It's Christmas time! (for everyone except the Creative City Centre)

Mayor Pat delivers a big ol' lump-o-coal to the Creative City Centre

Hey everyone! I hope everyone is getting in the Christmas spirit! I'm currently in "finals routine", and I've got a few new blog ideas kicking around to punch out when I get bored of studying (as in, stay tuned for more posts in the next few weeks). Today, I want to talk about how the Regina City Council is choosing to withholding much needed funding from the Creative City Centre.

So the Prairie Dog posted a blog yesterday about Regina City Council's decision to withhold funding from the Creative City Centre. Although I don't usually read the PD's articles on Provincial and Federal matters due to their obvious left-wing partisan opinions that tend to rear their ugly head, the bi-weekly does a good job of covering arts and culture in our city.

To summarize the scenario, the Regina Arts Advisory Committee receives $800,000 annually to dish out to organizations in the city. Right off the bat, two-thirds of that funding goes to the Mackenzie Art Gallery, the Globe Theatre and the Regina Symphony Orchestra, which are all deserving organizations. The CCC was looking for $30,000 to cover admin expenses and supplement staff for the renovation work that was done to renovate the formerly dilapidated and empty space above Loggies shoes downtown. Even after viewing the Centre's complete business plan, the Committee decided not to award them their funding and dispersed a good portion of the remaining funds left to the Mackenzie and Globe. Feel free to read the PD's blog for a more detailed explanation.

Being both a musician and a business student, perhaps I can provide some unique perspectives and insight on this issue.

As a musician, the experience and services that the Centre provides are a rarity in the Canadian arts scene. Having played approximately 100 shows over the past two years in various bars/art galleries/restaurants/houses/you name it across Canada, I can honestly say that the musical experience offered by the CCC is probably one of the best anywhere. This facility is the envy of other cities, and consistently packs the house for broke/weary/talented traveling musicians with a built in crowd and a warm, cozy atmosphere to perform in.

The owner of the CCC is Marian Donnelly, who has an MBA in Arts Administration. Seeing as the facility has experienced excellent attendance in its first few months, the potential for the Centre to profit definitely exists. However, for musical performances the CCC only takes 25% of door sales, and leaves the remaining 75% for touring musicians. Marian believes in rewarding Canadian artists for their hard work, and this is a refreshing change from many other venue owners that I have had the misfortune of working with that take a huge cut of the revenue earned by musicians for their own profit. The CCC is rapidly becoming a premiere arts destination for both Canadian musicians and the citizens of Regina, and is directly incubating our diverse/growing arts scene. City Council doesn't believe this is worth funding?

Approaching this from a business standpoint, I yield the same opinion. We all know that City Council has been attempting to push major condo developments (such as Capital Pointe) as viable and exciting options for our citizens. However, in order to to sell these $200,000-$1,000,000 housing units, you need to create an exciting downtown core with a wider variety of food/entertainment options. Being close to your workplace isn't going to be a strong enough incentive for people to consider these new developments in a city where people can drive anywhere in under 20 minutes. The state of Regina's downtown is far from being attractive to young couple that have experienced downtown living in other Canadian cities, and it has been one of the biggest criticisms from people visiting our city. The CCC is a top-rate facility, in a high density area, which can only raise the profile of our downtown core.

In addition, the Creative City Centre facilitates a fashion collective, art studios, and various workshops. Marian and other artistically renown workshop leaders work with interested artists to teach them creative skills such as songwriting and important entrepreneurial skills such as how to properly market products. This organization is helping to empower our artists with the tools they need to become successful entrepreneurs, which SHOULD coincide with the city's vision of promoting and fostering local entrepreneurs.

Denying this organization funding completely contradicts our Municipal vision. We are talking about good people that have poured their blood, sweat and tears into renovating a dilapidated, historic building in downtown Regina for the purpose of bringing people into an underutilized downtown core and promoting entrepreneurship.

Life will likely go on due to the hard work of volunteers without the help of the City. It would just be nice for our City Council to recognize the value of having a premiere institution such as the Creative City Centre in our downtown core. At the very least, I would be interested in hearing the Council's reason for denying them funding.

Nick.

PS - The Arts Advisory Committee is meeting Dec. 6 at 5:30 p.m. in the Larry Schneider Board Room (City Hall). I'm gonna try and show up, and I hope you guys do too!

What I learned on my summer vacation:

Ok, so first let me just acknowledge how grade-ten-first-day-of-school-english-class-writing-exercise-esque my title is. Now that that's been addressed, I was extremely fortunate to have some super awesome experiences over the course of this summer. I was thinking about the summer as a whole, and I began to realize that I learned some super valuable lessons.

I spent my summer touring the country/playing music and working at Camp Monahan, where another counselor and I guided groups of ten teenagers on hiking and canoeing trips in the Quappelle valley. These were some of the lessons I learned:

1) Good organization skills can make or break you:

Cramming your summer full of awesome and fun activities sounds fun and carefree. However, good organization skills can prove super handy when you have a gazillion things on the go. The months prior to my first tour this summer were full of album recording, university club commitments, booking a month-and-a-half long tour, playing shows around the city, in addition to working a full time government job. Even once I was on tour and camp I was still booking tour dates, dealing with university deadlines, playing shows and worrying about my campers.

Life can be overwhelming at times. Good organization was the only way which I could have even imagined to accomplish everything with my sanity semi-intact.

