Naomi Campbell, Industry Series Producer/Touring Liaison
June 13 - 16, 2010 Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario

A professional symposium dedicated to building networks and sharing the wealth of Knowledge amongst festival delegates.

While performers train throughout their careers, those of us on the other side of the proverbial curtain seem less inclined to incorporate schooling into our professional lives. The wealth of knowledge available to us keeps expanding but there's never enough time to absorb it all, and still stay on top of emails and grant applications, deadlines and meetings, tour follow-up and, oh yes, that elusive work/life balance.

Inspired by the spirit of investigation and higher education exemplified in Kitchener-Waterloo by the high standards of its universities and institutions devoted to pure learning, this year’s Industry Series will focus on renewal. We'll look at ways to keep abreast of innovations, to strengthen and deepen our own particular expertise, delving into intellectual concepts as well as sharing practical skills.

Setting the tone is keynote speaker Robert Pacitti of London’s SPILL Festival, whose strong commitment to research and development informs his work as an artist, an activist and a curator. Sessions, both practical and provocative, will challenge assumptions and answer gnawing questions, and of course the ever popular pitches return.

MAGNETIC NORTH THEATRE FESTIVAL INDUSTRY SERIES

JUNE 11 – 16, 2010

Since 2004, Magnetic North’s Industry Series has played an important role in strengthening our community. Of course contemporary Canadian theatre in English has existed for decades, but this event, along with a few others, has bound us together and forged a network that was almost unimaginable 15 years ago. By offering provocations, arguments, ideas, solutions, support and inspiriting conversations these few days will further expand and strengthen the bonds that hold us together.

JUNE 11 – 13: INDUSTRY SERIES PREQUEL

Touring Workshop with Judy Harquail and Lendre Kearns at Kitchener City Hall
This three-day intensive will provide practical tools and strategies for touring performance in the current context. With participants from across the country and guest presenters from around the world, the outcome will not only be increased knowledge for those involved but a new network of colleagues who will no doubt collaborate and support each other in the future. (Registration is closed.)

Supported by the Audience and Market Development Office of the Canada Council for the Arts.

9:30am - 11:30am | Presenters’ Breakfast at the Walper Terrace Hotel
The first chance for presenters, producers and artists to meet, the Presenters’ Breakfast provides the early arrivals a casual atmosphere and some good food with which to prepare for the days ahead. See who is here, hear who is coming, meet some old friends, make some new ones, make plans.

5:00pm - 7:00pm | Industry Series Opening Reception at Centre In The Square
The crowd gathers at Centre in the Square. Share a drink and some food, find your bearings in Kitchener-Waterloo, then catch Rick Mercer, The Last 15 Seconds or Homage followed by the SPILL Feast, or sneak out early for the opening of TOUGH!

MONDAY, JUNE 14: CONTEXT

1:00pm – 2:30pm | Keynote: On Agency at Victoria Park Pavilion

Robert Pacitti is an artist/director/performer/curator/producer/presenter/programmer/ researcher/risk taker/activist/social scientist/anthropologist/experimenter/conceptualist/ formalist/sound-maker/film-maker/photographer/sculptor/designer/writer/educator/facilitator/publisher/documenter/archivist/strategist/
manager/developer/team player/business owner/ administrator/fundraiser/evaluator/economist/politician/...

He doesn’t particularly want to be.

Depending on the context, and/or who’s paying for it, the work he makes is called live art/fine art/performance art/performance/theatre/visual theatre/performance theatre/visual art/
dance/installation/public art/hybrid art/...

It’s been called “a seamless flow of beautifully crafted intelligent images” and “a dirty smelly stinking piece of shit”... Depending on your position it can be either.

He has 3 primary agendas:
1) Making the absolute highest quality work possible;
2) Making work that can be meaningful;
3) Making a difference. He is an artist because he believes in making a fucking difference. Against apathy and ignorance.

This is civil war.

Today we discuss tactics.

3:00pm – 5:00pm | Art Matters at Centre In The Square
A series of national forums hosted by Their Excellencies The Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, Governor General of Canada, and M. Jean-Daniel Lafond, Art Matters encourages dialogue and provides a space for reflection on the creative process and how it is received by society. Over the past four years, more than 50 Art Matters forums have been held in Canada and abroad.

This session is called Creating Art, Creating Community and will address how our art practices affect the communities we work with, work in, tour to, welcome into our own, and those communities that are actually created by the work we make. Communities can be fleeting or permanent, ad hoc or highly structured, geographic or temporal. Questions of values and responsibility are placed at the centre of this discussion. Should we even be concerned with creating community or should we just stick to making art, and see what happens?

5:00pm – 7:00pm | Cinq à sept at Centre In The Square
Join Their Excellencies and your colleagues from across the country and around the world. Time for a drink between the afternoon’s discussions and the evening’s performances; a great time to finally talk to that artist you’ve been tracking since Magnetic North in St. John’s.

TUESDAY, JUNE 15: ACTION

The Canadian cultural community has spent years talking about diversity and the importance of addressing it in our work, in our presentation practices, in casting our shows and filling our performance spaces. We can talk some more, or we can make some concrete plans and implement them. Building on the foundations laid in K-W at The MT Space’s IMPACT 09 conference, this time action is the goal. With a special emphasis on the role and responsibilities of the presenter, Tuesday’s sessions are presented in collaboration with Cultural Pluralism in Performing Arts Movement Ontario (CPPAMO) and in cooperation with the Kitchener-Waterloo based Collective of Performing Arts (COPA).

