CITY OF VANCOUVER

ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT

 

Date:

November 24, 2004

 

Author:

B Taylor

 

Phone No.:

604-871-6004

 

RTS No.:

4338

 

CC File No.:

4001

 

Meeting Date:

December 14, 2004

TO:

City Council

FROM:

City Manager in consultation with Directors of Office of Cultural Affairs, Civic Theatres, and Financial Planning, and General Managers of Engineering Services and Park Board

SUBJECT:

Creative City Strategic Directions for the City's Cultural Services

RECOMMENDATION

COUNCIL POLICY

In 1987 City Council approved a series of goals for cultural development, attached as Appendix A.

Since 1991 the City's stated policy objective has been "to ensure our future as a creative city, open and accessible to artists, to the broadest range of artistic expression, and to the widest participation."

PURPOSE

This report sets out a process to review and revise the City's interests and actions in support of the arts, culture, celebrations, and special events, to best meet the needs of the community for the coming years and to ensure Vancouver maintains and grows its roles as a significant international "creative city" and "capital of culture".

SUMMARY

The City of Vancouver is at a critical juncture. We are already widely respected as a "creative city" and as a "Cultural Capital of Canada". We have an extraordinary creative sector and the coming promise of unprecedented opportunities such as the Olympic Cultural Program. However, the creative community is under-resourced relative to the creative communities of other major cities in Canada to the extent that the community as a whole cannot benefit from its full potential.

Council has made clear its vision of Vancouver as a city internationally recognized for its creativity, its cultural diversity and vitality, for its global quality, and its community participation. Council has also made clear its appreciation of the creative sector for both the social and economic benefits it generates.

If the City is to realize this vision, both strategic and implementation plans are required to guide development of the City's interest in and services to the cultural sector over the coming 10+ years. To start this process a number of critical steps need to be taken now, and the City Manager recommends: a process to consult stakeholders and develop strategic objectives and implementation plans; the creation of a new senior management position and a restructuring to focus City resources and services to provide improved effectiveness and efficiencies; and, a commitment in principle to bring the City's cultural investment up to a level that will not just maintain but grow the creative sector.

BACKGROUND

The City has been involved in the cultural life of the community since 1880 when the then City Council approved a grant to the Police Band. Since that time the cultural interests of Vancouverites, and hence the City, have expanded and taken on a new level of importance.

Today, the City fosters, encourages and supports arts and cultural activities, celebrations and special events through an array of programs and services administered through a variety of City departments. The Office of Cultural Affairs develops and manages arts and cultural support programs, participates in the City's planning processes to ensure art in the public realm and development of an array of cultural facilities, manages the relationships with the major exhibiting institutions that hold the City's collection of fine art and artifacts and co-ordinates the City's cultural initiatives with neighbouring municipalities and senior governments.

Cultural services are also delivered through the Vancouver Civic Theatres, which operates the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, the Vancouver Playhouse, and the Orpheum. Engineering Services co-ordinates and provides civic services to special events and filming in addition to managing the street banner program. The Vancouver Public Library and Vancouver Archives also directly provide invaluable cultural services to the public. The Vancouver Park Board with a community arts mandate, provides for a range of creative activities, events, classes and programs through its parks and community facilities city-wide. The City has also recently acquired the Pacific National Exhibition which, in addition to the annual summer fair, operates on behalf of the City several major sport and concert facilities within Hastings Park.

The current level of activity in the City is substantial. Last year more than 3 million people attended live performances, screenings, exhibitions, festivals and special events. 13.6% of Vancouver's workforce is employed in arts and cultural occupations (2001 Census). In all, this sector represents an increasingly important driver in Vancouver's economy. The arts and cultural activities in the City contribute to our quality of life, and create a "people climate" that is as crucial as the "business climate" in achieving an energetic, attractive and exciting place to live, work and visit.

