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2022 Annual Public Meeting

Video description

The Canada Council for the Arts’ 2022 Annual Public Meeting took place on March 30, 2022. The Council’s leaders reported on the past year’s accomplishments and shared the Council’s vision for the future of the arts sector. They then took questions from the sector and the general public.

We would like to thank all our participants, with special thanks going to electronic duo The Halluci Nation for closing out the APM with an inspiring performance.

#CanadaCouncil22

Speakers

Jesse Wente, Chair of the Board

Michelle Chawla, Director General, Strategy, Public Affairs and Arts Engagement

Simon Brault, Director and CEO

Carolyn Warren, Director General, Arts Granting Programs

Publication date

May 2, 2022

[Narrator]

It provokes us.

It inspires us.

It stirs our imagination, feeds our creativity and sets us in motion.

It takes us places we never thought possible.

It is freedom, experimentation, pain and joy.

It creates new myths and reinvents old ones.

It soothes the wary and offers us hope, touches our very souls.

It breaks new ground, breaks down walls and brings us together.

Art connects us with ourselves and drives us forward, telling our stories and giving us voice.

Art shows us who we are.

Arts are part of us all.

[Michelle Chawla]

Welcome. Bonjour. Kwe kwe.

My name is Michelle Chawla.

I’m the Director General of Strategy, Public Affairs and Arts Engagement at the Canada Council for the Arts.

I’m delighted to welcome you to our 2022 Annual Public Meeting.

Today, I’m speaking to you from the Council’s Kakaekwewin room at 150 Elgin, in Ottawa.

I would like to begin by acknowledging that our offices are located on the unceded territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation, whose presence here reaches back to time immemorial.

The Council recognizes the Algonquins as the customary keepers and defenders of the Ottawa River Watershed and its tributaries.

We honour their long history of welcoming many nations to this beautiful territory and uphold and uplift the voice and values of our host nation.

The Council respects and affirms the inherent and treaty rights of all Indigenous Peoples across this land.

The Council has honoured and will continue to honour the commitments to self-determination and sovereignty that we have made to Indigenous Nations and Peoples.

The Council acknowledges the historical oppression of lands, cultures and the original peoples in what we now know as Canada and believes that the arts contribute to our healing and decolonizing journey.

This land acknowledgment was developed by members of the Algonquin community, and I thank them for their generosity and collaboration.

This year, our Annual Public Meeting still needs to adjust to the pandemic for security reasons. Some segments are live, and others are pre-recorded.

The arts sector is still being hit hard by the pandemic, but things are changing rapidly.

The arts have an opportunity to reach a wider audience again, and that is exciting. But we have to keep in mind that the pandemic is not over yet, and the pace of recovery is uncertain.

The sector, as well as artists and workers, will feel the effects of the pandemic for a long time to come. I can assure you that the thoughts of our entire staff are with the artists, groups and collectives.

Our thoughts are also with the many people around the world who are experiencing the horrors of war.

Not only is world peace threatened, but on a human level, millions of refugees have to live in precarious situations, and their numbers are constantly increasing.

Of course, we are standing in solidarity with Ukraine, which is currently going through a terrible ordeal.

Our solidarity with the Ukrainian people is expressed through the Council’s participation in the economic sanctions of Canada and the international community and through efforts to safeguard Ukraine’s cultural heritage.

Last week, we made an important announcement in this regard.

Through the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, which is a member of the Council, we will contribute to UNESCO’s Emergency Heritage Fund to protect threatened cultural heritage, particularly in Ukraine.

I’ll now give you our agenda for today.

First, the Council’s Chair, Jesse Wente, will speak.

Then I will return with an update on our achievements this past year. After that, you will hear from our director and CEO, Simon Brault.

There will be after that a question period, with Simon, who will also be joined by Caroline Warren, Director General of Arts Granting Programs, here at the Council.

You can submit your questions in the form that you will find at the bottom of your screen.

We also received your questions by email before today’s event.

You can choose the language of this broadcast by clicking on the link in the upper right corner.

We will also be posting a video of this meeting for you to watch on our website in April.

I’d like to thank the simultaneous interpretation team as well as the sign language interpretation teams.

And remember, you can follow along on Twitter by keeping an eye on the hashtag #CanadaCouncil22.

A pre-recorded performance from The Halluci Nation will conclude our meeting.

