Director's Message: September 2017

ELAN Executive Director Guy Rodgers, Board President Bettina Forget, and Program Manager Amy Macdonald presenting at our 13th AGM on August 29 at Le Gesù.
Photo: Kinga Michalska.

Director’s Message: September 2017

ELAN’s 13^th Annual General Meeting took place on Tuesday (August 29^th) at Le Gesù, 1200 rue de Bleury in Montreal. It was an important moment to share ELAN’s accomplishments and plans with our members and friends.

Three motions were passed: to update ELAN’s mandate, to include part-time students and students in any discipline of study within student membership, and, in an ELAN first, to restructure our membership fees to a pay-what-you-can (PWYC) system. This is a major step towards making ELAN membership accessible to artists of all backgrounds and income levels. Click here for some background documents on these motions, and stay tuned to ELANews and social media as we share updates from our journey towards PWYC.

Board members elected for two-year terms are:

Louise Campbell (Music)
Kalina Skulska (Regions)
Bettina Forget (Visual Arts)
Paul Bracegirdle (Writing/Publishing)

Lori Schubert (Writing/Publishing: QWF)
Keith Henderson (Writing/Publishing: AELAQ)
Farah Fancy (Corporate)

Continuing board members elected last year are:

Valerie Buddle (Dance)
Fortner Anderson (Film/Video)
Karen Cho (Film/Video)
Rob Lutes (Music)
Dan Webster (Presenting Organisations)

Kristelle Holliday (Regions)
Warona Setshwaelo (Theatre)
Deborah Forde (Theatre: QDF)
Khosro Berahmandi (Visual Arts)

Click here to see bios of ELAN’s board of directors.

ELAN’s executive consists of President, Bettina Forget; Vice-President, Valerie Buddle; Treasurer, Kristelle Holliday; and Secretary, Karen Cho.

The annual business meeting was followed by a lively Schmoozer and Minute Market. A photo gallery will be available soon. If you could not attend the AGM and wish to see the agenda, financial statements or activity report, they are available on our website here.

The year ahead will be the busiest in ELAN’s history thanks to projects funded by the Department of Canadian Heritage, Canada Council for the Arts, and Conseil des arts de Montréal. In addition, new program funding from CALQ will enable us to hire new staff this fall (click here for the job postings). I look forward to working with this highly talented board of directors to develop new ways to serve ELAN’s members.

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.

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