Orchestras Canada/Orchestres Canada

Archives: Resources

Digital Strategic Planning: A Practical Guide for the Cultural Sector

From OC’s National Conference 2019: 

John White Fiona MorrisFacebook, and Twitter, and Youtube, oh my! The arts and culture sector operates in an increasingly digital landscape. How do orchestras keep up with the pressures and opportunities of going digital, and where do we strike a balance between online offerings and our live programming? Fiona Morris and John White of The Space lead this workshop on developing and executing an effective digital strategy for your organization. They draw on research and case studies to examine issues like content creation, rights management, and how to really reach audiences online.

The accompanying slide deck can be found here:

Social Prescribing and Orchestras

Social prescribing is a way of referring people from clinical care to a range of local, non-clinical services.  In this lunch & learn, we discuss what social prescribing is, why it is important, and how orchestras might engage with its practitioners. Learn about the history of social prescribing, hear how it’s being scaled up,  and meet leaders in this emerging field.

Hosted by Aaron Mcfarlane, Toronto Symphony Orchestra with special guests Sonia Hsiung, Social Prescribing Pilot Lead, Alliance for Healthier Communities; Janis Dahl, Health Promoter, Centretown Community Health Centre; Surkhab Peerzada, Regional Manager for Chronic Disease, South Riverdale Community Health Centre.

The accompanying slide deck can be found here:

An audio recording of the presentation can be found here.

Transcending Differences Through the Arts

From OC’s National Conference 2019: 

“I firmly believe that the arts are the only pure vehicle we have in today’s society that cross cultural and ethnic barriers and allow people to transcend their differences.” – Donna Walker-Kuhne

Donna Walker-Kuhne, of Walker International Communications Group and New Jersey Performing Arts Centre (NJPAC), delivers this keynote presentation on welcoming diverse audiences to arts spaces. She discusses what community and diversity mean in different contexts; how the arts connect us across differences; and key tactics for inviting, retaining, and truly making space for arts audiences that “look like the subway station.”

The accompanying slide deck can be found here:

An audio recording of the presentation can be found here

What is Resilience Anyway?

From OC’s National Conference 2019: 

What does the word “resilience” mean? What does it mean across sectors? To your organization? To you? Patrick Towell of The Audience Agency and Golant Media Ventures takes up these questions in his lively and interactive workshop. Drawing from original research, Patrick explores how arts organizations (and the people working within them) view themselves in terms of resilience and how to incorporate more resilient practices into our orchestras.

The accompanying slide deck can be found here:

Inclusive Leadership in Governance

Tools for Fostering a Culture of Inclusion at the Board Level

Cathy WinterFrom OC’s National Conference 2019:

Gender, race, class, sexuality, age, ability – we hear much about how Canada is diverse, but how do we create a culture of inclusion and embrace diversity at the board level? Cathy Winter of OnBoard Canada led this workshop for board members and staff on strategizing for, and practicing, inclusive leadership and governance in the non-profit sector.

A guidebook developed from Cathy’s presentation can be found here:

Making Orchestras OF/BY/FOR ALL

From OC’s National Conference 2019:

Nina Simon“What are we willing to change to welcome new people? What are we willing to change to help new people belong?”

Many would agree that orchestras offer programming FOR our communities, but is our programming truly OF and BY our communities? In her keynote presentation, Nina Simon focuses on the risks and rewards of engaging our communities more closely with our institutions, introducing OF/BY/FOR ALL: a new “global movement and a set of tools to help your organization become of, by, and for your community.” She explores the communities you currently serve and those you wish to involve — she gives take-home tools you can use to talk with your board and colleagues about new opportunities for community involvement that can empower communities and strengthen your organization’s impact.

The accompanying slide deck can be found here:

An audio recording of the presentation can be found here.