2) A little preparation can go a long way:

Putting in an appropriate amount of prep-work was especially important as we were preparing for our hiking/canoeing excursions. We were responsible for preparing food orders, strategically packing coolers/backpacks/canoes, and ensuring the campers were safe and happy. Spending a few moments anticipating challenges and situations that may arise could end up saving you exponentially more time and energy later on.

Good preparation is also crucial when booking shows as a musician, where a few hours of facebooking/emailing/phone calls can be the difference between having a terrible/poorly attended show and putting on a well promoted and profitable gig.

3) When you find yourself in a foreign place, take some time to immerse yourself in their culture:

You don't have to leave Canada to gain a different perspective than what you know at home. In a country as vast and diverse as Canada, you need only travel a few blocks or a quick drive down the highway to experience a completely different culture. The problem is that we get so caught up in everyday tasks, timelines, and worries that it is easy to overlook important little details that can be very educational if you're paying attention.

For example, when traveling from city to city I made an effort to pay attention to the social services and local flairs that each city would have. I would make an effort to use their public transit, ask about the health of the music scene, check to see if there were compost and recycling bins at houses we would stay at, and ask locals questions at shows about what they liked and didn't like about living in their communities.

By paying attention and asking about even the little things, you start to paint a picture of how insanely awesome and diverse our world is, as well as areas in your own community that need improvements. I know personally, that I also found myself with a ton of new ideas and perspectives to bring back to my hometown. These cultural perspectives are important for the growth and diffusion of new ideas, and are always around you if you take the time to notice them.

4) My family is probably the most important part of my life, friends a close second:

Being away from home so much (I think I calculated I slept in my bed a total of eleven times between May 7th and Aug 22nd) it is easy to lose sight of how important family is to you. Especially when you're on the road playing show after show in unfamiliar towns and eating terrible gas station food (chips, peanuts, McDonalds, etc). I found myself becoming moody and increasingly irritable as the days passed. The one thing that I knew I could count on was a comforting phone call to my parents, or a text conversation with a friend.

Building up a positive support group around you is important, especially when you find yourself at your lowest of lows. However, the relationship between you and your family/friends isn't stricly a 'take' relationship. It's important to give back when you can. You have to put in an effort to help them and invest an adequate amount of time into them, as they have with you. At times it was extremely difficult, but I still made an effort to try. These are the people that will be with you through the thick and the thin. They are worth making an effort for.

5) There's no place like home:

Out of all the places I've been this summer, Saskatchewan is still my favorite in the world (a close second to Newfoundland, by's). You don't realize how much you love a place until you leave. After spending a week in Jasper this summer (which was very beautiful), there was still something comforting and beautiful about driving back to camp in the Qu'appelle valley. Nothing can beat eating a hot plate of mom's pasta or taking an early autumn drive to the farm at harvest time.


Welp, that's all for now. I'm sure I'll be blogging more now that summer has died down!

nick.

"Domed If Ya Do, Damned If Ya Don't"

There has been a lot of discussion in the Saskatchewan media and in coffee shops across the province about the proposed Regina Multi-Purpose facility for the current CP Rail yards in downtown Regina.

Now I have loved, still love, and will love the riders forever. I've been going to the majority of home games with my dad since I was a wee lad. I have sat in the exact same seats in section 203 through the good (See: 2007 Grey Cup) and the bad (See: Jimmy Kemp). My family bleeds green, and it is rare to listen in on a supper time conversation without the topic shifting to the latest rider news. However, I have hated the idea of building the proposed domed stadium since day one.

The "Riderdome" has been widely promoted for the past few years as being a key aspect of revitalizing downtown Regina. Feasibility studies were done, and it was deemed to be a legitimate possibility. Local media, sports fans, and much of the mainstream province went insane.

The prospect of a shiny new extravagant multipurpose facility was an alluring one. How better to let the world know that Saskatchewan is rolling in it? It was to be a celebratory symbol of Saskatchewan's growth and it's triumph for the municipal and provincial governments over the last ten years!

Throughout all of the hoopla, I kept asking myself one question: How necessary is this dome? Do we really need to spend $431-million dollars (likely over $450-million with cost overruns) on a stadium, when we could build an adequate and modern facility for half the price?

Looking across the league at other CFL franchises, there are currently 4 stadiums being built, renovated, or that are scheduled for some type of construction: Hamilton, Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. For the sake of comparison, let's look at the Winnipeg stadium proposal.

Winnipeg is currently building a 33,000-seat stadium (similar to what Saskatchewan would require) on University of Manitoba land. We'll set aside the financial mess that is currently happening. The stadium has a price tag of $190,000, or likely somewhere over $200,000 with cost overruns and will be equipped with an inflatable dome for use in the winter.

The facility is both cost efficient and functionable. The inflatable bubble will render it useful for events and activities year round, and the facility will easily meet the needs of the people of Winnipeg.

Riderdome was a classic case of the excess, and the federal government likely viewed it the same way when it was reviewing the proposal for funding.

That being said, Taylor field is crumbling and the riders are in need of a new facility. It doesn't make sense to continue to dump money into a 100 years old building, so something new will have to be constructed. One has to wonder if the fed's decision would have been different if the province and the city had proposed a less flashy, more functionable plan such as Winnipeg.

Personally, I prefer watching football in Saskatchewan outside anyways. (Domes are for wimps)

Nick.