So, our agenda is full. Let’s get started. We will begin with the Council’s Chair, Jesse Wente.

[Jesse Wente]

Merci, Michelle.

I’m speaking to you today from Tkaronto, the traditional territory of many nations and under the Dish With One Spoon Treaty, which reminds us of our agreement to live together peacefully and share the abundance of this place as well as the obligation to maintain it for future generations.

This is my second Annual Public Meeting as Chair of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Once again, this year, we continue to face numerous challenges for the arts and wider society.

Through these trying times, I’ve found it inspiring to witness artists, arts workers, and audiences come together with a powerful call for a more just and equitable arts sector in Canada.

I’m proud to say this call is front and centre of the Council’s 2021-26 strategic plan, Art, now more than ever.

The plan is a roadmap to guide the organization—and the wider sector—through the many unknowns ahead.

It envisions a transformation of the arts in Canada to include, reflect, and celebrate all of us, in all our diversity, across this country more strongly.

This vision responds to several historically underserved and marginalized communities: Indigenous, Black, racialized, Deaf and disability, 2SLGBTQ and gender-diverse, women, and people at intersections of these groups.

Of course, the Council has been on a longer journey toward a more just and equitable arts sector that predates the current strategic plan.

Several years ago, the Council made a commitment to support Indigenous arts in a way that respects and upholds the cultural sovereignty of Indigenous peoples and concepts of self-determination.

One of the ways we did this, and we’ll continue to do this, is through the Creating, Knowing, and Sharing: The Arts and Cultures of First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples program.

Under the current strategic plan, the Council will deepen its relationships with the communities it serves across this country to support them on their own terms. 

In the months ahead, for example, the Council will do this through its support of the 2022 Arctic Arts Summit.

The Summit is a partnership between the Council and the Government of Yukon.

It will take place in June 2022, bringing together representatives of the Indigenous nations and Arctic countries in the circumpolar region.

It is a Summit by the North for the North that will centre the voices, visions, and lived realities of the North in Canada with strong Indigenous leadership and engagement. 

It will amplify artists, cultural workers, and creative leaders from across the region, an important opportunity to share, learn, and grow.

The Summit includes an online program that is open to all—with live-streamed events, visual galleries, profiles of artists, and more.

I invite you to explore these online experiences at arcticartssummit.ca.

As both the title and the principle lying at the centre of our strategic plan, “art, now more than ever,” acknowledges the vital role art and artists have played in helping us navigate the challenges of the past couple of years, providing entertainment, comfort, joy, and love.

It’s also a call to imagine. For artists and their work to help all of us imagine our future together, to envision a shared future that meets the challenges of today with the solutions of tomorrow, and to help form the community bonds needed to bring that future into existence.

In closing, I’d like to thank the Government of Canada for its ongoing confidence in the Canada Council for the Arts and the work that we do.

I’d also like to acknowledge the Council’s staff, executive management team, Director and CEO Simon Brault, and my colleagues on the Board, whose diligent work and dedication over the past year have allowed us to respond to the pandemic while also maintaining our regular activities. 

I’m deeply proud of what we’ve achieved together this past year, and I look forward to the accomplishments ahead.

Chi Miigwetch.

[Michelle Chawla]

Thank you, Jesse.

The pandemic continues to put significant pressure on the entire arts sector.

Despite the challenges, the Council has remained responsive to the needs of the community. During the pandemic, the Council supported the arts sector by creating opportunities for artist employment, digital dissemination, and public participation.

Last year, the Council delivered $377 million in grants including $62.8 million in COVID-19 Emergency Support Funds delivered on behalf of the federal government.

This year, the Council delivered a record amount of funds with $455 million in grants, including $141 million in COVID-19 Emergency Support and Reopening funds.

In April 2021, we launched our five-year strategic planArt, now more than ever. It aims to help rebuild an arts sector that, as the pandemic has made clear, is essential to society. But we must rebuild better, on a more inclusive, equitable and sustainable foundation.

The strategic plan sets out three major directions:

  • Investing in rebuilding and innovation
  • Increasing the benefits of the arts for society
  • Encouraging and enhancing collaboration and partnerships

These directions are upheld by key actions that will guide our work and investments in the coming years.

Of course, all these actions will be implemented progressively.

The Council has begun to speak with the community about the actions set out in the plan. At the end of November, we held two virtual meetings and spoke to over 200 people and organizations in the arts sector.