Re-sounding the Orchestra

Relationships between Canadian orchestras, Indigenous peoples, and people of colour

  

This report, authored by Soraya Peerbaye and Dr. Parmela Attariwala, was commissioned by Orchestras Canada with support from the Canada Council for the Arts, and OC’s donors. It is the product of over twelve months’ research, and presents perspectives gathered through interviews and roundtable discussions with close to forty administrators, artistic directors, Indigenous musicians, and musicians of colour.

The report is composed of three chapters:

  1. Placing relationships at the heart presents perspectives gathered through these interviews and roundtables.
  2. Defining the terms underlying the IDEA(s) presents a historical and critical overview of issues related to equity and diversity, including systemic inequity and coloniality in Canadian orchestras.
  3. Re-visioning Western classical musical training for the 21st century addresses the changes needed in music education and training, as well as in professional associations, to generate socio-cultural and musical change in Canadian orchestras.

The report concludes with a series of recommendations to Orchestras Canada that include actions, conversations and questions to help advance diversity and equity in Canadian orchestras. In an addendum to the report, Orchestras Canada presents our initial responses to these recommendations.

By commissioning this report, Orchestras Canada has taken a first step to re-defining our role as an arts service organization. We are proud to have started this journey, grateful for the learnings so far, and excited to continue. We humbly acknowledge that we have much more to do.

Re-sounding the Orchestra presents many challenges to ingrained ways of working, but we believe OC’s ability, and in the collective ability of Canadian orchestras (musicians, artistic leaders, board members, direct service volunteers, staff, and audiences) to respond to these new challenges.

Contact

Katherine Carleton
Executive Director
Orchestras Canada/Orchestres Canada
[email protected] | 705-243-6640 | 1-877-809-7288 x 1

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts

Logo, Canada Council for the Arts

Workplace Harassment in the Arts

CHRC-CRHSC LogoUnder the Respectful Workplaces in the Arts banner, the Cultural Human Resources Council (CHRC) has released two training videos on workplace harassment in the arts.

One for employers – including Boards of Directors of not-for-profit organizations.

And one for cultural workers – including self-employed artists, contractors and employees.

These animated videos on ‘responding to harassment’ are scenario-based. They have been produced to explain the rights and responsibilities of employers with respect to reports of workplace harassment; and to explain the rights and responsibilities of cultural workers who experience or witness harassment. They come with practical takeaways and best practices to recognize and navigate incidents of harassment from both points of view (employer and worker), and include a questionnaire to test the learner’s recall of the videos’ content.

Diversity and Drivers of Arts Attendance

In June 2018, Business for the Arts released CultureTrack Canada, the results of an online survey of 6,444 Canadians who had participated in a cultural activity between December 2017 and January 2018.  Attendees at Orchestras Canada’s 2018 conference in Calgary benefited from a sneak peek at the report’s key findings, and conference attendees requested a more granular analysis of the report’s findings on classical music patrons in particular. Working in collaboration with the other members of Canada’s Performing Arts Alliance, OC helped to commission a more fine-grained analysis of the Culture Track Canada dataset.

The report explores what’s motivating arts attendance among different segments of the Canadian population, and how these motivators influence frequency of attendance at classical music, popular music, musicals, opera, ballet and theatre, as well as art museums and galleries.

Here are three facts we found particularly interesting in the report, to whet your appetite:

  • Classical music attendance is higher among those who have immigrated to Canada more recently. Among those who were born somewhere else, 18% attend classical music monthly compared to only 10% of those whose parents and grandparents were born in Canada.
  • Top driving factors for attending classical music varied by the language spoken at home:
    • Anglophones: Bettering my emotional well-being; Being able to go by myself; Having grown up participating in it.
    • Francophones: Feeling like it gives life a deeper meaning; Experiencing new things.
    • Allophones: Being able to go by myself; Feeling like it gives life a deeper meaning; Having fun.
  • Ethnicity was far less of a determining factor in classical music attendance than one might think. With approximately 12% of the survey sample attending classical music at least once a month, this went as high as 28% in South Asian and Black/African survey participants, and 22% for Middle Eastern survey participants.