More Sweat and Tears in Art-making, Less in the Application:
Yesterday, Canada Council for the Arts’ CEO Simon Brault announced a new non-disciplinary funding model that will see the Council dramatically reconfigure 142 funding programs into 10. The Council’s fundamental values, namely commitment to artistic excellence and peer assessment, will be maintained in this new structure. This new model is still in the planning phase, but it will include simpler online applications beginning in June 2016. Although the 10 programs have not been finalized, Brault guaranteed that Aboriginal Arts will be retained. Brault asserted that this non-disciplinary funding model will sustain the Council’s relevance 15 years from now. Brault assured the audience at the Annual Public Meeting that no current client will lose $1 as a result of this change and that the Council will continue its role as catalyst for art-making in Canada.
In dance, this new funding model presents many questions. Will the Dance Office still exist? Will dance be clearly understood by a cross-disciplinary jury? Will dance be competitive in this non-disciplinary structure? At the Dance Debates last year in Toronto, the community debated this exact issue and notably, the dance community voted for the debaters who argued to maintain discipline-based funding. If you missed the Dance Debates, the topics were inspired by Shannon Litzenberger’s Metcalf Foundation report Choreographing Our Future: Strategies for Supporting New Generation Arts Practice.
The CDA will take an active role advocating for dance during this shift at the Canada Council. Colleagues at Regroupement québécois de la danse and AUSDance will be consulted in order to understand the impact of non-disciplinary funding on dance specifically.