The conversations centered around three themes: innovation, equity, and partnerships. They were enlightening for us, and we had the opportunity to answer many questions. More meetings will be held in 2022 to continue the dialogue.

And since the last few months have been full of twists and turns, we will also have to remain flexible and agile so that we can make adjustments. I can assure you that we intend to remain humble and transparent.

I invite you to visit the Council’s website to learn more about our strategic plan and its orientations.

I will now turn the floor over to our Chief Executive Officer and Director, Simon Brault, who will provide more information on the Council’s plan and vision for the coming years.

[Simon Brault]

For more than two years now, we have been living in uncertainty.

And the next few years might also be filled with more of the same.

But this should not lead us to adopt a posture of inertia or withdrawal. On the contrary.

This long crisis requires us to respond in new and inspired ways.

The last two years have heightened our awareness of the inequities in our society and in our own sector—inequities that often feed into our ways of thinking, ways of working, and many other systemic approaches.

Of course, the problems we face today go back much further.

But these days we can no longer ignore them.

We have to think differently, and we have to act differently. And it’s true for anyone in our sector and obviously for the Canada Council, as the main public funder of the arts in this country.

We have to think and act with more intentionality to achieve true inclusivity. 

Over the past year, we have initiated courageous and meaningful conversations with the community and with various stakeholders about the mid-term and long-term future of the arts sector.

Like some of you, we will be present and active at the National Summit for the Recovery of the Arts, Culture and Heritage Sectors, on May 2nd and 3rd taking place in Ottawa.

The Summit will be hosted by the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pablo Rodriguez.

Our commitment to participate on platforms that contribute to the sustainable development of the sector, and therefore society, is as unwavering as ever.

We are counting on the spirit of collaboration and communication because the arts have an important role to play in making true and lasting societal change happen.

Today’s Annual Public Meeting is more than just a review; it’s a moment to sketch out the coming year’s major milestones.

We need to start a societal transition by increasing all efforts in favour of eliminating racism and discrimination and furthering the decolonization of mindsets, institutions and systems.

We must also call upon our creativity and power of influence to join the worldwide fight against climate change, which is a concern to everyone, especially youth, here in Canada and around the world.

There is an urgent need for better social infrastructure and to extend it to our sector, which too often develops at the expense of the health and living conditions of artists and arts sector workers.

The rebuilding and recovery of the arts sector must aim for a fairer, and more equitable and sustainable sector for everyone, thereby benefitting the whole of society.

The arts sector proved that it is essential throughout the pandemic.

And its essential quality can and must be reaffirmed through:

  • the public support we give the sector, including the social safety net we provide;
  • the space we give the sector within our decision-making bodies;
  • the truth and reconciliation process;
  • innovation-based collaborations and partnerships; and
  • our individual and collective development.

The arts must be at the heart of human development.

To achieve this, the arts sector must have the tools and means to take risks.

At the moment, the Council is focused on innovation to increase risk-taking and push the envelope on the ordinary.

Our innovation fund is a way of supporting the arts as the sector tackles the challenges it is facing by taking risks, trying new approaches, and adopting a perspective that banks of the transformative and sustainable aspect of the proposals it puts forward.

Right now, innovation is a key to reviewing what was not working, maximizing what we learned during the pandemic, namely by exploring the digital world, and developing successful partnerships.

Innovation can contribute to solving issues around:

  • developing sustainable organizational and business models;
  • supporting digital transformation;
  • improving artists’ remuneration and working conditions;
  • promoting equity, diversity and inclusion;
  • tackling the still prevalent consequences of colonialism;
  • fighting against climate change; and
  • championing the arts.

Of course, this is the first strategic approach we have implemented because now is the time to rebuild our sector innovatively.

With the information sessions we have held so far and through other means of communication, we will continue this important and fruitful conversation with the sector.

I would like to say a few words on our Public Lending Right Program.

Despite the pandemic, the Program was able to work with a record number of public library partners across the country to fulfil its mandate to compensate financially people whose literary works are in libraries. 

This enabled us to make payments to over 18,000 creators last year.

And I want to mention all the love and recognition we received when we sent out cheques this year. It was really appreciated at the Council, and I believe that that sort of thing resonates well with public deciders.

In closing, I would also like to mention that the Council’s Art Bank is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2022. We will be unveiling a series of initiatives in the coming months that will enable us to celebrate this anniversary accordingly and ensure the Art Bank’s longevity.

