Artful Conversations 2020 Kathleen Darby Interview
Welcome to Artful Conversations - a podcast about arts and cultural management. Hosts Annetta Latham and Katrina Ingram, interview leaders who help shape the world of arts and culture. We share their stories, their insights and observations. This podcast season has been brought to you with the support of MacEwan University and The Rozsa Foundation.
KATRINA: Welcome to Artful Conversations, I'm your host, Katarina Ingram. Today my guest is Kathleen Darby, general manager of the Creative City Network of Canada. Kathleen Darby is a leader and consultant with an exceptional background in organizational development, program creation and implementation, event management and service delivery in a career that spanned three provinces in Canada. She has held senior level positions in the cultural, education and hospitality sectors. She was the first executive director of the Costume Museum of Canada, the Winnipeg International Writers Festival and Creative Manitoba, where she built the organization from the ground up. Her most recent post is with the Creative City Network of Canada, a national network of municipal cultural leaders dedicated to increasing the level of public engagement and awareness of the cultural sector in Canada. Welcome Kathleen.
KATHLEEN: Thanks very much, Katrina. It's great to be here.
KATRINA: Well, let's start out with a little bit of history. Can you tell us more about the history and the mandate of the Creative City Network of Canada?
KATHLEEN: Yeah, so the Creative City Network of Canada was established in 2002, so 18 years ago. And it was established because of the need to create connections for those who are working in culture at a municipal level. And it's grown from a handful of connections to over one hundred municipal members now as well as it has aligned with organizational members, in 2014, we added organizational members and individual members as well. So it's an organization that's been around for quite a long time and also has sort of developed over the years. And a lot of the work that CCNC has been doing has been toolkits and research and development and training and networking. And each year we have an annual summit. Of course, this year we had to postpone our summit. So it's a very interesting organization and really has its ear to the ground in a grassroots kind of way and brings that kind of perspective to the overall cultural sector in Canada and even internationally.
KATRINA: Well, that's quite a journey having evolved over the last 18 years. What would you say are some of the significant milestones that you've seen on that journey or maybe one significant milestone that you've personally been really proud of or pleased to see happen?
KATHLEEN: Well, I think the tool kits are really a great resource. I mean, many municipalities are going through the process of cultural planning. They go into a process called official community planning, and often those initial community plans are 10 years kind of long. And then parts of the municipal structure are pulled out. So the municipality might then have a cultural plan and other kinds of plans for housing development and that kind of thing. So I think the toolkits really help in terms of that idea of cultural planning and help those people who are working in those municipal jobs, municipal cultural jobs, to look at how to implement effective cultural planning. So I think the toolkits are a real milestone for the organization. However, they're quite dated now and the first toolkits were created in 2006, I believe. So I'm sure that in the next couple of years we'll see updated versions of all three of the cultural planning, cultural mapping and public art toolkits.
KATRINA: Yeah, it's always good to kind of keep things refreshed and and make sure that you're on point for what's going on today. I want to step back a little bit and talk a little bit more broadly about creative cities in general. Can you define what constitutes a creative city in Canada?
KATHLEEN: Well, you know, I want to say that I I think that all cities are creative cities. I mean, how can you not be a creative city? Creative cities are defined by their stories, and their history, and their people, and the diversity of culture that exists in them. So how actively a city pursues that idea of creative city, might mean that it's more or less successful in engaging its community in that regard. But most municipalities see the cultural sector as one of the aspects of creating quality of life for their citizens. So that might be having local festivals or it might mean supporting artists networks. But what I wanted, one of the things I want to say, is that there's kind of two aspects to the creative sector or the cultural sector.
One is specifically around the sort of artistic side and the creating of those stories and the dissemination of that. And so it's not necessarily, you know, sort of based in the economic structures. However, the creative industries have more of an economic factor. So there's sort of a culture-centric side to creative cities and an economic-centric side to creative cities, and a balance of that is important for cities and for community members to see in their city.
KATRINA: That's a lovely way to think about it, just kind of thinking about the cultural side and the economic side. And I also like the fact that you say that every city is a creative city. We all have potential. But I'm wondering about how we actualize that potential. How do we support and nurture creativity? What does that look like? And how can we stay engaged with the creative discourse, especially when we have this rapidly changing environment that's all around us?
