Opening up Space: Toward an Expansive Vision for Multidisciplinary Arts in Canada

A research report by Rachael Van Fossen commissioned prepared for the Multidisciplinary Workgroup of the Canada Council for the Arts.

This research project into Canada Council’s history of funding for multi- and cross-disciplinary arts activity began in December 2005 when the Multidisciplinary Workgroup, led by Claude Schryer of the Inter-Arts Office, undertook a mandate “to analyze and review historical documentation [and to] identify gaps, crossovers, good practices and the interweaving with other discourses,” and to look at “the potential impact of multi-disciplinary practice on Canada Council for the Arts’ structures.”

Historical documentation reveals that Council has shown in its continuing evolution an ongoing ability to examine its programs and to advance institutional changes that better serve artists, arts audiences, the arts as a whole, and Canadian society. The research also demonstrates a recurring need for the Council to be even more flexible and inclusive regarding funding for interdisciplinary work (defined as work that ‘integrates and transforms distinct art forms’), and multi-disciplinary arts (implying ‘the associative presence of more than one discipline that are combined, but not integrated’.) Following an early section on historical funding of multidisciplinary arts at Council, this report draws instead upon the term ‘multi-arts’ in order to capture the full range of activities currently being examined, without referring to disciplinarity as a defining feature...