Mayor wants to shake up how city museums operate

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This article was published 23/06/2016 (2856 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The city’s heritage, arts and museum leaders are hoping a new task force will set their organizations on the right track.

Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman announced the creation of the task force for heritage, culture and the arts Friday during his annual state of the arts luncheon address.

Bowman said the job of the task force is to help the member organizations broaden and stabilize their financial footing.

Ironically, it was the heritage and museums representatives to the task force who believe the desperate situation of the group prompted Bowman to set up the task force.

The museums board has been quietly on strike since the fall, refusing to hold meetings until city hall took steps to address its funding concerns.

Meanwhile, arts and heritage leaders had been holding meetings behind the scenes with the goal of seeing how they could work together, and approached Bowman to see if he could help them.

Bowman said there is no hidden agenda; he just wants the various groups to be financially stable and prosperous and wants to hear how they think that can be achieved.

Everything, he said, is open for discussion.

“This is about how can we do things better,” Bowman told reporters after his speech. “How can we identify additional sources of funds and support for our arts and creative sector?…

“How can we learn from each other and come up with better, long-term funding tools?”

The formal announcement from Bowman’s office lends support to the museums’ community analysis of the task force creation. The announcement, said Bowman, directed the task force to review “governance models for museums, heritage, and tourism,” and to provide “a recommendation on the best model for reimagining the City of Winnipeg museums board.”

The museum board recommends annual grant funding levels for the 14 community museums, some small — such as the Seven Oaks Museum, St. Boniface Museum and Transcona Museum — and some large — such as the Manitoba Museum and Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada.

But museum board members have been frustrated as city council each year ignores its recommendations on how much funds city hall should provide to the individual museums.

Christian Robin, co-chair of the museums board, said board members spend a great deal of time with the 14 museums operating in the city, reviewing applications and studying operations.

“In the last five years, all the recommendations (from the museums board) were ignored by council,” Robin said. “You can imagine how frustrating it is for a board member to go through that.”

Robin said the city’s museum community does not see the creation of the task force as meddling by city hall, rather he said the task force should lay the ground work for a new agency that helps the city’s museums and is respected by city hall.

“We’re supportive of the task force,” Robin said. “We’re participating in it and we look forward to where it’s going to go.”

Cindy Tugwell, executive director of Heritage Winnipeg and also appointed to the task force, said she hope the work of the task force doesn’t get lost in any single concern but helps all the groups, as Bowman intends.

“We’re all working in different directions with very limited funding,” Tugwell said. “I’m hoping everyone can speak to their dilemmas and what they’d like to see accomplished, so we can all hear each other. Then, when we listen to each other, we can decide, collectively as a group.”

Tugwell said the different sectors have many problems in common and she hopes during its short time frame they can come up with concrete solutions to help each other.

“Maybe I’m shooting for the sky, but I think these conversations work much better as a team,” Tugwell said. “Our resources are stretched, our funding is tight. We all have somewhat similar goals. How to get there may be vastly different but I’m sure we all have the same goals.”

The task force mandate includes consultations with stakeholder groups on existing government standards and grants and making recommendations on how to best move forward in supporting and structuring Winnipeg’s vibrant arts, culture, and heritage sector.

Bowman said the task force will report directly to him and he’ll decide what to do with any recommendations, possibly taking them to city council for implementation.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca