Audience Member 1:
I come from Whistler. I now live in Pemberton. Hi Margo. We have quite a large aboriginal community both in Pemberton and a little farther north in Darcy.
When Margo came, we did contact the band. I was going to bring up cost factor -- can be something. If a presenter is bringing in a show, it’s nice if they can also give the local First Nations people some sort of cost break because often, if we are charging $20 a ticket, it’s not something that’s within their budget. We made some arrangement with our local band and offered them a discount on numbers of tickets. They certainly did bring down a whole school bus full. We then presented another show and did it in Pemberton. Unfortunately, the management company didn’t realize how close to us Mount Currie was. Now, I was particularly presenting that show because I knew that the Mount Currie people and the Darcy people would be interested in coming. However, the management company booked a show that afternoon at Mount Currie. That had a difficult effect, or not the effect that I was hoping for. For me it was a bringing together of the people, but in fact, what it did was it split our audience. We did, in fact, end up with First Nations people from Darcy coming down.

So that’s just something to look out for, also.

I did have interesting conversations with the Mount Currie people who said very clearly that they did not feel as comfortable coming into our community to see the show. So I was trying to think of some way that we could find a mutual meeting ground.

Wendy:
I saw another hand…yes.

Audience Member 2:
I’m from Dawson Creek and we have a very large aboriginal First Nations population there as well and very poor at the same time, so again, cost comes into play.
One thing that we’ve gone and done is we attach a lot of local businesses into it. One thing it does is it helps promote the local businesses but them we go to them and ask them to provide tickets for foster kids or people that wouldn’t normally be able to get these tickets. There’s a huge response from the community where we see sometimes buying 100 tickets. Those tickets go directly to people who wouldn’t normally be able to attend those shows, directly to foster children, aboriginal people that aren’t able to get out to these performances usually. The response is great from the business community because it’s getting them a lot of free advertising at the same time.

Wendy:
Tracy.

Tracy Jack:
The Indigenous Arts Service Organization was formed specifically for these reasons that Margo and Sandy were talking about. One of the largest barriers to access to First Nations communities is the cultural barriers and the understanding of the socio-economic fabric of our communities. The Indigenous Arts Service Organization was formed by senior artists like Margo, who is on our board, and other senior artists who have been nominated from their regions. One of the issues that we come up with is, in fact, economics. When there is a showcase in a community, there even lacks, from the aboriginal community programmers like myself and others in communities, that are able to come in contact with the artists. This happened in 1995 where the Indigenous Arts Service Organization partnered with the BC Festival of the Arts because there was no aboriginal participation because we were not in the visual arts exhibition. It would stagger you the percentage of aboriginal participation at that world-renowned festival, the BC Festival of the Arts, which has a twenty-year reputation. So we created seats for them. We went into the regions and we juried the delegates and we brought them to the festival and it was a whole new world.

That type of mentorship must continue.

I see Margo and Sandy…they have made it in the senior artist category; they’ve made it within western mainstream culture. They’re accepted. But they do a lot of legwork that we don’t know about. Like I said, the first time I heard about Sandy, she was out there mentoring, she was giving. Margo does the same thing. But there seems to be a lack of recognition amongst programmers. It’s evident today if you look in the audience. Look around and see how many First Nations people are sitting in the audience today. What we need in our communities is to e able to work with the aboriginal community to mentor these individuals, to create programmers, to create presenters. And make it meaningful, put them in meaningful positions. Not just lip service but actually learning the cultural differences. When that happens, you will get access to the communities. And it will be successful, it won’t be tokenism. That’s one of the reasons we formed as an organization. We want to go into the communities and we want to work with the First Nations people. As we’ll discuss later, I‘m sure Margo and Sandy can talk about this, is the protocol issues.

Wendy:
Yes. Dianna.

Dianna Stewart-Imbert:
I think this can also pass over into more multi-cultural…even in the Vancouver scene.

