The Council for the Arts in Ottawa has just kicked some butt. It was written in bureaucratese, which is probably wise when criticizing bureaucrats, but there’s fighting words in the summary of a report the council just released.

The news isn’t unique: local arts institutions and festivals are barely hanging on because they don’t have political champions, like in other capital cities in the Western world, who are willing to fight for arts’ larger role in society. But there’s a fascinating backstory in the report, one that identifies specific weaknesses in the local sector, and it adds context to this tale of woe.

A tough slog for Ottawa arts organizations. Courtesy of Wikimedia.

The Complication

Not only are local arts organizations getting shafted in funding’s game of Survivor; we’re apparently pitifully unconscious about how how the rules work. Those are my strong words, only insinuated by the Council, but statistics in its report (started in 2008) back them up:

Of the $231.6 million in public cash that was injected into Ottawa’s arts-and-culture industry in the past seven years (I’m assuming that’s the time frame because it isn’t spelled out in the summary.), only six percent went to 72 local associations; the other 94 percent went to five national institutions – the Museum of Civilization and affiliated War Museum, National Arts Centre, National Gallery of Canada, Museum of Nature and Science and Technology Museum and affiliated Agricultural Museum, Aviation Museum and Space Museum.

Of the $118.8 million doled out between 2001 and 2008 by the Canadian Arts and Heritage Sustainability Program for stabilization (to establish non-profits), capacity building (to strengthen finances) and endowment (to attract private money), local Ottawa groups got $795,115.

That’s 0.65 percent….for Canada’s fourth largest city. Winnipeg received 12 times as much. What in Heaven’s name is that about?

It’s about a lot of things, obviously, but mostly about Ottawa’s arts sector not having anyone who knows how this game is played, or perhaps not having the resources to play it. The irony is that arts people seem caught in the same Catch 22 as those in economics, education and community (to just start a very long list): things can’t be fixed without the right resources and we can’t get the resources until things are fixed.

The number of those actively creating art in the city is increasing, but their abilities to generate revenue is spiraling downward. Like most other sectors of North American society, we’re in denial and quiet despair, individually focussed yet collectively adrift.

All funding is about politics, and this reveals the bitterness of Ottawa’s situation. We’ve watched the decay of institutions, like political office, for so long, we don’t trust anyone to lead us.

The Resolution

Enough talk, for now, about the importance of arts. People are so caught up in their own fears about the future that continued proselytizing can only make the perceived spiral more scary. Public resources are available to help local associations, and we need someone to jump into that game.

The CAO’s report suggests establishing a United Arts Fund under existing Ottawa municipal planning. It’s something like a foundation committed to one purpose, leveraging public-and-private funding for local organizations.

But the stark reality is that this can only happen if the elected members of City Council make it happen. Peter Honeywell and the CAO are working on revealing the arts elements of October’s municipal election. Local arts media will also get involved to help tell the story of which candidates might be willing to actively fight for the arts cause.

Change can only happen in one way: if the local arts community gets involved in the political process, simply, through the ballot box. There is no other hope for improvement in sector-wide health. Individuals benefit under the status quo, which is the 30-year momentum generated by our current un-collaborative, humanity-dissipating economic system.

There’s no guarantee that lobbying for an attitude change at City Hall will produce an arts champion. But it seems certain that maintaining the current political mix will widen the economic cracks that local arts organizations have been falling through.

Looking for a sign. Photo by Simplyzel

By Ryan Pratt

Ask me to sing the song Signs, the chorus anyway. “Sign, sign, everywhere a sign,” and I can recall the lyrics and melody as if they were spoon-fed to me as a child.  But ask me to name the band responsible for the 1971 hit single and I’m terrorized by the feeling that I should know better.

I’d never heard of Five Man Electrical Band before moving to Ottawa, but its legendary reputation intrigued me and Its impending performance at Super Ex would be a rare opportunity to catch them live. So there I was, surrounded by the neon lights of carnival rides, the microphone feedback of chatty prize tents and all the fenced-off alleyways of the parking lot sprawl.  And I was lost.

If the exhibition wasn’t busy enough on its first Saturday, summer appeared to be finished as cold winds and perpetual rain made it all the more challenging for someone who’d forgotten to check the venue’s site-map.

Coincidentally, it was the canned music of The Guess Who that drew me toward the concert stage. The Canadian icon had recorded a split album with Five Man Electrical Band, back when it were known as the Staccatos. It chronicled its singular break into the international music scene, but that was almost 50 years ago.

The Guess Who would reunite, achieving the highest-grossing Canadian tour of 2000.  The Five Man Electrical Band would re-emerge to play a free show at Lansdowne Park.