However, the cultural sector is under-resourced and limited in its ability to sustain the current level of activity let alone grow and develop to its full potential. Limited funding continues to be a challenge. While Vancouver arts organizations are supported and recognized through artistic adjudication processes and grant and awards programs of the Canada Council and the BC Arts Council, neither of these funding agencies has the capacity to meet the need. Vancouver artists and art organizations still receive low levels of federal, provincial and regional funding per capita relative to the creative communities of other major cities. While the City's investment has helped to mitigate this long-standing shortfall, civic funding too has neither kept pace with inflation, nor grown to meet rising costs or the increase in population seeking services or the growth in creative activities.

Within the City, cultural staff resources are also stretched. While the Office of Cultural Affairs has developed a reputation as a leader in municipal cultural planning, it has done so with limited resources. The OCA, with a total staff complement of 8 delivers an array of project, operating, diversity, organizational development and capital grant programs in addition to civic, private and community public art programs, facility planning and development, communications programs such as the transit shelter program, in addition to policy and program development. Periodically OCA staff has also been seconded to other initiatives, such as the 2010 Olympic Bid, 2010 LegaciesNow (ArtsNow) delivering significant benefits for the community but leaving gaps in services and programs and adding strain to an already taxed workforce. Additionally this year, two long-serving Cultural Planners have retired.

Recruitment for the vacant Cultural Planner positions, including the Festivals and Community Celebrations, Performing Arts, and Cultural Facilities Planners, are currently being concluded. One new staff co-ordinating the Cultural Grant programs has joined the team over the summer. This number of staffing changes has created challenges, but it also provided the opportunity to re-examine staff roles and responsibilities and put in place a team for the future.

While both the creative community and the city itself have been facing resource challenges,
we are now also uniquely positioned to create and capture a number of extraordinary opportunities over the next 6 - 10 years including:

How the City addresses these opportunities will be key in determining our success as an Olympic Host City and as a dynamic, liveable, and creative community.

DISCUSSION

To maximize the social and economic benefits of our creative sector, and the cultural opportunities and responsibilities of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, a strategic and co-ordinated approach to the development and delivery of the City's resources will best serve the community as we build towards 2010 and beyond.

Recognizing the immediacy of the opportunities and the need to proceed in the most effective and efficient manner to capture these prospective benefits, the City Manager believes it is time now to establish a single more co-ordinated and streamlined organizational structure to achieve the City's strategic interests.

The City Manager therefore recommends a new senior exempt position be created immediately, to which the Directors of the Office of Cultural Affairs and the Vancouver Civic Theatres will report. The position would also oversee the Creative City planning process, outlined below, during which other areas of civic cultural interests may be identified for incorporation into this new department within the next year. (Recommendation C.)

The next step in building a plan for the future is setting a clear vision and process to achieve that vision. There are many ideas and concepts of what Vancouver's future could and should be: Cultural Capital, Creative City, Olympic Host City, and Festival City. Remarkably, the opportunity exists for Vancouver to be all of these and more.

But to do this, the City will need to work with the community to build creative and cultural depth and breadth, strong cultural infrastructure, civic and community leadership and public support, targeted, stable and effective grants programs, and initiate new strategic relationships with other stakeholder partners. This will require a focused set of strategic objectives and implementation plans to set the course for the next 10+ years.

Clearly Vancouver is already doing some things right. The arts and cultural community's existing strengths include:

But there are also significant weaknesses and unmet challenges including:

Strategic Planning

To develop a comprehensive and proactive approach to addressing these needs and opportunities the City Manager recommends a two-part planning process. First would be the appointment of a Creative City Task Force comprising community representatives, elected officials and senior City staff to develop a new vision for the next decade.

The mandate of the Task Force will be to oversee a consultation process to review stakeholder and community perception of the arts, culture, events, and celebrations in the City, and to seek new ideas on how the City can respond to the needs and opportunities within the community. The Task Force would identify strategic directions and priority objectives and make recommendations, for Council's consideration, on the City's services, programs and policies in support of the creative sector.

It is proposed that the Task Force comprise key community stakeholders recommended by the Alliance for Arts and Culture representing a broad array of interests, elected officials from City Council, as well as senior City staff from Office of Cultural Affairs, Engineering and Civic Theatres, Park Board, and School Board.