Trying to get a diverse audience base out to some shows is very difficult. If you do a show that has about five different ethnic background performers -- you may have Vietnamese, you may have Chinese performers, African performers, etc. -- it takes a lot of work to cultivate, first of all the press. I think you’ve got to get them seeing the validity. The other thing is basically the homework that has to be done ahead of time to go out into the other ethnic communities. And not, for example, just think, ‘well, we’re presenting a Chinese show, therefore, we should go out only to the Chinese community,’ but to start to create an audience base in all of the different ethnically diverse communities that make up your community. It’s hard work, but I think it’s a necessity looking towards the future.

It actually can be quite exciting. I had an example of a show that I put on with the Vancouver World Music Collective at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre. A lovely venue, and it’s true what Wendy was saying, of course they do have quite a multi-cultural base there already as audience. I really pushed into each of the communities and dialogued with them. The people at the Cultch said that was the most culturally diverse audience they’d ever seen there. There were people from basically every part of the world represented there. It was really exciting, but it took two months of getting out there on the phone. But again, those people are part of the Vancouver World Collective membership now and whenever we do an event, they’re there and it’s growing from that.

Wendy:
Dianna, you mentioned the media. What are the other ways…yes, getting stories in the paper if it’s a newspaper that’s read by the entire community will work…what are the other ways that you succeeded, beyond the media?

Dianna:
I think actually going into the community itself, by individual members who are in the arts in that community and just dialoguing with them and getting them excited about what we were doing.

Wendy:
Face to face.

Dianna:
Face to face, on the phone. And also talking about future projects together, collaborations…

Wendy:
So not one deal…this is the beginning, let’s work together. Now go from there.

Dianna:
Building on it…

I always worry about stereotyping shows as well. It’s very hard. I mean, ‘This is a Chinese show or this is an African show,’ and if the prep work isn’t done it can be, ‘okay, we’ve done our cultural diversity for this year and then we’ll go back to the normal programming.’ That kind of worries me. Even in the Francophone community, you’ll send a show that would be valid for any audience member and it’s billed as a Francophone show and no one else comes. Other ethnic groups might think, “Oh well, they’re probably singing in French,” or “I won’t understand,” or something like that. So again, it’s a lot of grunt work to get out there and do it, but it is something that grows and it’s something that gets very exciting after a while. It grows on itself. And then the word gets out and people come to you. That’s what’s happening more and more with the Collective. We have a web site and people just start coming to us for stuff. So we’re so busy with that…it’s worthwhile.

Wendy:
Dianne Kadota? You were signalling?

Dianne Kadota:
I manage the Vancouver Chinese Music Ensemble and we do draw a largely Asian audience and we do target the Chinese community. What I’ve learned, because I don’t come from the Chinese community, my background is as a third generation Japanese-Canadian and I don’t speak Japanese or Chinese, is that the audiences are very different.

I go to shows, Korean shows and Chinese shows in the Lower mainland that are 99% Asian. They’re from that community. They do have presenters that present their work and they know their audience really well. There are major differences between the mainstream and the Asian audiences as they are now. We’re talking about a large, first-generation audience now and we have to look at the demographic changes. What’s going to happen with the second and third generation Asian population? That’s an area that I’m really interested in.

The music schools in Vancouver are largely Asian students. At UBC, Cap College, you name it. The Vancouver Academy of music, they’re very high, young populations. It’s now next to impossible to get a violin teacher for your five year old because there’s such a huge demand for those teachers.

So we have to look at how the population is evolving.

The first generation audiences are much more particular about the environment that they’re in. For instance, Asian populations want designated seats, they want a higher ticket price, they want to know the pieces of music that are being performed. They’re as interested in who’s performing, they’re more interested to know that Spring on Heavenly Mountain is part of the programme. That’s what will attract them. For other cultures, some of the venues are very anal. In other words, they don’t allow people to come and go during a music performance and that can be very confining.

I think we have to look at where the population is going.
I went to church for 12 years. My friends say, ‘the Kadota’s know how to sit quietly during a performance.’

What we’re asking the audiences, that are into video culture, to do now is to sit for 45 minutes to an hour in a seat.