The mid-1960s Staccatos become...... (Courtesy of the Seattle Post Inteligencer).

Perhaps I was expecting a live presence that albums like Coming Of Age and Good-byes and Butterflies disguised from me, or any reason that would warrant Five Man Electrical Band’s cult-following beyond municipal loyalty.  There’s something heartwarming about that allegiance, like how SuperEx’s Website purported that the band was “on the same playing field as the Beatles” or how keyboardist Ted Gerow introduced Les Emmerson as “one of the greatest songwriters of all time.”

For a band that unsuccessfully tried to escape Ottawa for Los Angeles during its formative years, this must be a salute to its hometown’s defiant, albeit fickle, devotion.  And for most in attendance, the concert wasn’t just a showcase in nostalgia; it was modern folklore at its best.

No sooner had I settled upon a fold-out chair several rows from the stage than an elderly woman asked me, point-blank, whether Emmerson was still with the group.  Drawing on all of the research I’d done prior to the show, I could only shrug.

For a band that offers no online presence other than a defunct website, and that performs live only a few times per decade, her question was valid, but hardly widespread among groups of double-dating Baby Boomers and seniors chatting under umbrellas.  Were these friendly people braving the cold weather to warm their hearts or their extremities?

Opening act Eddy & the Stingrays answered this to a degree, causing an immediate stir by walking out in hot-pink blazers and with pale green instruments.  Launching into a string of rockabilly classics like At the Hop and The Twist, the quartet effectively turned their opening slot into a 1950s jukebox, which elicited broad smiles and composed applause.  The set boasted an obvious disconnect for younger adults but overcame the age gap with an enthusiasm that blew the zeitgeist gateway wide open.

To my delight, the arrival of Five Man Electrical Band fetched a greater reaction, even without the kitschy spectacle.  Instead, the seven members – from their late 30s to late 60s – filed out in an assortment of tie-dyed shirts and Hawaiian prints, looking appropriately disassembled for a band that has survived its share of reincarnations.

With the opening bars of Absolutely Right, the audience came alive, clapping and forming a line at the base of the stage.  A few individuals even gave standing ovations. Finally, some genuine buzz!  One can learn a lot about a band by spending a few hours with its fans, although Five Man Electrical Band hadn’t impressed me any more as performers than as recording artists.

The 2010 Five Man Electrical Band. Courtesy of Super Ex.

I live for those concert moments when a band unites a mass of strangers and sends a pulse of energy through the anticipating crowd.  It’s a familiar feeling that never gets old.

But then, three songs into their set, something happened: the audience lost interest.  Conversations that had fallen silent when Eddie & the Stingrays opened the show, started again. Mothers began to fuss over their stray children and, at a gentle pace, casual viewers began to sift out of the crowd.

Not all manners were abandoned; the audience offered its attention and polite applause between songs, but continued to fidget through goofy guitar-stomps like The Dance Of the Swamp Women and an untitled composition about human destruction from an alien’s point of view.

For the first time, I was on the same wavelength as the majority of this crowd; we knew Signs would be played last, and we weren’t leaving until Five Man Electrical Band played it.

When it came, the audience was united in chorus.  Even I burrowed out from my rogue disposition and surrendered to the mob mentality. Those final three minutes witnessed a minor celebration, as a group of Ottawa’s longtime citizens sought to communally toast a timeless song.

Does six minutes of Billboard success – the two songs which bookended the concert’s set-list – adequately justify an evening of tedious lingering?  As an unwilling member of the ring-tone generation, I’m not sure, but the consensus among departing show-goers indicated that Signs was worth both the wait and weather.

Post-competition culture. Photo by Lois Siegel.

The jam started when a couple dozen of the best fiddlers in the country met up at the pub, ordered some beers and started playing until management locked the doors for the night. I didn’t hear about it until now because I, like the rest of Ottawa’s media, didn’t pay much attention to the competition.

Lois Siegel said the night was raucous, and fun, not a surprise considering the bowers included two-time national champion Julie Fitzgerald and Calvin Vollrath, one of the best in the world and composer of five songs for the Opening Ceremonies at Vancouver’s Winter Olympics.

Very few others heard of the championships as well, apparently lost in end-of-summer zombieland and the upcoming bail hearings of Ottawa’s terrorist suspects. That’s a pity because fiddling is to Canadian music the way The Prairies are to our culture: integral to identity yet marginalized in notoriety.

Every seat in the Shenkman auditorium was full for the finals; the audience was from across North America; and the top three winners were all under 40. But the days of Ottawa Valley icon Don Messer are gone, and Natalie MacMaster and Ashley MacIsaac, while still active, are not doing what it takes to be sullen celebrities.

