Director's Message - April 2019

Guy Rodgers, Kristelle Holliday, and Ziv Przytyk of ShazamFest at “Made en Estrie”, Sherbrooke QC.

April is the beginning of the new financial year. Projects from the previous year are wrapped, but their impact continues to resonate. State of the Arts was the largest community dialogue that ELAN has engaged in since 2011. Part of the value of bringing people together to share ideas and information, plans and dreams, is simply to make connections, like a multitude of new synapses forming between neurons. The creative power of the brain resides in its remarkable plasticity. The same is true of a healthy community. Some of the connections made during State of the Arts will evolve into collaborations between artists and cultural workers, and ideas that emerged during the past months will influence ELAN’s projects for many years to come. We will be sharing the final SotA report with you in the coming months; for now, you can visit the project page for more information.

April is also a time to launch new projects. ARTS2U has completed two research phases and is now entering a developmental phase, thanks to funding from Canada Council’s Digital Strategy Fund. The research has been highly technical but the idea is simple enough. How can artists and cultural producers make use of the digital universe to better connect with audiences, and to retain control of their own data? ELAN is also preparing to launch a major project made possible by the federal Action Plan for Official Languages. The goal of the Artists Inspire Grants is to send artists into every English-language public school in Quebec over the next four years. It is large and ambitious, but we have a splendid team working with us. You will be hearing much more about the Artists Inspire Grants in the coming months.

I was in Ottawa on March 11 when Melanie Joly, Minister of Tourism, Official Languages and La Francophonie, launched a public consultation to modernise the Official Languages Act, which turns 50 this year. Much has changed in Canada and Quebec since 1969 so the Act needs to be updated, but it remains of great importance to minority language communities. ELAN will be actively involved in the dialogue to modernize the Official Languages Act, which strengthens Quebec’s English-speaking community, and its artists, in many ways.

Guy Rodgers

Executive Director

Land Acknowledgement

ELAN is an official minority language organization within a country that recognizes two languages as official. ELAN is located in Tiohtià:ke, the original name for Montreal in Kanien’kéha, the language of the Mohawk—also known as Mooniyang, which is the Anishinaabeg name given to the city by the Algonquin. While we are based in this city, our projects have also taken place in many regions across Quebec.

We acknowledge the colonial origin of English and French in Canada, and recognize that both languages benefit from official status throughout the land. The province that we know as Quebec is an amalgamation of the traditional territories of the Innu and Inuit nations, Algonquian nations, as well as the Mohawk nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Kanien’kéha and Anishinaabemowin are but two of the original languages of this province; Atikamekw, Cree, Inuktitut, and Innu-aimun are also among the many Indigenous languages spoken across Quebec as majority languages, all well before French and English.

ELAN acknowledges the important work being done by First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples to revive the traditional languages of these territories, and their advocacy for the official status of Indigenous languages.