As Councillors Green and Louie are already tasked with cultural and civic theatres responsibilities, it is recommended that they form part of the Task Force with a City Councillor and City senior staff with cultural responsibilities co-chairing.

The City Manager also recommends appointment of a staff committee to work in tandem with the Task Force, to be responsible for managing and facilitating the consultation process, and to create an implementation plan to meet the objectives arising from the Creative City Task Force. This is a substantial and important piece of planning work requiring dedicated staff and resources to support the process.

Through this two-part process, at a minimum, the following initiatives should be addressed in the ten-year strategic plan:

Process Requirements

The strategic planning and implementation planning processes will address the larger human resource questions but short-term support is required. The City Manager recommends that up to $75,000 be allocated to support these processes (Recommendation D) recognizing that there are insufficient resources within the OCA to take on these additional responsibilities.

Cultural Investment

The City of Vancouver currently provides an array of grant programs, the primary ones being project and operating grants. These grants provide funds in support of artistic creation, production, exhibition, marketing, administration and organisational development. They represent a percentage of the total cost of providing the services with the balance of funds coming from earned revenues (i.e. ticket sales) and public and private funding.

In 2003 the City provided a combined total of $7 million in cultural grants. This level of investment is significant and sounds adequate until it is put into context. Of the $7 million civic contribution, 50% of the funds are distributed to 4 organizations the Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver Maritime Museum, Vancouver Museum, and the H.R. McMillan Space Centre. These organizations provide important cultural services and programs which serve not just Vancouver, but the region and province. Despite the City's significant level of investment even some of these organizations are under-resourced.

A further 25% of the grants budget goes to offset the rental of the Vancouver Civic Theatres. Again this provides much needed access for larger performing arts organizations to the three theatres owned by the City. What remains of the total grants budget, approximately 25% or $1.6 million, is available to fund the operating, projects, celebrations, diversity and organizational development initiatives of the 165 annual grant recipient organizations. Clearly this is not adequate to meet the needs of this large and growing sector.

And while the sector continues to grow, the City's contribution has been capped by modest inflationary increases over the past ten years. Over that period, the value of the City's funding for operating and project grants declined in real terms by 12 % and yet grant recipients' expenditures grew by 38%.
There are several approaches to begin to address the funding challenge including strategic approaches to senior and neighbouring governments, Olympic Partners, corporate sponsors, foundations, and private individuals. These structural funding issues will be explored in full in the context of the larger Creative Cities consultation process. Staff believe, however, that a declared commitment and leadership is necessary to convince other funders to follow suit.

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

While experience in other cities indicates that successful implementation of this report's recommendations would have a substantial beneficial impact on the local economy as well as our community, a new vision and plan for arts and cultural development will have significant financial implications for the City. Though the exact costs will depend upon the strategic planning outcomes, it would be unwise to embark on a public consultation and planning process without acknowledging the prospect of increased financial commitment from the City. It should be noted, however, that the strategic plan and process should also lever new partnerships, new sources of revenues, and restructuring of existing resources to best meet the needs of the community.

The immediate financial implications of the recommendations contained in this report include a one-time cost of $75,000 to support the Creative Cities strategic planning process; and the creation of one permanent senior management position, subject to classification by the General Manager Human Resources, source of funds to be the 2005 Operating Budget.

CONCLUSION

To achieve the vision of Vancouver as a Creative City and as a Capital of Culture; to capitalize on the profound potential of our creative community and to capture the promise of the Olympic and Paralympic opportunities; and in order to sustain the legacies that will be created as a result, the City Manager recommends that the City take a pro-active role in developing strategic plans, partnerships, policies and implementation programs, as outlined in this report.

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APPENDIX A
PAGE 1 OF 1

City Cultural Objectives

To ensure our future as a creative city, open and accessible to artists, to the broadest range of artistic expression, and to the widest participation.

City Cultural Goals

Council adopted the following goals on October 27, 1987 to guide the City of Vancouver's overall direction and specific decisions concerning the arts and the development of cultural policy:

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© 2002 City of Vancouver