Siegel, herself a fiddler, took pictures of the event. She was gobstruck by the quality of the music. But fiddlers aren’t famous people and, Siegel surmises, local media don’t think anyone is interested.

Tens of thousands in Canada disagree. There are hundreds of fiddle associations, competitions and festivals each year. Irish Music Ottawa lists 12 weekly jam sessions for Irish and fiddle music.You can call it a jam or a kitchen caleigh or whatever you want; fiddling thrives on community and in family (like Fitzgerald’s). It’s music for unswollen heads and light feet.

Fiddlers share an image with curlers. There’s money and fame at the very, very top, but that rarely seems to be the purpose. Letting the rosin flow into the culture is. It’s also one of the roots of this country’s multiculturalism – Cape Breton, Quebec, First Nations, rural Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, the Northwest Territories and a dozen other pockets have all been linked for centuries by it.

Those in the sector say fiddling dropped in popularity in the 1970s but is regaining strength. But I wonder, because there’s precious little traditional violining in our entertainment today. And that should be an embarrassment for those paid to protect our culture.

Rapid Reads are genre fiction by Canadian writers with a one-two marketing punch – aimed at adults with reading problems or for whom English is difficult as well as at those looking for a one-or-two-sitting read. The stories by established writers use strong mature themes, usually mysteries with one plot line, short sentences and not a lot of clauses.

Brenda Chapman. Photo by Mike Levin.

The criticism is melting away under a summer of strong sales, especially in the United States. Ottawa writer Brenda Chapman feels it never was valid; some of it even got her edge up. “Ideas don’t have to be dumbed down. (Simpler) writing is often more clear, especially if it’s written by a best-selling writer like Gail Bowen.

“When I was teaching (adult education) we didn’t have novels with lower language levels. That was a problem.” After Chapman started writing her own books, mostly young-adult novels, she always had an affinity, and a skill, for short narrative, which any writer knows is far-more difficult than long. This year Orca contacted her about contributing to Rapid Reads. It wasn’t a hard sell, especially with a minimum $5,000 advance and 10 percent royalties for 15,000 words.

Chapman had more to tell about the characters from her 2008 short story Evening the Score, which won the Audrey Jessup Award, and she knew there had to be a murder. The result, written in about two weeks in late July and early August, was The Second Wife. It offers domestic violence and death in short, simple order, compared to In Winter’s Grip, her about-to-be-published first full-length adult mystery, which takes a little longer to add suicide and sexual harassment to its mix. 

“(Short fiction) is a great focus, lots of fun, and, I feel, very valuable. I’ve already got a sequel in mind,” Chapman says. The Second Wife is scheduled for an April 2011 release.

It’s easy to understand how people can see Rapid Reads as an assault on adult literature by employing the dreaded “common-denominator” ploy. This might make sense if the number of people reading books of any kind was actually increasing, which it isn’t.

Like the resurgence in graphic novels with relevant themes (see Von Allan’s The Road to God Knows…), offering short, simpler prose doesn’t mean content has to suffer.

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To enter, write a one-pager describing why a favourite animated character is the best cartoon ever. Deadline is 4 pm September 24.

Entries to: info@animationfestival.ca, by fax: 613 232-6315, or by regular mail: Ottawa International Animation Festival, 2 Daly Avenue, Suite 120, Ottawa, K1N 6E2.

Guidelines: http://www.ifco.ca/diversity.html

For more info, contact: Tasha Waldron at admin@ifco.ca or 613 569-1789.

Gallery at: http://www.crichtonccc.ca/?page_id=30

Information on submissions from: Susan Ashbrook, Program Director, 613 745-2742,
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But it is all about allowing time, giving us a chance to learn and remember. The New York Times gets into this theory, backed up by research, about how digital devices take away our downtime and the negative effect this has on learning and retaining.   

Of course, this information would have to be about technology – all those smart phones and other toys are today’s sex objects – otherwise it wouldn’t help the Times sell ads.

Context is Everything. By Rene Magritte. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

The point, I think, is not how technology distracts us; this has been pretty obvious since the advent of television and has become an inverted epiphany since everyone got a personal computer. No, it’s more about how we’re losing our abilities to appreciate things that offer a deeper glimpse of life.

Arts journalism is a good example.

With few exceptions in Ottawa, arts media focus on product: what, when and where. (Sometimes it’s about how much, but not too often because this is an industry that is told it’s not worth anything. But that’s a story for another time. ) One product starts to look like every other, much like focusing on a Blackberry, an iPod and a video game, all at the same time.  Just gimme more.

