Patrick Street Productions
is thrilled to offer musical theatre classes to youth ages 11-18.

Anvil Centre Theatre
777 Columbia Street, New Westminster
(across the street from the New Westminster Skytrain station)
April 11-28
Tuesday-Friday
4:00pm – 5:30pm
Final presentation on Saturday, April 29th at 7:30pm
in the Anvil Centre Theatre
Cost is $245
download registration form

Work with the Professionals
Led by members of the cast and creative team of PSP’s upcoming production of A Little Night Music, young performers will explore skills and techniques that bring movement, voice, and music together to tell stories the way only musicals can.

Throughout three weeks of after school classes, ensemble numbers from Broadway musicals will be studied, explored, and staged, ending in a presentation on the Anvil Centre Stage.

Aimed at youth ages 11-18, these classes are perfect for young performers who love to sing, dance, or act… especially if you love doing them all at once!

Junior Class Ages 11-14
Senior Class Ages 15-18

MORE INFORMATION
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July 5, 2016 by Diane Ragsdale

A couple weeks back I had the privilege to give a talk in Christchurch, NZ at an event called The Big Conversation—hosted by Creative New Zealand, the major arts funding body for the country. You can download a transcript here.  The talk, titled Transformation or Bust: When Hustling Ticket Sales & Contributions Is Just Not Cutting It Anymore, was intended to address the general conference theme, Embracing Arts / Embracing Audiences. It was assembled on top of four cornerstone ideas:

• Michael Sandel’s argument that we have shifted from having a market economy to becoming a market society in which, as he puts it, market relations and market incentives and market values come to dominate all aspects of life.
• The notion that, paradoxically, the arts are facing a crisis of legitimacy (says John Holden) at the very moment when we have so much to potentially contribute to the erosion of social cohesion that is resulting from global migration, economic globalization, a culture of autonomy, and the Internet (see the David Brooks op-ed, How Covenants Make Us).
• The four futures for the social sectors predicted by NYU professor Paul Light in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis: (1) the unlikely scenario that nonprofits would be rescued by significant increases in contributions; (2) the more probable scenario that all nonprofits would suffer; (3) the most likely scenario that the largest, most visible, and best connected nonprofits would thrive while others would fold; and (4) the hopeful scenario that the sector would undergo positive transformation that would leave it stronger and more impactful, likely only if pursued deliberately and collectively by nonprofits and their stakeholders.
• And a concept I encountered on Doug Borwick’s excellent blog: transformative engagement, by which Doug means engagement with the community that changes the way an organization thinks and what it does.

Building on these, I argue that in the US arts and culture sector we have for too long ignored or denied the costs of so-called progress in the arts–meaning, for instance, the costs of professionalization, growth, and the adoption of orthodox marketing practices including so-called customer relationship management and I suggest five ways that arts organizations may need to adapt their philosophies and practices in relationship to their communities if their goal is deeper, more meaningful engagement.
Ultimately, I pull the various threads of the talk together in a framework that seeks to conceptualize the difference between embracing the community and embracing the market. In setting this up, I build on Internet guru Seth Godin’s notion of, essentially, competing worldviews that inform the way companies approach marketing. In an interview with Krista Tippett on her NPR show, On Being, Godin remarks:
There’s one view of the world called the Wal-Mart view that says that what all people want is as much stuff as possible for as cheap a price as possible. … And that’s a world based on scarcity. I don’t have enough stuff. How do I get more stuff?… There’s a different view, which is the view based on abundance. [And] in an abundance economy the things we don’t have enough of are connection …and time.
Here’s the PPT slide of the framework I created that synthesizes the various ideas in the talk:

What is living in poverty if not constantly being creative?
BY ALISON STINE | APRIL 23, 2016 This post first appeared at TalkPoverty.org.

In the toy aisle, which is inconveniently next to the bread aisle, I tell my 5-year-old son we are not getting a truck today. I tell him we buy what we need, and not more. I tell him I have enough money for food, but nothing else. I tell him I don’t buy treats for myself.
“You buy art supplies,” my son says. And I’m stumped.
Because of course he’s right.

I live in Appalachia, in the poorest county in my state. I often make less in a month than some people spend on cable, though my son and I don’t have cable. We don’t always have trash collection. I drive a 15-year-old car with dents in the back and a scrape on the side that will never get fixed, and I’m behind on medical bills.
But I do buy art supplies.

One of my first memories is of drawing. I’m sitting below the table while my parents have dinner; I’m drawing their portraits. Outside, rural Indiana is flat and abandoned. Our road is gravel. Our neighbors have trailers. But in the warmth of the kitchen, I draw and dream.
I don’t remember being specifically encouraged in art as a child, but I was encouraged to be creative. I was encouraged to occupy myself. I was told, when I complained to my mother that I was bored, “Is your imagination broken?”
When I became a mother — and then, a solo mother — I found myself saying the same words to my son. I filled an old suitcase with art supplies, and put the suitcase in the living room. Mostly, I did it to distract him, to gain a few minutes so I could fold laundry, or start dinner.
But something happened: my child came to love art.
Read More

DANIEL LEBLANC
Ottawa The Globe and Mail Last updated: Saturday, Apr. 23, 2016 11:48PM EDT_
Changes to Canada’s cultural policies would be first major overhaul in decades, reports Daniel Leblanc. Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly announces the launch of public consultations with consumers and content creators with an aim to bring Canada’s cultural properties – everything from the Broadcast Act to the CRTC – into the digital age.
Ottawa is ready to blow up the rules governing Canada’s $48-billion broadcasting, media and cultural industries, arguing that decades of technological changes and government inaction have left a broken system in need of a revolution. 
“Everything is on the table,” Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly told The Globe and Mail.

