Opinion

In October 1973, the Arts Access* conference was convened at Simon Fraser University (SFU) to discuss provincial arts policies and practices. Nini Baird, wearer of many hats, chaired the conference. She was, at the time, a board member of the Canadian Conference of the Arts and the Canada Council, but it was because she was Director of the Centre for Communications and the Arts at SFU that she was able to amass the resources required to host and organize the conference....Read more

For more on this topic, please refer to Chris Tyrell's September 2010 opinion piece, "New Policies, Not Restored Funding".

Background – The last years of the Social Credit Government under W.A.C. Bennett...Read more

"Making it" in the United States has always been a kind of ultimate test for many professionals including visual artists, but the process of setting up your practice to accommodate international sales prevents many Canadian visual artists from even considering entering one of the word’s great marketplaces. The biggest obstacles to participating in the US marketplace, however, come from perceived challenges rather than real ones—plus the bad word of mouth about the process from those who attempt it without doing the proper preparatory work....Read more

Stories and Value
Stories are so important. We entertain each other with them; our values and history are celebrated in historical myths and legends and they are an extremely powerful component of effective teaching. The value of narrative for visual artists is a critical part of every course, workshop and speech I make about visual art marketing and career development....Read more

When you say "real estate" in Vancouver, two names that come immediately to mind (especially for those of us in the visual arts) are Michael Audain and Bob Rennie. Michael Audain is CEO of Polygon Homes; his firm builds (and sells) homes. Bob Rennie is Executive Director of Rennie Marketing Systems; he is the pre-eminent marketer of real estate....Read more

I met Bill Horne as a result of my interest in CARFAC. Bill was head of the BC branch of CARFAC when we met and we have maintained a professional relationship for many years....Read more

I thoroughly enjoyed walking around Vancouver’s Olympic sites and all the various pavilions downtown in spectacular sunshine and unseasonably warm weather. I had no idea that there would be all those international and Canadian regional pavilions creating a kind of world’s fair atmosphere in the city core. In some of the pavilions there was a focus on culture and artistry....Read more

Your assignment, should you wish to accept it, is as follows:

#1 Create an inventory of twenty things that you have put “on display” in your home – that is, things that you have expressly made visible for guests to see in your living space. ...Read more

I am in a love/hate relationship. I met my love in 1986, and since then, my love has made my life unbelievably richer and easier; my love has brought the whole world into my life and totally changed the nature of the work I do....Read more

Forget the H1N1 virus, there is a plague of artists in BC, according to Hill Strategies Research (HSR), a company that conducts research on the arts in Canada. The revelations of their analyses can seem, on the surface, rather depressing....Read more