Culture pour tous

WHO WE ARE

A message from Louise Sicuro, President and CEO

The Journées de la culture, representing the combined efforts of players from professional arts and culture circles, have been an annual occurrence in Quebec for the past ten years. This three-day event, which invariably kicks off on the last Friday of September, brings hundreds of institutions, organizations, artists and craftspeople into contact with people from an equally large number of Quebec municipalities.

When this novel initiative was launched, it involved calling directly upon artists and their professional circles and suggesting that they organize an event— it would later become a movement—designed to foster a new form of cultural mediation through the creation of spaces where people could come together and exchange ideas on the processes involved in art education, art-making, art conservation and dissemination within the field of culture.

In sketching out what would eventually become the Journées de la culture, we sought to go beyond the concept of audience development and draw closer to the ideas of cultural rights and inclusiveness. Thus we made a deliberate decision to put the ideal of cultural democratization back on the agenda—it had been downplayed by an overly restrictive discourse focused on the pursuit of excellence and the development of cultural products.

In 1997, Quebec’s economic, social and political circumstances were not initially conducive to the emergence of an offensive aimed at cultural democratization, and launched through an appeal to the values of generosity and altruism. The public finance crisis was in the forefront of people’s minds, and the role of the State was being called into question not only in the field of culture but in that of education as well. The labour crisis was in full swing, and examples of social exclusion were undeniably on the rise.

So when Premier Lucien Bouchard announced, in the spring of 1996, that he was holding a summit to review State priorities with “zero deficit” as his rallying cry, cultural leaders decided that they would prepare for the event by outlining what was to become the platform for the Journées de la culture.

The goal, which was as simple as it was ambitious, was to revitalize a model of cultural democratization based wholly on the responsibility of the State and its government departments (like Culture and Education, for example). We put forward the idea that it was in the best interests of artists and cultural workers to plan and launch a voluntary and militant movement intended to promote a better understanding of culture and the arts among their fellow citizens. We also hoped that this joint venture, involving many members from Quebec’s cultural circles, would be supported not only by the State, as an integral part of its cultural mission, but also by other nerve centres like the education and business communities and the municipalities.

This proposal caused some surprise in 1996. And it generated bitter debates, particularly around the fact that themovement would initially have to rely exclusively on the voluntary input of cultural organizations, artists, craftspeople and cultural workers scattered across Quebec.

While we were convinced that artists had to be better paid throughout the year, we still had to face reality as it stood: a movement needed to be launched and, each time this happens in history, one has to count on the desire to interact with others and the community as a whole. Ambitions had to be put front and centre, even if finding the means to realize them could only come later. And this is indeed what happened. We affirmed then, as we do again today, that this committed attitude is indissociable from the discourse and ideas that form the basis of the Journées de la culture. It gives us a persuasiveness which is all the more powerful in that our initiative depends on people, organizations and agencies that take up the task freely, act on their convictions and demonstrate true solidarity with their fellow citizens.

The Journées de la culture are composed of thousands of interactions taking place on a human scale. They are not like festivals, neither in spirit nor in the shapes they assume. Sociologically, they are are more akin to the idea of the voluntary work brigade, of those movements dictated by need and urgency that mobilize the best energies and minds in order to attain a shared objective.

Supported by ongoing awareness and mobilization activities targeting professional cultural circles along with municipal and other government sectors, this movement has taken on the outlines of a concerted attempt to change the dynamics that exist between professionals who create, produce and program, and citizens who aspire to be other than passive consumers of culture or its rejects.

During the Journées de la culture, therefore, elected officials, artists and their fellow citizens form a coalition to affirm the importance of culture in our society. This is real, concrete action, in which each person became a dynamic player in the creation and protection of the cultural life of his or her community.

From the beginning, we foresaw that the Journées would be a success to the extent that they allowed for sustainable development in the area of cultural democratization. We wanted them to spark and nourish reflection on orientations and practices aimed at anchoring culture, as well as cultural organizations and enterprises, more solidly in their communities all across Quebec.

The Journées have had many offshoots. More and more, they provide participants with a useful pretext for developing new—and previously hard to foresee—forms of interaction with other players in the business, education and health care communities. Many initiatives have followed in their wake, drawing on their momentum. Sometimes this occurs in an obvious manner, but at other times it happens more subtly or even unnoticeably. A new attitude is becoming widespread, and is even having repercussions on grant programs.

The Journées de la culture have been, as it were, the first millilitres of water used to start a pump that is now operating at ever greater speed—one that will, we hope, bring to Quebec as a whole a vivifying stream of ideas and actions that will sustain a democratized artistic and cultural life.

While much remains to be done to break down the walls that divide us, real advances are stacking up. We will obviously have to draw upon human and financial resources much more extensively before we cross the threshold that leads from the process of cultural democratization to a culture that is democratic through and through. And we still have to go beyond the dynamic that consists in reaching out to others, even if this is far from having exhausted its potential. To go from the desire to communicate to actual interaction is to move from an approach oriented toward inclusiveness to one marked by participation—a form of participation in which citizens are called upon to become integral parts of a process of cultural creation.