12 minute read
A Conversation with Jennifer Mascall: Dreaming Bigger than the Funding Model
by Rachel Silver Maddock
Early in the morning on a sunny, bright International Dance Day, Jennifer Mascall and I got on the phone to discuss the important topic of funding and the challenges dance artists are facing in the context of increased competition and decreased resources. Jennifer is always so inspiring to connect with, and she has a wealth of wisdom on this topic having kept her company MascallDance alive and vibrant since 1982. Among other things, Jennifer emphasized the importance of community, of reaching new audiences, and most importantly, encouraging artists to dream bigger than the current models that exist.
Rachel Silver Maddock: The topic of funding is present in people's minds. You and I were chatting at Bloom the other week about how artists and companies are feeling the pressure with the increased competition for grants. (In March, Canada Council for the Arts (CCA) released the statistic that only 16.6% or 1,125/6,750 applications of the last round of Explore + Create applications received funding.)
Jennifer Mascall: It seems to me that in some ways the Council set themselves up for that by trying to embrace a new range of artists and putting in the policy that priority would be given to first time applicants. It might be hard on an applicant getting it— the excitement, courage, and momentum it gives you—and then to not get one for ages because you are no longer the first one. I wonder, to the recipients at this end, it felt like the repercussions of that and the actual effects on somebody's career were not totally thought through.
The COVID Relief Funds were a remarkable thing. For our company, it allowed us to upgrade Bloom (performance series), after doing it for 20 years, to work with artists that are not emerging. What happens is there is a kind of momentum that comes as you emerge, and then as you get into the decades of really honing your craft, it is different. It does not have the same kind of momentum. That is when artists really need to be supported to continue to do their work: to do some in private and bring out in public what they need to, but not to be always revving on momentum. They need to be able to have time to gather their thoughts and find what they really think about.
With the COVID Relief Funds, the artists that I spoke to said it was the most unbelievable thing because they could stop their [other jobs]. One of the artists who is working with us is working three jobs just to pay the rent! To be able to stop that and work on their art... they had money to rent a studio, and they made more art. I do not know what work Statistics Canada has done but I think the production of art escalated in that period.
RSM: Yes, I have heard from other folks in the community that they try to hang on to the “emerging artist” title as long as they can, because it offers them more opportunities for funding and residencies. After “emerging” when you get into something else (what some people have called “mid-career”) there are less options. The issue that I am seeing is exactly that: people are working two, three jobs outside of dancing, which makes the making of art the last priority, rather than the first priority for their energy because it is so expensive to live here. My question is: how can government funding or other funding better support artists so they can prioritize their art?
JM: I am working with a young artist now. When she mentioned to me that she liked doing administration, we were able to hire her when we were not working with her as a performer. She is working with us every day learning administration of the dance company. At the same time, it just feels ridiculous that she and I are sitting doing administration all day, when really, we should be in the studio all day. There is that kind of dilemma. However, I feel like as many artists as possible need the survival skills of administration. At the same time, it feels like in the past five years (since just before the pandemic) there is a certain kind of accountability and reporting that has increased. There are demands being put on artists that are not being put on people in other fields that require us to write and report and calculate and count in ways that simply take us away from our work. It is a demand that does not recognize how much time it really takes to both produce an idea and the procedures for how that hunch or unknown idea would be realized.
To spend time counting numbers, counting people, and adding this and reporting on that, and stating values before you really lived your value, it feels like it is distracting artists from their real purpose which is to perfect the skills and improvisations that allow them to survive in the world. The thing that we offer the rest of the world is to know how to step into the unknown, work there, and know that something will come out of it that will inspire.
RSM: Yes, that really resonates. The amount of time that goes into these applications is huge. Sometimes the questions they ask, for example, “how does your project intersect with decolonization practices?” hit on really critical issues but may not be directly applicable to the project that someone is working on. I was having a conversation with an artist recently who is a member of a minority group working on a completely different issue that simply felt like, “I shouldn't be the one addressing this.” They felt pressure to change their project to mold their art into something that the Council was really interested in reporting on and valued.
JM: There are a lot of formatting and content things that are irrelevant to us. For us to answer a question like that, we might not be able to do it in 21 words, or whatever they say is the designated way they need for their homogeneity of reportage. I think that is a problem. We need to be able to speak when we have the thought and speak in the ways that we can speak rather than be shaped by a grant application, which we then twist ourselves into to get the money.