KATHLEEN: Well, I think that the fundamentals of cultural planning actually help us to do that. In many ways, the idea that you would bring the community together, cultural planning is based on that grassroots communication that's needed, so that people can actually bring their stories to the table, they can they can look at the tangible and intangible cultural assets in their community and and discover how the citizens really feel about about their community. So municipalities have a sort of an obligation to do that, to do that process of cultural planning, and that might include establishing ways of creating financial support. It might include establishing community events. It would include embracing the diversity of the population and the stories that exist in your community and understanding the physical and mental well-being that creativity provides and the way that creativity helps us define and understand ourselves. And that's all in addition to the economic value, of course, of nurturing creativity as well.
KATRINA: There's a lot there absolutely to unpack and seeing how the linkages form between kind of the planning and the actualization. And you mentioned these toolkits and that seems to be an important aspect. You've actually produced three toolkits that are available online. There's cultural planning, there's a cultural mapping toolkit and a public art toolkit. Can you dig in a little bit more and tell us the importance of these toolkits and how they were actually used by organizations and what that looks like? The differences perhaps between how a small organization might apply the tool kit versus a large organization? What did that actually look like in practice?
KATHLEEN: I think that the cultural planning toolkits, cultural planning, mapping and public art toolkits are specifically created for that municipal worker who's trying to drive that agenda within their municipality. I think that outside of that environment, so, for example, any given cultural organization would be more of a participant and an observer of those things. So as a cultural manager, for example, I would want to know what cultural planning is about and know what my role would be in cultural planning.
I was involved in developing the Creative Manitoba strategy, which ended in creating the Creative Manitoba organization, and that was a long process. It was a good six months or a year of developing the community to come together and discuss all of the implications of a plan that would move an agenda forward within the province of Manitoba. So the same kind of thing happens at the municipal level. One of the things that I think municipalities need to do as part of their cultural planning process is this idea of cultural mapping, right? So cultural mapping being the mapping of the tangible. So tangible being theaters and rooms where things might happen, and maybe dance studios and those kinds of things, those kind of actual tangible and then the intangible like artists networks and that kind of thing. So getting a really good idea of where all these things sit within the conditions of culture in your community is very important.
And I wanted to just read a little quote from Nancy Duxbury - said “cultural mapping is a mode of inquiry and the methodological tool in urban planning, cultural sustainability and community development that makes visible the ways local stories, practices, relationships, memories and rituals constitute places as meaningful locations.” So I thought that was a really great quote to kind of illustrate how important cultural mapping is to the overall cultural planning process.
And then just to continue on into the public art area. Public art, of course, is one tool of developing a cultural environment in your city and the idea of creating public art that reflects our communities, and our history, and the newness of an immigrant community, for example. All of those things also play into that public art planning process and policy. And we've seen on our listserv recently a renewed interest in public art and public art policy and how to deal with some of the civic unrest that has happened over the past little while and using public art to sort of ground those ideas and emotional responses to that kind of thing. So it's quite interesting how all of these things fit together.
KATRINA: Yeah, you paint a really interesting and interlocking picture and and thank you for sharing that quote as well and explaining how cultural or cultural policy or sorry, cultural planning and cultural mapping kind of feed together. I'm kind of curious about digging into cultural mapping just a little bit more and going back to that idea of every city being a creative city and having potential. How could these two things then link together? How does cultural mapping kind of lead into this idea of finding the highest potential in a city's culture?
KATHLEEN: Well, it's interesting. The cultural planning process that I went through with the city of Nanaimo, I think that the process really identifies assets that you might not even know about. Did you know that there was this network of visual artists that were working out of this building and had never applied for a grant or anything? So how would you know that they were there? So that to be able to look at this overall, bring the community together to say where are these assets, these tangible and intangible assets in the community and how do we activate them?
How do we use that discussion also to look at the problems that might need to be solved? Do we have the right theater spaces, for example, to offer to our community so that they can continue to grow and do the performances that they want to do? And what are the strengths that we can build on? Do we have an active artist community or an active heritage community or active immigrant communities who are contributing to the overall quality and understanding of who we are? So that cultural mapping to me is kind of one of those essential things. It's like grass roots digging into who are we really? And I think that before we enter into the cultural planning process, cultural mapping is an essential piece. And yes, I mean, it's going to let us know what are our strengths and where are the weaknesses that we need to address in our cultural plan. And then how is that going to also inform the official community plan?
