Background
The City of Kenora has embarked on a cultural planning process in order to understand its cultural assets, to create a vision, goals, and define actions for cultural development, and to integrate culture in planning across municipal departments.
What is Municipal Cultural Planning?
The Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Culture defines cultural planning as a "place-based approach to planning and development. It is a process for identifying and leveraging a community's cultural resources, strengthening the management of those resources, and integrating those resources across all facets of local planning and decision making."
Cultural planning is based on the tenet that culture
is one of the four pillars of community sustainability, along with
the social, environmental, and economic pillars.
As just a few examples, culture contributes to the
social pillar by building social cohesion and personal fulfillment;
the economic pillar through business attraction and stimulating
urban and real estate development; and the environmental pillar
through retention of natural and built heritage.
A municipal cultural plan works hand in hand with a community's other policies in the social, economic, and environmental arenas to strengthen the community as a whole.
What do we mean by 'culture'?
The term 'culture' means different things to
different people. UNESCO defines culture in a broad way as a:
"set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional
features of society or a social group, and that it encompasses, in
addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living
together, value systems, traditions and beliefs."
In order for a Cultural Plan to remain meaningful,
however, cultural planning requires a more narrow definition of
cultural assets to be managed and preserved. These assets
relate to various cultural disciplines, including performing arts,
visual arts, literary arts, crafts, heritage, design arts,
communications media, electronic arts, and civic arts.
This definition is consistent with the scope of cultural plans elsewhere in Ontario. A specific made-in-Kenora definition of culture will be an outcome of the Cultural Plan process.
How are we proceeding?
The planning process for the Municipal Cultural Plan
is divided into three stages: first, developing a picture of the
current situation of culture in Kenora ('where are we now?');
second, defining a vision ('where do we want to go?'); and third,
outlining the steps required to achieve the goals ('how do we get
there?').
The first phase (now complete) involves a review of
Kenora's history, a profile of the community today, a review of the
relevant policy context, and an inventory of cultural assets.
A copy of the Working Chapter resulting from this Phase is available
here.
The second phase (currently underway) involves
consultation with stakeholders and the public through a variety of
means including in person interviews, panel discussions, surveys,
and a public meeting held March 10, 2011. The purpose of the
consultation phase is to focus on defining goals, priorities and a
vision for culture in Kenora going forward. (See the 'Have
Your Say' Tab for additional ways to get involved.)
In the final phase, we will create an implementation
plan to achieve the goals.
A draft plan is expected to be complete by Spring
2011.
The planning process is being developed with the guidance of a Steering Committee with the following members:
- Jennifer Findlay, Economic Development Officer, Lake of the Woods Development Commission
- Lisa Moncrief, Regional Advisor, Government of Ontario (Ministry of Citizenship & Immigration, Culture and Tourism, and Health Promotion)
- Lori Nelson, Director, Lake of the Woods Museum
- Tara Rickaby, Planning Administrator, City of Kenora
- Erin Roussin, Director, Kenora Public Library
