-weekly Member Check-ins on Wednesdays at 1pm ET to share intel and skills.
    • Sharing info in-between Check-ins – such as the opportunity to join the pro-bono LEAN initiative (Leadership Emergency Arts Network) to provide short-term crisis management support to leaders of organizations across Canada. 150 Advisors and matching happening now.
    • Co-hosted online discussion with Mass Culture on April 20 – Supporting Organizations Today. Over 30 attended. Thanks very much to Fanny Martin for her work on this initiative with Mass Culture.  Evaluation report expected soon.
    • Share open tips on ACCA FB and LinkedIn and new Twitter account – Marketing Committee to take this on?
    • Ask members to sign up individually for a Canada Council profile so that we as a group and as individuals become eligible for whatever granting programs come.

    1. Medium Term actions:

    • Canada Council meetings April 2 and 20. Early discussions with Canadian Heritage have begun.
    • Pursuing collaborative effort with Canadian Arts Coalition, Arts Service Organizations, Cultural Human Resources Council and others. Discussions begun.
    • Members’ Survey of ASO affiliations: identify individual affiliations and Members who could be assigned as liaisons with key different ASOs to ensure that, as a group, we are up to date with their current activities, especially around this crisis. Send second survey this week to get more responses.
    • PENDING: Pilot the 3-for-1 Team consultants’ services program without government assistance to see what happens and to demonstrate that we are willing to and have the talent to serve our clients in a more collaborative manner. We need a couple of volunteers to take this on.

    1. Check in – What members are hearing:

    • Funders focusing on the immediate future, not yet looking at long term recovery
    • Arts groups and funders still in emergency mode
    • $500 million funding announced last Friday – federal departments will know in about a week who is getting new funds.
    • Funders thinking that getting arts orgs. to focus on local arts community and arts as part of social cohesion may be the way forward. No support for travelling.
    • Post – pandemic: many fragile arts orgs will cease to operate. Will there be mergers? Amalgamations? Will larger orgs take on the work that was being done by smaller ones? Will major players support the smaller players? Digital entrepreneurship will be the way forward for many artists.
    • Arts orgs currently focused on short-term – bridge financing, delaying activities, supporting their teams and artists.
    • ASOs wish to be open beyond the traditional idea of membership. There is much more desire for collaborative ventures/partnerships. Medium Term – looking at doing things differently. A good time to manage change.
    • Some desire for new organization models in the medium term future to maximize artistic resources across admin infrastructure – even amalgamations.
    • Funders concerned about small/vulnerable organizations and speculating ways to ensure Sustainability – new business models, more digital proficiency, shared services, supporting local/nothing involving travel. Suspect cuts in long term to balance government books.
    • Messaging – social value of the arts as local community building/rebuilding consumer confidence – come out to share the arts locally in your town.

    What consultants can bring to the effort:

    • Shared skills and expertise
    • Knowledge in revenue generation/donor relations
    • Independent facilitation for change and collaboration
    • Potential collaborative ventures with CHRC/ASOs:
    • For Sector: Webinars/online training in key areas such as: How to develop healthy collaborations and partnerships, How to manage Cash Flow, Tips on sharing arts with the public in the time of COVID physical-distancing, Successful Digital Platforms
    • For arts organizations: Customized Team Consulting
    • For individual artists: Career Management

    1. New Action Items:

    • Sandra to ask Programming Committee to tackle setting up a few webinars in the near future – Panel discussion on Collaboration and Partnerships – how to make it work; Panel discussion on Health and Safety concerns – how to reopen your facility to keep people safe. How to adapt work spaces for social distancing. Roger to contact Janet Sellery (former member) and CITT.  Later in the year maybe one on Fundraising and Donor relations during this pandemic?
    • Marketing Committee to discuss/plan how to promote new webinars for maximum reach. Cate volunteered for this committee.
    • Resend the Survey asking people that did not respond to fill it in. Sandra to draft new opening paragraph and get to Victoria.
    • Victoria keeping an eye on Grant deadlines that ACCA could access with ASO’s as partners
    • Lucy to update/finalize ACCA profile with Canada Council

    1. Next Meeting:

    It was agreed that the hour was well spent, good information shared and a plan of action for ACCA is evolving. It was agreed that there would be another “Let’s Talk About It” in two weeks Wed. May 6 at 1 pm ET.

