Angie Littlefiled's speach at PRAC's 2005 AGM

PineRidge Arts Council

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Angie Littlefield

Call to Arms for the Arts

by Angie Littlefield

Year Two is about Vision and Reality. We need to consult with a wide variety of people about what an art centre should look like, who it will serve, how it will operate and how it will be funded. For example, support of local artists will be a significant part of the Centre’s mandate but not the Centre’s only goal. We need to make sure that everyone understands that. Then, when we have a model in mind, we have to gather the support to make the vision real. You have already started that by being part of that with Gary Faulkner’s artist survey and the feedback on the January Visual Artists’ seminar.

Part of our task, however, will also be to convince the Town of Ajax and the City of Pickering that they are a part of the support and SUSTAINABILITY of an arts centre. Although both municipalities have been great, no arts centre in Ontario is self-sustaining. Let me repeat that, NO ARTS CENTRE IN ONTARIO IS SELF-SUSTAINING. So, just as the ice surfaces receive municipal support to sustain them, so too the arts will need that support. Just to make my point, the arts have the teams to put on the ice and the spectators to fill the arenas. Here are our line ups:

Ajax Creative Arts will take on the Ajax Rug Hookers—a fair match.

The Student Alliance of Songwriters is itching to take on Anna Lynn Murphy’s Young Singers.

The StoneCircle Theatre versus the sculptors promises to be a slow match as each team keeps calling time out to check what they look like in three dimensions.

The Pickering Community Concert Band, often penalized for high sticking with its tuba, will be matched with the Durham Symphony Orchestra who has been known to slash with their violin bows.

Then there’s the lichen journal against the Durham Folklore Society—two teams whose language pyrotechnics delight the spectators.

The Clarington visual artists are ready to pit themselves against the artists of Uxbridge and the Pickering artists are ready for Whitby. Bring on the studio tours!

And, of course we’ve had trouble getting Ajax Film Circuit on the ice because they just want to watch and the potters are hard to get on the ice because they think they’ll break.

There are many more arts teams to play and spectators to fill the arena. The problem is, WE DON’T HAVE ONE. The arts need their own arena, their own arts centre, as surely as we need libraries, recreation centres, playing fields and ice surfaces.

The current DWAC show, the Thomsons of Durham, part of our visibility strategy, has a panel on William Lyon Mackenzie and the Farmers’ Revolt of 1837. Mackenzie agitated farmers into revolt as the farmers’ interests were not being represented by the government. Neither are the interest of the artists and arts lovers represented adequately. You pay taxes for all these very important interests, yet, you own are not represented.

Now I am not here to suggest we take up pitchforks and march, but, we do need to gather the arts forces to act as a united voice for reform. We in the arts need to show that we can work together on the common cause of an arts centre that will serve the region.

And back to hockey—although we may not like what all the arts teams do, or have team loyalties towards one medium and resentment towards others, we must put those aside in the interest of the arts as a whole. We need to work together to get a permanent arts centre. We must support DWAC with memberships, provide input for the arts centre vision and work on the building campaign for the future. Comrades of the arts revolution, you have nothing to lose!!

Thanks again to PRAC as one of DWAC’s earliest supporters for allowing me to speak. Even when DWAC eventually prompts an arts centre, there will always be a PRAC as there will always be a need to support local artists. And thank goodness there is a PRAC now. Congratulations on another successful year and good luck for the upcoming year.

PRAC Vice-president, Ivo Azevedo introduces AGM Guest Speaker, Angie Littlefield,

Executive Director of the Durham West Arts Centre

Good evening ladies and gentlemen and thank you to the PineRidge Arts Council for this opportunity to speak. We are here this evening to review and praise the efforts of another great PineRidge Arts Council year.

In 1996 the Pickering Arts Council had 33 members and a one page newsletter. Nine years later, renamed as the PineRidge Arts Council, membership is over 200, which really represents well over 1000 individuals because of the groups, and a 16 page tabloid newsletter with spot colour—and there’s a webpage! The newsletter and webpage provide excellent visibility for all the arts in Durham Region and beyond.

1997 marked PRAC’s first Artfest, a successful annual event which has run for eight years and PRAC has continued to increase its community locations to show works of visual artists. They now have the McLean Community Centre, OPG and Pickering Civic Complex Rotunda. 1999 was the first Juried Art Show in partnership with the Town of Ajax.

PRAC has also been active behind the scenes helping with nominations, contests, funding and festivals such as the hospital’s Festival of Trees. It’s amazing what this volunteer group has been able to accomplish in promoting the arts in the region.

In 2002 PineRidge Arts Council provided $1500 of sponsorship for the Durham West Arts Centre. Why? Who was this group?

Well, literally for over a decade, Ajax and Pickering arts’ groups had brought the need for an arts centrre to municipal councils. For example, in 1996 PRAC made an impassioned plea to Pickering Council to encourage the Town to support and promote the arts.

In 2002, the nucleus of the group that is the current Durham West Arts Centre was forming with the mission to establish a permanent arts centre for the Ajax-Pickering area. Knowing the arts, all of them: music, media, dance, visual arts and more needed a home, PRAC took a chance on this latest group. We are delighted that they did.

With additional funding from the Trillium Foundation, the Town of Ajax and the City of Pickering, DWAC was able to start on its mission in April 2004. Year one was about infrastructure and visibility. We needed to set up a base of operations and we had to get out the message who we were, what we were doing and what we could do. We wanted to show we supported youth, local artists, art education, established Canadian artists and famous artists with ties to Durham. Year one: Mission Accomplished. The Brenda Clark Franklin the Turtle Readathon alone brought us contact with 9,000 school children and we had over 1000 visitors into the Franklin Show—an incredible number if you consider the size of our facility. The show Common Threads representing diversity of age, culture and media, brought totally new visitors to the centre. Our website continues to get over 10,000 hits a month and of course there’s our coup: The Thomsons of Durham—the impossible show which we made happen. Who would have guessed that works by Tom Thomson would be on display in Pickering Village, Ajax?