Merci. Thank you.

[Michelle Chawla]

Thank you, Simon.

In the spirit of our ongoing conversation with one another, we will now begin our question-and-answer period. We will begin with a few questions that we received by email in advance of today’s APM.

And then we will turn to some of the questions we received from you during today’s event.

Joining us to answer your questions, along with Simon, as I mentioned earlier, is Carolyn Warren, Director General of Arts Granting Programs.

So, let’s begin with our first question.

We received several questions in advance that relate to our recent decision to place a temporary hold on artistic activities taking place in Russia and Belarus, including one from Carmen Rodrigues, who asked why the Council decided to stop funding Russian and Belarussian artists and arts organizations due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, given that it did not do the same with other recent global conflicts.

I will turn to you, Simon, to answer.

[Simon Brault]

Thank you, Carmen, for your question.

We decided to join the international movement of sanctioning Russia for the invasion of Ukraine because we think that it was very important to signal to the world and to our colleagues and to the artists in Ukraine our support.

We did similar actions in the past, but clearly, this is a very unique moment right now. And I believe that the arts, if we want to consider the arts as very important and central in our society, I believe it is just normal that, when major conflicts or major tensions like this one are happening in the world, that we take a position, even if it is quite symbolic and even if we could argue that we could have done it before with other conflicts.

Maybe we are now opening a new chapter in terms of reacting and acting when dramas like the one that is happening right now are happening in our world.

So thank you again for the question.

[Michelle Chawla]

Thank you, Simon.

The next question was sent to us before today’s event by author, editor and translator Elaine Wang.

What are the specifics that the Council has planned for this year and for the next two years for its engagements in equity and also for racialized authors? Thank you.

[Carolyn Warren]

Thank you for the question.

The new strategic plan addresses this question. As you have already heard from my colleagues, we have already taken steps, very clearly, that will allow us to prioritize diversity, equity and inclusion and to move forward with the elimination of obstacles around access to our financing.

I would like to emphasize first that the support for writers and Black and racialized and Indigenous players is there. We believe strongly that the arts must be more important in the lives of more citizens, and therefore better defended and better supported by society. So a few concrete actions for the next five years.

First, the Council will allocate 50% of the total funding to projects. That will allow new requests, new applicants to access financing. And even this year, we are in the process of delivering more than 20% to new applicants.

We are also going to be earmarking $100 million to Indigenous arts. The Council is also working on a strategy for the arts in the North, as you have already heard.

In order to reinforce our support and presence for arts in the North, we are diversifying our collection in the Art Bank, and we are revising our prizes to ensure that these recognize all of the artistic contribution and literary contributions to our society.

We will also participate actively in dialogues with arts bodies and all participants in the sector in order to support the strategies and initiatives that will move forward on equity, diversity and inclusion, reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, and the battle against discrimination in all forms, certainly, and including against women.

Thank you for the question.

[Michelle Chawla]

Let us now turn to Rea Beaumont, who submitted a recorded question to us in advance.

[Rea Beaumont]

Thank you very much for taking my question.

I am pianist and composer Dr. Rea Beaumont.

I would like to know, in light of the economic devastation of the global COVID-19 pandemic, if the Canada Council is planning on integrating a need-based component in its applications for grants.

Or if it is going to start a separate set of grants that have a need-based component in addition to artistic excellence.

Thanks again for taking my question and for all that you do for arts in Canada.

[Simon Brault]

Thank you very much for the question.

The question of the financial situation of artists in Canada right now is a top priority for the Canada Council.

Obviously, as a funder of the arts, we do not compensate for loss of revenue. Our first role is not to support the revenues of the artists. But when we do the granting activities, obviously, we take into consideration their needs and basically, what we do when we support a lot of the work for creation, for instance, is to buy time for the artists to develop their art, develop their work, develop their creation.

But the Council is also very much involved in terms of advocating for and giving advice to the government in order to expand the social security net. And I think that during the pandemic, it was probably a very important moment when we saw that it was possible to extend the support to artists and cultural workers as to any other workers experiencing loss of revenue because of the pandemic. So I think it will be a big discussion, a big conversation in our society.

How can we make sure that, in the future, we find ways to compensate the work, the visible work and the invisible work of artists and cultural workers in the future?

But clearly, it is an important consideration, and it will remain an important consideration for us.