     

     

  • Notes from Let’s Talk About It Member Check-in 2020.04.08

    NOTES FROM ACCA MEMBERS LET’S TALK ABOUT IT RESPONSE TO COVID19

    Wednesday, April 8, 2020

    In Attendance: Lori Baxter (Vancouver), Erika Beatty (Dartmouth), Lynn Feasey (Victoria), Roger Gaudet (Ottawa), Kelly Hill (Hamilton), Kate Proctor (Ottawa), Victoria Steele (Ottawa), Sandra Thomson (Nanaimo), Lucy White (Toronto)

    1. Short Term Actions:

    • Bi-weekly members Let’s Talk About it – check in
    • Short term informal LEAN initiative information circulated to members
    • ACCA membership committee working on a new pro bono Work Policy for our members
    • Request to members to share tips/survival strategies on FB, LinkedIn and the new Twitter account
    • A possible pilot project for teams of 3 ACCA members to work with paying clients is being discussed
    • Suggest interested ACCA members create Canada Council profile and link to the ACCA profile.
    • Survey coming soon to ACCA members to determine the links/connections we have with Arts Service Orgs.
    • ACCA Vice Pres. Eric Dubeau is getting ACCA connected with the Canadian Arts Coalition response
    • ACCA to send out general notice (ebulletin?) notify the sector that our members are here to help

    2. Medium Term Actions:

    • Canada Council meeting April 2 – encouraged ACCA to work with ASOs
    • Meeting with Dept. of Canadian Heritage soon – Victoria and Roger
    • The idea is that ACCA could develop a program/project with Arts Service Organizations to build sector resiliency, sustainability and evolve in the new era. Opportunities to innovate and create the future will be essential to recovery.

    3. Check in – What members are hearing:

    • Lots of response initiatives emerging – nothing organized yet
    • Artists are stressed, out of work and out of money-  e.g. Lost My Gig
    • Summer festivals cancelling
    • Artists are being asked to work for free
    • Consultants are being asked to work for free
    • Wondering if audiences will return to live venues?
    • Museums and art galleries might fair better because social distancing possible
    • What will the future look like? Maybe it looks like this right now?
    • Strategic Planning seems impossible – but planning must occur
    • This is the time to innovate
    • UK arts scene bursting on to social media world wide
    • Digital Strategy fund impact

    4.  Wrap-Up

    • It was agreed by all that the hour was well spent, good information shared and a plan of action for ACCA is evolving. It was agreed that there would be another Let’s Talk About It in two weeks (Wed. April 22).

  • Insurance for Consultants Webinar

    ACCA Professional Development Event

    What You Need to Know About Insurance

    Tuesday, January 14, 2020
    12:00 – 1:00 PM Pacific / 3:00 – 4:00 PM Eastern / 4:00 – 5:00 PM Atlantic
    Location: Online

    Have questions about insurance? Of course you do!

    Benjamin Rossington of HUB International’s Sports and Entertainment Practice will provide a bespoke presentation for ACCA members outlining the various types of insurance available to today’s arts consulting practitioners. Learn about General Liability, Errors and Omissions and the most up-to-date data protection coverage. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A.

    Who should attend:  Arts Consultants, others who are self-employed.

    Facilitator:  Benjamin’s passion is to ensure that the show goes on. For over eight years, Benjamin has been working with every imaginable stakeholder in the entertainment industry, from touring bands, record labels, festival organizers, music studios, backline, staging and marketing firms. Ben’s passion is to ensure his clients receive the best possible advice, information and instruction to do their job successfully.

     

    Fee:                       Free for ACCA members, $20 for non-members

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