KATRINA: Right. Yeah. And that you raise a great point about identifying the assets and kind of knowing what you have. And I'm wondering if either in your current role or in a prior role, you might have a concrete example of how that worked so that this kind of process of identifying these cultural assets and then kind of linking that back into cultural planning, if you have some kind of a concrete story around how that has shown up in the course of the work that you've done.
KATHLEEN: Yeah, I'm not sure that something's coming to mind just immediately on that one, Katrina. But the process that I went through with the Creative Manitoba development, we knew that there was a hole in terms of training individuals in learning how to do their work in the cultural sector. And so one of the main focuses of that work was to identify the holes in training and then to offer those. So, for example, one of the areas we knew needed to be worked on was governance. And so we identified that and did some specific work in that regard, within that organization. So I'm not sure that I can give you any more concrete examples, but that it's all sort of feeding back into the overall planning process and decision making process. In the end, these cultural plans are supposed to be living documents. So when it comes to policymaking at the council table or at the legislative table, hopefully these plans are informing the process of making decisions about how things will develop.
KATRINA: Yeah, no, I think that's a great example about identifying gaps, seeing a need, trying to address that in your plan. I'm wondering, what are some of the key characteristics that define a successful cultural plan?
KATHLEEN: Well, I want to point people to the cultural planning toolkit for the CCNC. I do have some here with me right now that I can say, and some of those are a local definition of culture that focuses on more than just Eurocentric arts based activities and heritage. So really getting digging deep into that local discussion, a focus on cultural resources and how they can be mobilized to help a community achieve their civic goals, a focus on building networks very important to build those networks, relationships and partnerships rather than facilities, for example, a process of broadly-based community involvement and collaboration that includes representation of the community and its cultural sectors, neighborhood citizens, elected officials and other community leaders. So those are just some of the things that create a successful cultural plan. And you can see that a lot of them have to do with let's-get-together-and-talk-about-this and discover what we have and who we are.
KATRINA: Those are really good concrete examples. And I'm pretty sure we're going to be linking in to your website. So for those who want to dig a little bit deeper, they can look into that a bit more. I'm curious about the perspective of an arts manager, because, of course, our students are our future arts managers. And so having that perspective is interesting. What goals should an arts manager have for their organization to sustain cultural activity in the greater community? What should arts managers be thinking about?
KATHLEEN: Yeah, audience development is a really important discussion, right? Then, of course, that's going to be key to the success of organizations as they move forward and also to the success of arts managers. I think it's important for us to identify that our audiences are fluid. First of all, that it's not just the same audiences that are going to be interested in the products that we create. So identifying, first of all, identifying who the new audiences are, for example, children, young adults, immigrant and refugee audiences. And then also, how can we engage those people and those communities in creating their own cultural products that might enliven cities as well? And then I think it's also important to sort of build into community life the idea of “this is our festival.” So, for example, Nanaimo has a silly boat festival and everybody goes to the silly boat festival and it's part of community life there.
And then I think that also we need to make sure that we identify the barriers to audience participation and try and resolve those. So if people can't get to your venue, then how can you resolve that in your municipality by making sure that the busses are getting there and maybe you're offering free transportation to get to certain kinds of events and stuff like that. So those kinds of ideas in terms of identifying those new audiences, as well as looking into how to galvanize a community around their local events and then also finding those problem areas and trying to resolve them.
KATRINA: I love the Silly Boat Festival. I have not heard of that. My goodness, that sounds really fun. And what you've just said is actually a great segue to my next question, because I really wanted to understand the how, how do organizations and cities actually take these large cultural plans and prioritize people and their community? How do they make sure that it's reflecting the community? And I think that the Silly Boat Festival example is a great one. Are there other things that you might suggest that these organizations do? And so they're not kind of importing other events or other cultural happenings and that the cultural plan and priorities are truly reflective of the community. Are there other things that you've seen in the course of your work that really get to the heart of that?
KATHLEEN: Well, yes. I mean, one of the things is ensuring that in Canada in particular, that all of the diversity of communities are represented at the table when you're engaging in that planning process. So your indigenous communities, your immigrant communities, your, you know, historical communities, they're all at that table. I think that otherwise, if we don't if we don't have those voices at the table, then we are not going to create an active community plan that's going to be adopted and easily implemented in the community because people won't believe in it. They won't see themselves reflected in it. And I think that's the most important part, is that people see themselves reflected in those plans. And again, Katrina, municipalities are making their decisions based on these planning documents that they create. So they will be moving agendas forward. So for arts managers, again, making sure that you get involved in those discussions at the community level, don't ignore your local councilors and cultural municipal workers. Talk to them, find out what the priorities are of your community, and then try to try to influence those priorities through your own engagement in those processes.