[Michelle Chawla]

Thank you. Thank you, Simon.

Next, we go to Clayton Windatt, who also submitted a recorded question.

[Clayton Windatt]

Hello, Canada Council for the Arts.

My name is Clayton Windatt and I am the Executive Director of the Artist-Run Centres and Collectives Conference, also known as ARCA.

Thank you for offering me this opportunity to send my question in as a pre-recorded video.

As an artist and arts administrator myself, I often ask questions based on what I hear in the arts sector and provoke you, the Canada Council, for a response, as I believe in your ability to confirm and reaffirm your mission and mandate.

There are a lot of misunderstandings and misinformation out there. Many artists and groups feel that your new funding structures are departures from supporting artists, that money could be going away from the arts.

Considering this, my question is:

How is the newly announced innovation fund supporting artists?

I hope this question provokes a response to larger issues of communication, and that you consider how programs connect to your core values.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

[Carolyn Warren]

Thank you for this question and for the opportunity to explain, in fact, how this new innovation fund does support individual artists and arts workers, as well as groups and organizations, and how it does so both directly and indirectly.

The goal, of course, is to support the building of a more sustainable arts sector, and we have been talking about this throughout our meeting today, and to make the arts more relevant and accessible to more people.

I will say off the top that we do know that that word, innovation, can be challenging for some. For the Council, innovation is one of the ways that we will be supporting artists and arts workers to address the many challenges that we are facing today, which Simon has described earlier in in the meeting today.

I do want to say that the innovation fund, our investment in this innovation fund, is in fact only 13% of our overall granting budgets over the next five years. And those other programs, as you know, will continue to support all kinds of activities, from research to creation to production, dissemination, public engagement and professional development. So again, directly supporting individual artists.

The innovation fund is really intended to build capacity in the sector, to find new ways to deal with these challenges that we have been living with for such a long time, but that have clearly been exacerbated by the pandemic.

Many of these challenges, as Simon has pointed out, are not specific to the arts sector. And I’m thinking here, of course, of the current climate crisis, the reckoning with issues of social justice and equity and the need to address Indigenous Truth and Reconciliation.

We share these concerns with society broadly. But then, there are also challenges that are really relevant and resonant in our own sector. And here I am thinking about the chronic under-remuneration of individual artists and arts workers, the unsustainability of our current models and the ongoing gaps we see and continue to see in digital understanding and capacity.

So innovation, which is quite simply a way to solve problems and bring about change, is an approach that we believe to be essential for the arts ecosystem to help us find new and more sustainable ways to work.

We know this is challenging during a difficult, protracted health crisis, and many of us are stretched and discouraged after the past two years, which is really why we designed the fund: to give easy access to individuals, to groups and to organizations, at every level of readiness, to take on projects that will create change.

We created a variety of pathways to these new funds, from small-scale grants that allow you to identify a problem and imagine a plan, seek out appropriate partners, to mid-sized grants that actually enable partnering, implementing and piloting, all the way to very significant grants up to $1,000,000 for multi-partner projects that will have a clear and significant impact on the sector as a whole.

So the fund is about individual artists and arts workers. They can apply as individuals, but they will also benefit indirectly from the changes we hope we will be supporting in terms of creating better working conditions, more sustainable business models going forward.

And in terms of support for artistic creation and individual artists, we have actually increased our funding to individual artists significantly in the past two years, as both Michelle and Simon have mentioned, particularly in making sure that many millions of emergency funds from the government have gone directly into the hands and pockets of those who need it most.

On a final note, I do want to say that the new fund has clearly encouraged partnerships both within the arts sector, but also between the arts sector and other sectors. And I want to be clear that this does not mean that the funds are leaving the arts sector.

To be eligible to receive a Strategic Innovation Fund grant, you have to have an eligible Canada Council profile. What we have done by encouraging this kind of partnership is to ensure that we can leverage the investments we make in innovation with co-investments from outside of our sector, which will also enable the arts to expand their reach and their relevance across society.

And this will have a very profound, direct and indirect benefit for artists and arts workers across the country.

So thank you again for the question.

[Michelle Chawla]

Thank you, Carolyn.

We will now address some of the questions we received live during this event.

A lot of questions and comments have been received during the event on our plan of relaunching the sector. How do you think your programs will change to meet the needs of the arts sector?

[Simon Brault]

In fact, it is an excellent question.

