A sense of belonging
and community cohesion through the arts and culture as an integral part of
everyday life in our region.
On the
weekend of March 14/15, a group of 6 RRAC committee members took themselves off
to Albany in the hope of finding peace and quiet to revaluate and reassess
their vision.
We stayed at
the centrally located Mary Thompson House, part of the Vancouver Arts
Centre. Arriving Friday night amid the
chaos of the VAC’s first No Lights, No Lycra event proved somewhat challenging
to find parking and unload, but with a bit of car shuffling we were soon all
sorted and sitting down to dinner and a meeting.
After a late
first night (we get excited when discussing future plans and possibilities) we
began early the next morning with a Strategic Planning Session with the
excellent facilitator Liz Jack from the Denmark Chamber of Commerce. It was tough going; Liz was not easy on us
and had high expectations…but her experience in business planning and the arts
sector was a huge opportunity for us to gain a clear picture about who we are
as an organisation and where we are going.
Among some
of the main points that came out of the session was that RRAC has an excellent
opportunity to be leaders in the role of alleviating or addressing social
issues within the arts, that we desire greater inclusivity across all profiles
of our community, that we want to strengthen current partnerships with other
groups, businesses and organisations and that we need to do more meaningful
community consultation in developing our programs.
After an
exhausting but productive day we decided to reward ourselves with a nice dinner
out, and took along Amber Perryman (past RRAC
committee member and now manages the VAC) to catch up on all the Albany
news.
The next
morning, after another late night out, cocktails and intermittent smoke alarms
going off in the night (picture mature women in PJ’s running around at 3am to
try and work out which alarm was the culprit and accusing each other of secret
cigarette smoking in the hall) it was a more subdued group- some more subdued
than others- that tackled a session on Social Media skills and reviewing a
bunch of policy drafts.
It was, all
in all, an extremely productive and fun filled weekend; now comes the hard part
in applying all those decisions and producing those outcomes!
Find us on
Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Raveaboutarts
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| Friday Night's Meeting |
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| Saturday's Strategic Planning with Liz Jack. |
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| A pity there was no time to admire the view from the deck. |
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| ...and Liz pulls out the big guns; hundreds of sticky notes to capture our thoughts! |
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| We still managed to make some new friends on the way home! |
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| Some of us really bonded! |
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