KATRINA: Yeah, I'm hearing communication as a huge theme that's coming through in this conversation. I want to shift gears just a little bit slightly and talk about destination cities. So when the city distinguishes itself as a destination city, what are the challenges in trying to create cultural organizations that are not tokenistic?
KATHLEEN: Yeah, this is a good question, because what happens often is that we think, oh, well, let's just trot out this group or that group. The cruise ship shows up and let's trot this group out. And we don't want to sort of misrepresent who we are by thinking that people will just come and will just experience this sort of “entertainment” rather than really experience the culture of the community. But let us let it be true to the feel of the place and to the sense of the community. Let's make sure that what we're promoting and disseminating to the people who are coming here is having an effect of having them understand more the place that they're visiting to really deeply understand it, not just on a surface level.
KATRINA: I'm curious about this idea of collaboration and I'm wondering how different organizations can support each other, can collaborate with each other and reinforce the culture in their municipality. How have you seen that work in the course of your work?
KATHLEEN: Well, I think we do that really well, actually, in the cultural sector. I think we've had to do that to sort of develop and move forward, move our agendas forward. And particularly in times of crisis, we need to develop those relationships in those communities and make sure that we have an understanding of what each other is doing. I think that more than anything, there's sort of two things that I want to say around this.
If you are choosing to go into running a municipal culture in a city as part of your career path, for example, then you might want to make sure that you understand municipal government really, really well and that you understand that the idea of that is to make sure that you are connecting with people on the ground and bringing that perspective into the planning of what's going on in your community.
And on the other hand, as I said before, if you're if you're working in the cultural sector already, making sure that you're connecting with those people and your MLAs and your MP’s and keeping in touch with them and making sure that you're at those tables, that's that's key. When we get together and we have those discussions, we can have an effect on how things move forward. I don't think that we should really complain about how they move forward unless we're doing that. We really should get to those tables, even though sometimes it's difficult.
KATRINA: We should do our best to get to those tables, to be at the table or live with the consequences of not being at the table. I want to take this down one more level to that of the individual. And I'm wondering about what long term strategies might be used to build a culture that converts individuals and communities into recurring and engaged audiences.
KATHLEEN: Yeah, I think we talked about that a little bit already in terms of audience development and how, you know, individuals who come from different parts of the community, whether it's youth or the immigrant community, and how to make sure that we, as arts managers, are creating that inclusivity within our organizations and then making sure that we're communicating that to the municipalities and other levels of government. So how do individuals become engaged? Because they are also being heard, right? I think that if we're not, I mean, you could you can actually use an analogy from completely outside the cultural sector, for example, like religion, people aren't going to certain kinds of churches anymore because it's just not speaking to them.
KATRINA: That is actually a really great analogy. And just kind of figuring out then what is going to resonate with that person if it's not that other message. How do you shift things? Great analogy. Well, let's talk about you, Kathleen, specifically. Now, you entered your post as general manager at CCNC this past March. How has that been so far during these very unusual times that we find ourselves in?
KATHLEEN: Yeah, it's actually very interesting because when I was talking to the vice president and president of the organization about the job in February, we didn't have a pandemic. And however, the intention of CCNC was to move to more of a virtual environment anyway, so that was not a difficulty. We knew that this organization is nationwide, so having the opportunity to do video chat and stuff like that was something that was always on the table and that we would move more to that anyway. However, we did intend to have a summit in October. And so the pivots that we had to do were significant. So like I said at the beginning, we established the series of national calls because we wanted to address the issues that people were facing. How could we support our community of municipal culture workers in a way that would make sense in terms of pandemic? And really, we found out a lot about what was going on on the ground floor. And we recognize and through them that the cultural sector is taking the biggest hit. I mean, maybe tourism, but the cultural sector is taking the biggest hit and how difficult it was for these municipal cultural workers to navigate those waters of closures, of facilities and and laying off and redeploying staff and all the kinds of implications of that.
So we've I mean, in terms of CCNC, it's actually been, in a way, helpful because it's made us look at the organization deeply and look at how we can better serve our membership and move our agenda forward and create training opportunities and information gathering and networking opportunities that will go beyond that sort of in-person summit. So I really feel very fortunate to have taken this job on at this time. If I had been working in a cultural sector organization, there would have been a much more difficult sort of road. And for me personally, but also I feel as though CCNC is offering our municipal membership a way of connecting that's helping them really navigate this and look at how they can support the sector moving forward. And we're also being asked by the provincial and national level to bring that grassroots perspective to those other levels of government as well. So I think CCNC has a big role to play in the recovery process.