I went to Japan last year with Uzume Tyko and we went to Kabuke Theatre. People bring in food. A beautiful old, ancient theatre in Tokyo, very prominent theatre, very classical music, very stylized, and people are bringing in their boxed lunches and eating during the performance. That would never happen here because people in Japan have learned how to eat really quietly. That’s an extreme, but I think there are ways to make things a little more relaxed, maybe shorter sets. But I think we have to think about those things. We have to think about future generations because they won’t be as culturally specific. When you look at second or third generation, they’re values are going to change, they’re going to become more integrated.

I’m actually moving into an area where I’m promoting specifically for an Asian audience or I’m programming or promoting specifically for a mainstream audience. It’s a bit weird because you want everyone to get together and love each other, but sometimes, it doesn’t work.

Wendy:
Dianne, you mentioned the venues. I’d like to brush towards that direction and to ask the question, ‘are the venues that we have, the cultural facilities we have in our province a help or a hindrance to diverse and First Nations programming? What do we have? What are some of the issues on venues?

Bronwen:
I can speak to that. When I worked in Prince Rupert the population is, I think, 52% First Nations. I did a lot of work through the education system, I found was the most easily accessible to me, going in and talking to people there to find out what was happening. I also worked closely with the Friendship House. I just feel, as a presenter from a very English family, my mother was very English and boiled the vegetables to death, so that’s how English I am…

Wendy:
There’s a cultural difference.

Bronwen:
Huge cultural difference…
I can ago and look at a Japanese production -- I have no idea if it’s good or not. Is there any one else as a presenter who feels that way, or is it just my vegetable background?
And that might be where some real education needs to happen because it’s different to my ear, let’s be honest. And I don’t understand, ‘Is this good?’ I think, ‘Wow, this is good,’ and everyone’s clapping, ‘Oh yeah. Oh this is fabulous.’ But sometimes when you bring it into the community, whatever community it is, people go, ‘What is this?’ Because you don’t know if you’re not used to that community.

Wendy:
Which is a strong voice to have in partners in you community who do.

Bronwen:
Absolutely. And that’s why you need to get in there and find people who know.
The other thing I learned, and I learned very quickly, is that just because you’re doing, say a First Nations presentation, it doesn’t mean that the First Nations community is going to automatically come, for exactly the same reason’s that Margo was saying -- they don’t know about it or…

But back to the venues for a moment -- working with the Friendship House. They brought in a number of very successful things. They did their own programming and stuff.

One of the things that quickly became evident -- the rules of the boiled vegetable group do not translate very well to other cultures. As facilities managers we’re hysterical. We’ve got to start at eight..we have t have eight ushers at the door…no you can’ go in…Kids? We don’t really like to bring our children to the theatre for some apparent reason, but there’s five hundred children going in and the ushers are hysterical because they’re obviously from the same boiled vegetable clan that I’m from.

So that was something we had to sit down and really address.

That door is going to stay open, people are going to walk in and out, people are going to talk, people are going to cry, children are going to be running around the lobby pulling things down, because you bring your children and thank goodness for that.

But I really feel as a venue person, it was a really hard slog for me to think, ‘okay, food can come in,’ because you’re just so trained.

And it ends when it ends. That’s the thing. You can’t say, ‘okay, it’s going to be over at 11:30 then everyone has to get out.’ Doesn’t happen that way. You have to really just go, ‘whew.’ You’ve just got to let it happen.

I think, really, the boiled vegetable clans are the only ones who really start at 8 and finish at 10:30 and we all go home and the doors can close and it can be vacuumed.

That’s my feeling. And you need someone to help you through that because I really had no idea. ‘Get back in your seat. Go find your mother.’

Wendy:
Sandy.

Sandy:
That’s a really valid point. For the aboriginal community, the main social thing in our community is the pow-wow. I don’t know if anyone’s heard the expression ‘Indian Time’ but that’s exactly echoing what you’re saying. There’s no such thing as we’re starting at 8 and we’re ending at 11. It’s just like an organic thing. It’s about the community, it’s about the elders who are highly esteemed in the First Nations community, it’s about the children. There’s a different protocol there.

