scheduled workshop

Austerity is a form of policy thats intentions are to save money, to not fuel a national debt crisis. It is a policy that has historically affected the capacity of the state’s welfare programs, cutting back on Arts & Culture, Healthcare, Education, and other Social Services. In Canada, the new Liberal government has promoted this conservative policy, recently proposing cuts of 15% for Arts & Culture across the board — companies from Heritage Canada, to the CBC, to the CCA feeling the strain — leaving artists, arts institutions, artists co-ops, and the sector writ large in the pitfalls of an already ballooning crisis.

With public grant success rates at their lowest ever, it is necessary to come together as artists and both advocate against austerity, all while developing new methodologies of sustainable praxis that seeks to confront the historic problematics of Canada’s film “industry” and its increasingly diminishing resources. How can we reconfigure our imaginations, our financial strategies, our aspirations, to fit collectively into this narrowing frame of possibility?

During this workshop, we will consider the historical contexts of Canadian film, and collectively strategize to conceive of methods that might address the problem before us: fewer resources, fewer institutional supports, fewer professional opportunities. Are there new types of narratives that can be expressed through new forms of images, producible on limited micro-budgets? We will discuss what ‘new’ means. We will trouble the relationship of finance with our cinematic practice. We will convene with one another to imagine a future where the crisis of arts funding and our arts institutions can be ameliorated.