KATRINA: It sounds like it for sure. And it sounds like really interesting learning that you had to personally navigate and just rethinking how you wanted to do that summit and rethinking how you want to support your community. You shared a little bit about your goals and plans for the CCNC. Is there anything else that you want to share around that in terms of future vision, where things are going either in 2021 or beyond?
KATHLEEN: Well, I mean, we are working on national and international partnerships right now. One partnership that we're working on right now is with the Canadian Commission of UNESCO. And there is, as you probably know, the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. And so we're going to be working up a relationship with them to help Canadian cities be successful in applications to become a UNESCO Creative City. We are also doing regional mini summits instead of our summit, and we're hoping to use some of the podcast material that we're working with Grant MacEwan University on for those. So there's a lot of sort of plans moving forward. The organization is looking at how to really activate individuals that are members of the organization in terms of committee participation and developing new ways of addressing the issues that the cultural sector is facing, but also new ways of supporting that work at the municipal level. So it's pretty exciting, actually, what's going on that sort of like from the local to the national and international level. And I really see a lot of opportunities. And there's been time as well to work on structural things, sort of very basic finance structure and operational structure things as well in the organization. So I feel like we're creating the solid footing and moving forward with the organization.
KATRINA: Well, that all sounds fantastic. My last question before we wrap up very open ended, is there anything that you would like to add that I haven't asked you about or just any thoughts that you want to share as we bring our podcast to a close?
KATHLEEN: I think I think I've done most of it. I think I mentioned also that I think that governance and you're going to be talking about this in another podcast is the really important issue to understand the relationship between governance and administration in organizations, and that's something that's been very high on my priority list as a cultural manager myself, and I just feel really fortunate to work in an organization that has a clear understanding of those two functions in the organization. So that's one thing. And also just a just a sort of a recap of what we've talked about. And that is how cultural planning is really a grassroots process.
And to encourage people who are already in cultural management roles or who are considering cultural management roles to be engaged with their local and regional and national cultural managers so that they can have a voice at that table and make sure that their perspectives are being addressed.
KATRINA: Wonderful. Well, Kathleen, I just want to say thank you so much for being here on the podcast today and sharing your perspectives about creative cities in general and the Creative City Network of Canada in particular. Thank you so much.
KATHLEEN: Thanks very much, Katrina. It's been a pleasure.
Analysis
KATRINA: Well, Annetta, I have to admit, I didn't really know much about the Creative Cities Network before I spoke with Kathleen, so this was such a learning experience for me.
ANNETTA: Oh, absolutely. And I think some of the things that she really hit on were really, really interesting. The stuff that she talked about, about festivals being key parts of communities and not to overlook those and to think about the barriers to participation. But my favorite thing was the silly boat festival. I’m absolutely going to have to google that.
KATRINA: That was a really fun comment. The things that really stood out for me is this idea of building relationships across cities, across regions, globally and really sharing what you know in terms of professional development. And I really think that's at the heart of what Creative Cities is all about. And it also struck me that you can do this from anywhere. We were talking, Kathleen was based in a very small community in Vancouver Island. She's not in a major center, and yet she's heading up this national network. And so it just struck me that you don't have to be anywhere major these days. You can literally be anywhere and connect to people.
ANNETTA: Yeah, totally agree. We've got so much to learn from what they, what she talked about. And I think it's, you know, and the websites there for all of us to jump on and connect with. I think it was really exciting.
This show was created by Executive Producer and Host Annetta Latham; Co-host Katrina Ingram. Technical Producer Paul Johnston. Research Assistants involved were Caitlin McKinnon and MacEwan bachelor of music students.
Theme Music by Emily Darfur and cover art by Constanza Pacher. Special thanks to the Rose Foundation for their support and to our guests. Artful Conversations is a production of MacEwan University and Assistant Professor Annetta Latham, all rights reserved.
Latham, A. (Executive Producer and Host). Regan-Ingram, K (Host). (2020, October 16) [Season 2: Episode 6]. Kathleen Darby. Podcast retrieved from: https://www.artfulconversations.com/season-2-1/2021/2/6/ep-6-kathleen-darby