And also, what you were saying, Dianne, what are we going to do about this issue around different cultural protocols when we’re trying to bridge everybody. When you don’t know that these communities expect to come in and eat and you’ve got the guy at the door saying, ‘you can’t come in with your bowl of noodles,’ or whatever, it really is a challenge, I think.

Audience member 3:
I think the key is being incredibly responsive to your audience and listening to the feedback that they give you. Always having an organic and flexible attitude to how your future programming happens based on what you’ve learned.

Wendy:
Joyce.

Joyce Hinton:
I just wanted to echo some things in terms of a venue. At the Chan Centre a lot of different cultural groups often rent and we do present them as well. We too, have suffered from the same thing. Having our expectations, based on Western European music, about how audiences should behave and our staff being really caught off guard by a group wanting to stay out after intermission and drink at the bar and maybe not go back in and people don’t really know how to handle it.

One thing, I think is important, and I’m not saying we’re always necessarily successful at this, too, but it has to involve all staff from all levels because everybody’s involved in really recognizing the differences and being behind it and being willing.

One other thing that we do quite often is co-presentations. That has worked really well, where we work with a local organization who has the expertise. We literally have done things where we’ve divided the publicity where a local organization will publicize to its community that it knows very well and we publicize to ours. We’ve had really successful events that way where we’ve had a really nice cross-section of audience members because we’re working in our field of expertise.

It is challenging because both groups have expectations and we do things differently.

I certainly am part of a big bureaucratic organization that doesn’t move quickly and flexibility is probably not the first word when you think of a big organization like ours so it probably involves a lot more work and time and dialogue than some of our other shows. But it’s very rewarding.

Audience member 4:
I was just wondering about the educational component of a presentation. When I am looking to bring someone in to my facility, I am also looking for an educational component. If it is from a diverse group that in not necessarily from the dominant society, I want to have something that the members of my audience, who generally come to my venue, will come back again because they have been educated, not only through the artistry that is prepared, but from some explanation. And I’m always looking for that and I’m quite often disappointed that it’s not there.

Wendy:
Tom and Val, you’ve got to jump in on that one.

Tom:
I’d love to respond to that because a lot of the artists that I work with are not only artists in terms of their art form, but they also love to teach and they love to share what they do. They’re obviously good speakers, they’re up there on stage, and they invariably want to do something with schools. I always strongly suggest that you try and get schools involved in you community presentation. I know that there’s a fine line where some presenters firmly don’t want an artist going to the schools because that kills their evening audience and others say that’s great because they’re in the schools and they go home and talk to their parents about it and their parents come on Saturday night to see the show. The best way is when the whole family comes and sees it after they’ve been in the school.

There’s other ways to get them involved. Instead of having the artist go to the school, maybe you can have the school visit the artist. If you plan it in advance, have an extra half an hour at the end of sound check time where students might come in and see what the artist does on stage. A little informal 20 minute concert or question and answer period. A lot of the cultural artists, though, include that in their show, as well. Sandy’s traditional group will tell you the history of the song before they present it and then they’ll sing the song. I’m actually surprised that you haven’t had that experience in your presentations, but maybe it’s just part of the dialogue in advance to express those needs.

Wendy:
To make sure the artists realize that that’s what the presenter needs in their community.

Audience member 4:
I have asked this in the past and they say, ‘Oh no, we don’t do that. We do it for school shows. Would you like to set up for a school show?’ ‘No, this is for an evening performance.’

Tom:
Maybe there’s something you can add to the performance at the end of it. Because I can understand that, in a theatrical presentation, you want the stage, you want that environment, so you don’t want to detract from that by having a question and answer…

Audience member 4:
No, I don’t have that problem. I just want it to be a learning experience so that my audience will come back and they will appreciate it that much more each time. We’re going to be in these little isolated situations until we start to educate. That’s the only way that we will get the cultures to come together and that’s one of the ways I try and do it but it hasn’t been successful so far.

You are on Page 2 of 3
Go to Page 1 | 2 | 3