This report presents the findings of a national community consultation process jointly undertaken by the Canadian Artists’ Representation/Le Front des artistes canadiens (CARFAC), le Regroupement des artistes en arts visuels du Quebec (RAAV) and the Independent Media Arts Alliance (IMAA) in 2016 to evaluate their respective fee schedules in relation to the needs, practices, and activities of the Canadian media arts community.
The goal of this community consultation process was to propose a harmonized national fee schedule for media artists informed by media artists’ and media arts organizations’ current practices and uses of the existing CARFAC-RAAV and IMAA fee schedules.
Members of the media arts community with expertise and/or involvement with CARFAC, RAAV, and IMAA were invited to join an Advisory Committee to provide input and guidance throughout the process. Mariane Bourcheix-Laporte was hired as consultant to develop materials to undertake the community consultation and analyze input gathered through this process.
Two bilingual online surveys were circulated in February and March 2016. One was designed to collect input from media artists, while the other was distributed to staff and/or board members of professional media arts organizations. The media artist survey had a total of 105 qualified respondents, while the media arts organization survey collected 72 qualified respondents.
Seven focus group discussions were held across Canada between in April 2016 in the following cities: Calgary, Saskatoon, Halifax, Montreal, Winnipeg, Vancouver, and Toronto. Focus groups were individually moderated by members of the media arts community, Advisory Committee members, CARFAC-RAAV and IMAA staff, and/or the consultant. The consultant designed a questionnaire and slides to guide focus group discussions, which moderators were asked to follow. Audio recordings and written notes from the focus group discussions were shared with the consultant for analysis purposes.
Following the analysis of the information collected, an Advisory Committee devised a new transitional IMAA Fee schedule for 2017 which was ratified at their 2016 AGM. The schedule was intended as a temporary, transitional document and represents a first step towards the eventual harmonization of media arts fee recommendations between three organizations: IMAA, CARFAC, and RAAV. It also closely parallels the fee recommendations of a fourth organization: Conseil québécois des arts médiatiques (CQAM) which represents media artists and arts organizations in Québec.
This schedule is limited in scope and addresses only areas of activity where wide consensus was clearly achieved during the consultations. IMAA, CARFAC, and RAAV agreed to continue working towards a fully harmonized fee schedule. In 2019, a new harmonized fee schedule will be presented to their respective members for ratification, and implementation in 2020.