What’s being lost is narrative, the thing that makes us think about a writer’s opinion rather than immediately accepting or rejecting it, or about a story’s context, which helps us see criticism as valid, maybe even important?

I don’t buy the lack-of-resources rationale because there are lots of examples of local writers creating great narrative pieces they weren’t paid to produce – examples here, here and here.  Alie Lavoie doesn’t buy it either. She’s a young lady I met recently and asked to do some writing for UnFolding. She explains her take on creative non-fiction arts writing in this way:

“There is no ultimate truth when it comes to questions of art or opinion. Everybody’s got a bias, and everybody’s got a reason behind that bias–and both of these things are fascinating to explore.

“I feel like bias and personal accounts are considered amateurish in journalistic circles, but for myself, bias and personalization are the things that draw me to reviewers, journalists and artists of all kinds. Getting at the heart of why you even wanted to write about (creativity), while simultaneously giving a non-fiction account? Well that can be inspiring.”

Narrative in arts writing allows for intermissions, digressions and opinions, unless of course a reader is plugged into music and watching reality TV at the same time.

Tyler Ham Pong: making the leap. Photo by Eachel Thalia Fisher.

Tyler Ham Pong lives in New York City. Just before we spoke on the telephone, he’d had a meeting with a casting agent. After we finished, he’d be off to an audition for a television commercial. Tomorrow would be taken up with a photo shoot for a clothing line, but he was most excited about the pre-production work he was doing for a role in his third feature film.

His publicist Ashley Shea wrote me because she felt Tyler’s story of “how a small town Canadian maintains his integrity in a city known for swallowing its artists” would interest readers in his Ottawa home.  

It’s difficult to judge the integrity of a 22-year-old to whom you’ve talked long-distance for just 45 minutes.  I do know Ham Pong makes a living in a notoriously fickle city with his stunning good looks and a short acting pedigree that started in Grade 9 at Ashbury College.

Yet he’s definitely been swallowed by New York City because he willingly, and enthusiastically, jumped off the Canadian dock, aiming for the belly of America’s entertainment whale. And when you look at his four years since high school, the only thing that’s unambiguous is that Tyler Ham Pong was in one heck of a hurry to make that leap.

“Yeah, the funny thing is that the acting industry is very fast. You gotta get known when you’re young. New York was always my (immediate) goal, so why waste time,” he says. Starting in 2005, Ham Pong was on a mission.

By then he’d done the Merchant of Venice at the National Arts Centre with the Shakespeare Young Company (now Salamander Shakespeare Co). In the summer before his final year of high school, he took film training at the UCLA Acting and Performance Institute. There he met his first girlfriend and decided that acting was the only thing that could make him happy. After graduating from Ashbury, he enrolled in theatre at York University, lasting a year before deciding he had to go to the United States, where “they had the best training.”

He spent another summer at the New York Film School at La Fémis, the French state film academy in Paris.  Then to New York and two years in method acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film institute, where he added dancing to his repertoire, re-acquainted himself with singing (at Ashbury he played in a heavy metal band called In The Memory Of…) and finally realized that what he was doing was no longer a hobby.

“I always wanted to be an artist when I was young, wanted to be a concept like Da Vinci, the pinnacle of ingenuity,” he says. But theatre offered a bigger rush than painting; and now film offers a bigger rush than theatre.

New York is the biggest rush of all, a place where “you can be involved in any aspect of art you want, any time of day or night.” In that competitive milieu, Ham Pong is carving a niche.

He’s developed and acted in plays (E-dating, Time Travelling with Cannibals, Camino Real); written, produced and acted in a repertory-theatre production (Moony Mercury); earned significant roles in two independently produced movies (Still a Teen Movie, Unscripted); and has finally been given the opportunity to play an adult (a detective) in Open Season, which starts shooting in October.

There’s a dozen other of his projects you can find on the Internet but that aren’t listed on his resume because in America, you go big or go home. Which is why Ham Pong is down there in the first place. “It’s sink or swim. We take risks in my family.” It means he doesn’t have to spend 30 years in Canada before being able to indulge his “managerial bug,” probably in Los Angeles, in television (“You go to New York to train, to LA to sell out.”).

Inevitably, a path like this throws up big questions, like “what you are willing to do in the name of art,” he says. It’s an emotional investment that doesn’t allow for the comfort of Canada’s shades of grey. But it’s the path he’s chosen, for now, and after a brief glance out his apartment window onto the Indian restaurants of New York’s East Village, Tyler Ham Pong hurries out to take the next step in his headlong rush.