Additional funding for Tuesday’s programming was received from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, Equity Office of the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and the Ontario Ministry of Culture.

1:00pm – 2:45pm | Presenting Paradigms in Globalized Canada at Victoria Park Pavilion
As Canada’s population grows and changes, and as we remember to remember whose land we are standing on, programming strategies in our venues must evolve to better reflect who really lives here. This session will facilitate learning and relationship building between creation-based culturally specific performing artists and presenters, and will focus on creating homes and audiences for performance both within and without the conventional presenting networks and festival circuits, for artists from Canada and beyond our borders.

3:15pm – 5:00pm | Ideas into Action: a Workshop for Presenters at Victoria Park Pavilion
Building on today's plenary this hands-on workshop will offer ways to renew your presenting practice and attract new audiences. While it is crucial to bring in work that appeals to the cultural communities in our neighbourhoods, we can't make curatorial assumptions that will create ghettos for intercultural art. This session will provide real strategies for serving and challenging audiences while promoting pluralism, with excellence, relevance and the bottom line in mind.

3:15pm – 5:00pm | Three Sessions: Pick One Or Move From Room To Room at Kitchener City Hall

Presenting Art Like the Art You Make
One way to teach an audience what to expect from you as a presenter is to bring in work that is akin to your own. Is this fair to your audience, or just fun for the inner circle? Is it good for your own work, or does that just end up getting short shrift? 

Practice or perish: Who’s Afraid of Academia?
Universities seem to offer security and a way to experiment as both artists and presenters, but is maintaining a flourishing career really possible within the academy? Is it an inspiring alternative to pensionless senior years or a sure way to ruin your art practice?

Touring Outside Your Comfort Zone
In recent years Canadian artists have begun to tour work outside Canada, the United Sates and Europe, sometimes without the technical support we have come to expect, but often with remarkable success. Volcanoes permitting, this is globalization at its best and the future of international touring.

5:00pm – 7:00pm | Cinq à sept at The Museum
Between the Industry sessions and the evening’s shows debrief over a drink, but don't forget your business cards - this is where the real deals are made.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 16: THE WORK

9:30am – noon | Speed-dating (by invitation only) at the Canada Room, The Record
Festival artists meet one-on-one with prospective presenters and partners to talk about their work.

1:00 - 3:00pm | Pitch Sessions at Conrad Centre For The Performing Arts
Eight pitches, eight very different projects. The ever-popular pitches return. Highly anticipated and truly effective there is ample proof in theatres across the country and around the world that pitches really work. Keep an eye out for these projects in seasons to come. Following the pitch sessions the artists will be available to meet and discuss details in the theatre lobby.

The Silicone Diaries Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto, Ontario
YICHUD Convergence Theatre, Toronto, Ontario
The House at the End of the Road Inner Fish Performance Co., Kelowna, BC
Everything I've Got Jess Dobkin, Toronto, Ontario
Unburdened Modest Productions, Toronto, Ontario
Carmen Aguirre’s Blue Box Nightswimming, Toronto, Ontario
The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi Théâtre PAP, Montreal, Quebec
Five Easy Steps (to the end of the world) Zuppa Theatre Co., Halifax, NS

3:15pm – 5:00pm | Now for some Balance at Snyder’s Flats – meet at The Museum
Work up a thirst with a walk and a swim at Snyder's Flats. Just across the Grand River from Kitchener-Waterloo in Bloomingdale, Snyder's Flats is a low-lying trail-filled grassland with a series of ponds that boast many species of native plants and animal life. A bus will leave downtown Kitchener at 3:15 and will be back in time for the final cinq à sept.

5:00pm – 7:00pm | Cinq à sept at The Museum
The final networking opportunity of the Industry Series. Please, join us.

The Mentor Wall We all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. Throughout the Industry Series the Mentor Wall begun at Toronto’s Free Fall Festival will hang in the festival bar at The Museum. Take a moment to name your mentor and pin up a tribute.
With thanks to the Theatre Centre and Harbourfront Centre for a lovely idea.

Take the bus from Toronto to Kitchener and back! June 14 -16, departures from City Hall on Queen Street in Toronto at 10:30 am daily, will deliver you to Kitchener in time to attend the Industry Series, have some food and drink, see a show, and still have a bit more social time before returning to Toronto at 11:30pm.

3 return trips Toronto - Kitchener $50 • 1 return trip $20 • 1 way $13

Seating is limited. To guarantee passage pay in advance by credit card or take your chances and show up on the day. To reserve tickets please email Rupal Shah rupal.r.shah@gmail.com.

THE TORONTO SPECIAL:

For June 14, 15 and 16 Toronto arts practitioners can buy a one-day special for $100. It includes the bus from Toronto to K-W and back, access to the day's Industry Series programming and tickets for two shows. SPILL Feast is extra. All reservations must be made in advance through Gayle Diguer at GDiguer@nac-cna.ca or
1-866-850-2787 ext 738.

All programming subject to change and last minute inspirations.
Naomi Campbell, Producer naomic@interlog.com