Cultural Spaces in Practice: Re-thinking Policy and Imagining Future Uses 💬

Housing availability and affordability of space are among the most pressing policy issues facing all levels of government, in rural and urban communities across the country. Pressures and challenges are mounting around cultural spaces and changing how artists and cultural producers live, work, create, and share. What policy tools are needed at the local, provincial/territorial and federal levels to support this work? How is capital secured and what conditions for successful partnership are needed for collaborations between government, developers, and the wider community? What new models and solutions can we learn from to hold space for our communities, now and in the future?

Join the Cultural Policy Hub at OCAD University for a compelling dialogue with leaders, scholars, and artists to explore these critical issues. Our panel includes Terri-Lynn Brennan of Inclusive Voices (Ottawa), JP Longboat of Circadia Indigena (Algonquin territory), Julie Whitenect of ArtsLinkNB (New Brunswick), Mélanie Courtois and Julie Favreau of Laboratoire d’innovation pour les espaces de création (Montréal), and Brian McBay of 221A (Vancouver). This expert panel will dive into how organizations, communities, and individuals have developed new approaches to shaping our understandings of cultural space: how we designate them, how we imagine their uses, and how we create and sustain them long-term.  

Our panel of leaders will share insights and learnings from their pursuit of groundbreaking solutions, prompting us to reimagine and expand our definitions of cultural space. This dialogue serves as the first in a pair of roundtable discussions that the Hub will host on the topic of cultural spaces and housing. Knowledge exchange between cultural leaders and attendees will speak to community-driven practices that can help inform and transform policy directions to support these vital spaces and the communities that are welcomed within them.