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CAPACOA 2005
Having recently returned from the CANADIAN ARTS PRESENTING ASSOCIATION conference recently convened in Ottawa, I have been reflecting on why I have found this conference so personally and professionally meaningful for the last 15 years. It is an annual meeting that I make it a point to never miss. Since I have chosen to pass on so many other conferences over the years, I decided to share what makes it special and rewarding to make my annual pilgrimage North in order to renew the friendships and collegiality that have come to mean so much.
It is even more interesting to observe some of my fellow American colleagues return repeatedly. Wally Chappell, a colleague and friend who I admire and respect enormously returned this year. His keynote a couple of years ago was stunning – erudite, insightful, exquisitely phrased, and challenging. John Patches was absent, but John’s presence over the years has been a treasure. Teri Orr, from Park City’s Eccles Center, made the trip again, and just blew me away with her fundraising and marketing strategies. It’s great to have discovered something so wonderful and then see one’s friends discover it, too.
SCALE
As I have grown older, I have come to really value being a part of a conference where the sheer numbers of people present aren’t overwhelming. When it comes to participation, bigger is not only not better, it’s worse.
I’m a social creature and I love having the time and opportunity to hear and watch individuals change and evolve over time. At the CAPACOA conference, it’s not just some delegate that I don’t know who rises to the microphone to speak; it’s a person that I have come to know something about – his or her home community, facilities, professional accomplishments, challenges, background, and philosophy. That knowledge – over time – helps me put remarks in context. I think I take away more value because I understand why a particular point-of-view emerges from both the person and the organization in which they work. I enjoy that dynamic and I appreciate what it teaches me.
Manageable scale creates, for me, the experience of being in a conversation that takes place over time. That experience is due in no small part to the continuity and regularity of those speaking. Smaller numbers make for greater “air time� as well as more “face time.� These are both things I value. And everyone follows the conversational thread as it is woven into a tapestry of meaning during the three or four days that people convene. By the time the conference closes, I sense a kind of community consensus emerging in the last sessions. People have made sense of things and take the meaning and experience home with them, hopefully to use it to inform and enrich the work they do in their communities.
PHILOSOPHY
Without a doubt, Canada differs from the Unites States in important ways. Canadians are both a gentler and tougher people than many Americans I know. There is an illusion that the government makes running nonprofit arts organizations easier in Canada than here in the United States. It ain’t necessarily so.
I am amazed and frankly inspired by the ingenuity, thrift, cunning, resilience, and determination of Canadian presenters and artist managers. These people do more with less and often do it much better. I always learn from these folks, especially from people like Chris Ball, a one-man-show from the Maritimes who famously has the popcorn machine in his office. I missed Chris at the conference this year and felt his absence greatly. The Canadian cultural sector’s strength lies as much in the quality of its individuals as it does in its organizations.
These folks work often in small markets – locally, regionally, and nationally. Companies like the Royal Winnipeg Ballet – a ballet company of astonishing quality that tours worldwide from its prairie city home, Winnipeg. In Canada, there are maybe 8 markets that can support it. But the RWB, with its commitment to serving Canadians equitably, has performed in places the equivalent of which one would never find the New York City Ballet or another comparable American ballet company performing. Our national treasures have become too important and too expensive to go to places like where I grew up – Cody, Wyoming.
CONSISTENCY
Every year, when I’m in plenary sessions or workshops, I sit and think, “Wow. This is amazing stuff.� And it happens every year. When I look back over my many conferences I think about the amazing people I’ve met and listened to at CAPACOA: Former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson spoke before she became the Queen’s representative in Canada; John Ralston Saul, the eminent Canadian author of Voltaire’s Bastards and The End of Globalization; Glenn Murray, Winnipeg’s charismatic Mayor and creative sector champion; and this year, Andrew Taylor, the well-known Artful Manager blogger and head of the prestigious Bolz Center at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Business.
For the last several years, CAPACOA has been blessed by the moderating skills of one of Canada’s eminent cultural journalists, Laurie Brown. Again, this is a touch that just doesn’t happen here in the US. Would we see and come to know a leading national journalist (with celebrity status) at our conferences? It hasn’t happened and I doubt it will, despite American conferences’ brobdingnagian enrollment numbers.
PLACE
Ottawa is a wonderful city to visit. Whenever I walk to Parliament, or by the Chateau Laurier, or visit Ottawa’s Market Area, I am filled with joy. There is a sense of place, of history, of dignity, and aliveness in the City. Recently, CAPACOA’s leadership made a decision to move the conference on a biannual basis. Last year’s event in Edmonton was terrific, if a bit chilly. To be able to visit and come to know, if only a little bit, the cultural treasures of Canada’s great cities is a gift. I’m looking forward to being in Saint John, New Brunswick next year.
Posted on November 22, 2005 11:29 PM | Permalink
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