The Council programs will not necessarily change. With the new funding model, we already have a certain number of programs that let us cover the whole spectrum of what is being done in the arts sector.

And we also published our financial objectives, like Carolyn Warren spoke about.

The Canada Council for the Arts is the only council in the country that has such a huge portion of its budget that is supporting projects (50%) and the remaining 50% is supporting the operations and the organizations.

What is going to evolve in the coming years is the attention given to certain content or proposals that come from the arts sector.

That is very important for us to always be able to react to what is being proposed by artists and what is coming from the sector. But also what can be amplified at the right time: initiatives or projects that can have an impact in Canada or abroad.

Carolyn Warren was speaking to our innovation fund. This fund is especially interesting right now because it lets us build bridges with other sectors of society that are having challenges that are very similar to the ones that we see in our sector.

In the next few years, I expect to see an evolution in the content of artistic creation, and the way that it is being created and disseminated and also, how it is going to be linked to other sectors of society.

So we have to keep listening and be in symbiosis, in synchronicity with artists and arts organizations.

Thank you so much for the question.

[Michelle Chawla]

Carolyn, this next question is for you.

So we are also receiving questions on whether any of the recent programs like Digital Strategy Fund or Digital Originals, that were popular—will they be making a comeback?

[Carolyn Warren]

That is a very good question, and I will not say that they will not.

What I will say is that we are very responsive and flexible in our Strategic Innovation Fund, which now does have two digital grants that are available for all kinds of different projects.

In fact, they are broader than Digital Originals and Digital Now.

And I would recommend looking at the guidelines for those grants. Those are not intended to stay in place for the full five years of the current plan.

But we have so much flexibility within our Strategic Innovation Fund that we may well decide, in response to what we hear and the proposals that come to us from the sector, we may well add additional digital initiatives, sometimes one-off or over a short period of time in the future.

Thank you for the question.

[Michelle Chawla]

Thank you, Carolyn.

One last question. Simon, it is for you.

Several organizations have received specific support during the pandemic.

How will the Council support the organization of these projects in the following year?

[Simon Brault]

That is an excellent question.

During the pandemic, we had additional funds from the government, additional support, and for the first year in our entire history, this year, we had half a billion dollars in our budget.

We supported a much greater number of artists and collectives and organizations more than ever in our history.

The greatest concern now is to make sure that those who have been supported for the first time by the Council can continue making progress and continue receiving support.

That is one of the reasons why we insisted on protecting 50% of all of our resources to support our projects. And at the same time, we are working on having some core funding.

We do not want to increase the core funding by using the funds that are earmarked for projects because otherwise, we would close the door to new ways.

For us, it is important to be dynamic for the future of the arts.

We have to be able to consolidate what is most mature and also be able to work with what is emerging in adequate conditions.

So we are truly looking at all of these issues at this time, but we want to make sure there is a continuity and that individuals who were supported, thanks to the additional funds that we received during the pandemic, will not be abandoned, and that they can continue.

For us, during the pandemic, one of the huge concerns that the Council had was to be able to help organizations not go bankrupt or implode because of the pandemic.

But we continued throughout the pandemic to support very strongly the independent scene.

For us, it is very important that at the end of the pandemic, to not only find again these organizations that existed pre-pandemic, but also to be able to create a huge diversity.

So we really tried to find the right balance between supporting the independent scenes and individuals and organizations for which we have a responsibility at the Council.

Thank you very much for the question.

[Michelle Chawla]

Thank you, Simon and Carolyn.

So it is time to end our question period.

I would like to thank all of our interpreters.

I would also like to thank Don Ross, who won the Walter Carson 2022 prize, for the music in the slideshow at the opening.

And to close our 2022 annual public meeting, we would like to share a pre-recorded performance from electric powwow duo The Halluci Nation.

Please enjoy the performance.

Thank you and merci.

[Tim and Bear Witness]

What’s up? I’m Tim.

And I’m Bear Witness.

And we are The Halluci Nation.

Thank you for inviting us to the 2022 Annual Public Meeting.

As past recipients of numerous grants, we understand the important role that the Canada Council for the Arts plays in the development of artists both here in Canada and beyond.

The world needs more art in all its forms, and we are happy to be here to help promote that in our music.

[Music – R.E.D., by The Halluci Nation, featuring Yasiin Bey, Narcy & Black Bear]

Thanks again, Canada Council, for all your years of support.

Nia:wen.