I see that in this period of huge change, the work that has to be done is the talking about what are the intersections of different mediums and populations, and what are the intersections of how we are going to live as Canada? Maybe not as Canada, but as Turtle Island. How are we going to live in this new world? I feel like that is the work of the next time period. That is a priority for everybody in the world. I think because nobody has the answers it would be circumspect for the grant to not be open enough to acknowledge that they do not have the answer. We do not have the answer, but this is what we propose to do to help us add to the pot of the answer that will make the new culture.The funding system needs to be more responsive From the artists' side, those thousands of new artists have so much power if they chose to use it—to say we look at these non-profit societies and they are not the right shape for what I want to do. Can we please change the system? All those young people can say this is not working, please do not push us into existing systems that are not really working
RSM: I really love what you said about how artists are always looking forward; artists have always been the ones that envision a new world. We are at an interesting crux in the history of our country of figuring out how to go forward and artists need to be supported in being able to think with complete freedom and in an open-ended way.
JM: The statistics since the pandemic are mixing art and culture with sport, but in Canadian Art in 2018, they had this remarkable article on StatCan that showed that artists had eight times more direct economic impact than sports, and that the impact of the culture industries outpaces agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting. The impact on the finances of the country was like sixty billion dollars, not counting education or government organizations. One of the triggers that many artists feel is that people laugh when they hear about how the statistics are showing artists have an enormous impact. It is permeating an assumption that is not true. [This disbelief] is not acknowledging the vitality and financial impact that we, as artists, have brought to the country, which is so bizarre when you realize how much we do with so little money. It is really shocking, the language that comes into common parlance that denigrates art.
RSM: So far in our conversation, we have talked about the funding model and how it can serve us better, but another part of the equation is artists being able to maneuver and being pliable and being able to work within this system, even as you know, we want to change it. Is MascallDance pivoting to react to the current funding environment or what is your vision for that?
JM: I think what has influenced my thinking is having spent four years researching water to make The Impossible Has Already Happened, which was a co-production with New Zealand. We created the piece and toured it in New Zealand. Then, we came back to Canada and reworked, remounted, and toured it here. Throughout the pandemic, while we were trying to get it to the tour, we were researching it. It feels to me that the model of making a dance, performing and touring is too narrow to embrace the need for work with the environment. We as artists could partner with anybody to help expand, educate ourselves, and show the skills that we have of invention, dreaming and visioning of new possibilities with the environment. That is where my vision is going.
RSM: Apart from government grants, where else can people go for funding?
JM: We are doing an audience development called Privilege at Home. During the pandemic, to give a chance for people to watch in their homes and for dancers to perform, we put a piano in a pickup truck and worked with Rachel Iwaasa—a concert pianist who runs the Queer Arts Festival. They sat at the piano in the pickup truck, and we drove to people's places (apartment buildings, co-ops, places on the street) and the dancer got out of the car and Rachel played Beethoven for five minutes while the dancer danced and then we drove away...It's often gone to the places of people that don't go out to art. They bring their neighbors, people come out to see, and it is the magic of the five minutes, just a bite and a taste. There are many ways we need to reach people for whom art would be magic. That is what leads to other funding
RSM: I love the idea of micro art; rather than everyone going to the same place for the same thing, using the communities that we're already a part of. As someone who has survived in the arts for many decades and continues to make work and thrive, do you have any advice or encouragement for younger artists and emerging companies as they try to create solutions and not lose motivation?
JM: I realized that my legacy, if I have one, comes from my ability to survive. My ability to survive comes from my practice of improvisation. I began my career as a solo improviser. I have always improvised, in fact, I consider choreography to be simply the boundaries that you propose within which an improvisation takes place. The boundaries can be between one beat and another, or they could be between the beginning of the performance and the end of it.
In our administration and our artwork, we continually make decisions for us as a group that will lead to longevity. Developing the skills of improvisation from any point of view is what allows for longevity because we have to adapt to things that are just inconceivable again, again and again. I am working with two young artists. It is so much fun because it seems to them that I have things to tell them about, and they have ways of being that I learn from. Intergenerational partnering is what will help us build community and allow us to survive.
RSM: That is such a wonderful place to land.
Rachel Silver Maddock (she/her) is an independent dance artist, choreographer and arts writer guided by artistic curiosity. Currently pursuing her M.A. (Contemporary Arts) at SFU, she lives and works on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations as a settler of British and Icelandic descent. Her work explores relationships between the self, the land and each other in the complex environment that is called Canada. She has presented choreography and performed with artists and companies locally and in the UK since 2013.
Jennifer Mascall breeds a culture of improvisation. MascallDance makes spaces that welcome thought experiments and invent ways to perceive and re-perceive dance. Mentoring all generations is a mutual growth. Both craft and wisdom develop through perseverance.
Title image: The Impossible Has Already Happened © Caio Silva