Announcing the launch of consultations with consumers and creators of cultural content, Ms. Joly said she is willing to change laws such as the Broadcasting Act and the Telecommunications Act, modify the mandates of the CRTC and the CBC, and create new laws or agencies, as needed. The scale of the coming upheaval hasn’t been seen in 25 years, since the Mulroney government revised the Broadcasting Act in 1991 at a time when no one could foresee the arrival of YouTube, Netflix and iTunes. 
Ms. Joly said her ultimate goals are to foster the creation of Canadian content across the country, but also increase the international audience for Canadian creators. 
“I think the current model is broken, and we need to have a conversation to bring it up to date and make sure we harness its full potential. For a long time, politicians have been afraid to deal with these difficult issues, but I don’t understand why it wasn’t done.… The issue is how can the government be relevant today, instead of being left behind,” Ms. Joly said. 
The review of Canada’s cultural policies was not part of the Liberal platform in last year’s election, and wasn’t mentioned in the Prime Minister’s mandate letter to Ms. Joly in November. Instead, the Liberals simply focused their arts and cultural promises on boosting the budgets of the CBC, the Canada Council for the Arts, Telefilm Canada and the National Film Board, with no mention of deep structural reforms. 
Still, Ms. Joly said the urge to tackle the root of the problems came naturally to her as a 37-year-old politician who grew up with digital technologies. She added that in the first five months in her position, she has had a series of conversations with key players in Canada’s cultural industries who complained about Ottawa’s inability to respond to ongoing changes. 
“I’m a Heritage Minister who thinks about digital technology first and foremost, that’s how I consume information and music. I’m a product of my generation,” said the rookie MP from the Montreal riding of Ahuntsic-Cartierville. 
Ms. Joly pointed out that her 2013 mayoral race in Montreal – in which she finished in second place behind Denis Coderre – was run mostly on social media. “All of my career was built outside of traditional models,” she said. “For me, all of these reflections on digital technologies and the model that we will build after these consultations, that will be the cornerstone of my mandate at Heritage.” 
The consultations are starting Saturday with an Internet poll, to be followed by public hearings after Labour Day. 
The government is guaranteed to hear widely diverse and contradictory views during its consultations. Common complaints these days include musicians and artists who can’t make a living selling their creations on the Internet, Canadian cable and television firms that are riled by foreign Internet rivals that don’t charge sales taxes, and media firms that decry the publicly funded CBC’s unfair advantage at selling advertising. 
At the same time, an agency like the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), which enforces federal legislation over broadcasters and telecommunications firms, has had a hard time forcing media giants to offer flexible and affordable cable packages to consumers. 
Read More

Setting the stage for a day of deep thinking and lively conversations at the Alliance's upcoming conference re:generation / BC Cultural Roundtable 2016, about the changing landscape of our arts and cultural leadership, will be a morning panel discussion which will include SFU Woodward’s Cultural Unit director Howard Jang, Writers Festival founder Alma Lee, and PuSh Festival managing director Roxanne Duncan. 
The panel discussion, focusing on the twin themes of “Engagement & Support” and “Transition & Legacy," will follow a keynote by Emiko Ono, a program officer with The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s Performing Arts Program. Ms. Ono is the author of a recently released study, “Moving Arts Leadership Forward: A Changing Landscape”, which tackles head-on many of the issues to be discussed at re:generation. 
re:generation / BC Cultural Roundtable 2016 takes place from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Thursday, June 9 at New Westminster's Anvil Centre. 
Throughout the day our conversations will include views from across the career spectrum, from founder/pioneer though mid-career and just beginning, as we discover what each has to teach and learn from the others.
The BC Cultural Roundtable is the new name for what in previous years was the Alliance’s annual Arts Summit. The BC Cultural Roundtable will be the annual keystone of the emerging BC Cultural Roundtable Network, bringing together voices from similar gatherings around the province.
Early bird registration for re:generation / BC Cultural Roundtable 2016 closes April 29. Click here to register now! 
Learn more about the programming and join the conversation here.

Each spring your BC Alliance for Arts + Culture presents an Arts Summit to bring together a diverse group of artists, organizations, presenters, facility managers, students, businesses and government representatives and create opportunities for dialogue, networking and professional development. 

At Arts Summit 2015, June 18 and 19 at the Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre, we will close the circle on two years of province-wide conversations around the creation of a Cultural Policy Framework for BC as part of our BC Creative Convergence initiative.

We will also spend a day with cultural visionary Richard Evans, as he shares his thoughts on the relationship between cultural policy and emerging practices in the arts. 

Click the sidebar links for more details. Register now to join the conversation!

To learn more about the BC Creative Convergence process, visit bccreativeconvergence.ca

This is your invitation to join your arts, culture, and heritage community colleagues in a province-wide conversation about the development of a cultural policy framework for British Columbia.

The BC Alliance for Arts + Culture and ArtsBC are holding a province-wide series of Community Cultural Roundtables. These Roundtables are part of the BC Creative Convergence project launched by the Alliance for Arts + Culture in 2013.

The Roundtables will focus on a Cultural Policy Discussion Paper which will be posted to this website at the beginning of March. This Discussion Paper will address:

• What local and regional issues should be reflected in a Cultural Policy;
• How a Cultural Policy could recognize the economic and social impact of cultural activities;
• How a Cultural Policy should acknowledge the historic and contemporary importance of the multicultural diversity of BC’s communities;
• How a Cultural Policy could impact the relationships between the sector and the provincial government and its ministries and agencies.

The Community Cultural Roundtable series is your opportunity to bring your personal, local, and regional perspectives to this important provincial initiative.
More Information