By Trevor Copp
December 29, 2015
BURLINGTON, ON
Trevor Copp is the dancer who brazenly told city council in 2012 that there really was a cultural community in Burlington and Council needed to wake up and pay attention. That fresh start resulted in the creation of the Arts and Cultural Community in Burlington, a significant report on the state of culture in the city and the development of a Culture Action Plan plus the appointment of a Manager of culture at city hall. Copp sees that as just a start.
Last year the star of the cultural community was how many indy ‘up and coming’ local artists/orgs ‘up and came.’
Kune Hua’s Wish Garden at the No Vacancy event held on Lakeshore Road this year.
Selina Eckersall’s No Vacancy – a pop up Art event which was an unthinkable in Burlington five years ago – held its Supernova event this year on Lakeshore.
The Burlington Performing Arts Centre saw its full local professional Series bloom with Tottering Biped Theatre, Nortsur, and Koogle Theatre all presenting works. The AGB’s new Executive Director Robert Stevens has for the first time acquired a piece by an internationally famous public art specialist from Lowville, Walt Rickli.
The FORM brought some of the most progressive dance the city has seen – great performance poorly attended though.
And an all-out first: FORM Contemporary Dance presented the first Burlington original contemporary dance event ever this past Fall.
Add in the Art in Action studio tour, the Burlington Slam Poets competing at the world championship, Symphony by the Bay rocking, and Burly Calling all holding their own beautifully.
This is what will finally get us to come into our own: artists doing it for themselves. We’ve been meeting up a storm at the City and progress is slow. The city is a big boat and takes a long time to turn, with several Councillors still needing convincing that the Arts have a place in our budget, not just our hearts.
Getting the City’s first manager of Culture Angela Paparizo into an office was a highlight – but we need a lot more of that going on so the City hall types can catch up to its people.
In 2016 I’d like to see even more independent artists making things happen. The Burlington Shebang – a multi-year collaboration of many local artists – will culminate at BPAC in May.
The performance community really wants to see continued growth in for them in 2016 – they are hoping Susan Haines can deliver. She does need some time to put a program together.
We’ll see if the new Executive Director at the Performing Arts Centre holds up Brian McCurdy’s vision of supporting local theatres. There’s a lot of possibility out there and we can have it all if we become impossible to ignore.
The City needs to kick in more real money and energy for the local artists: no more plans, we need money on the table. We are putting the ‘url’ back in Borington and this is our time.
Good enthusiastic comments from Copp. One significant local arts to also be included is Tim Park’s Live & Local Series of musicians from Burlington. The rental of BPAC is high and Tim and his fellow music curator deserve credit for sticking their necks out by renting BPAC. Park curates which musicians will be presently annually. I believe that this is Local & Live Series third season. The next Live and Local series performance is February 12 at 7:30 p.m.
Stuart Laughton sings and plays a dozen instruments, and injects his contagious enthusiasm into a kaleidoscopic musical combination of country and blues, jazz and Celtic, rockabilly and much more!
Support Burlington’s arts & culture. There has been quite the emergence of new arts organizations in the past four years. Oakville and Guelph have four city staff in their cultural departments while Burlington has 1.5 cultural staff. This is an improvement since the Cultural Action Plan but in 2014 there was to be 2 staff in the Culture department.
Come on councillors. Follow through with the Cultural Action Plan.