The Art and Culture Advisory Committee (ACAC) is a volunteer committee of community members which advises Council and staff for the City of Vancouver. The ACAC is made up of professionals in the local culture space along with one general member. I was lucky enough to be the general member on this term of the ACAC. As co-chair, along with Melissa Tsang, we provided a structure for committee meetings and managed communication external to the ACAC.
During our short term on the ACAC, cut short because of the 2022 Vancouver City election, we accomplished several things that I am proud of (listed below). Unfortunately, though serving on the ACAC a great learning experience, it was also incredibly frustrating. The advisory committee role lacks direction and lacks the incentive to build one because it is a volunteer position. ACAC members felt like a staff "check box" with no way to trace the impact of our advice. The ultimate result was a high turnover for the next iteration of the ACAC with a lot of information loss. To mitigate this loss, the 2021-2022 ACAC created a document of recommendations and lessons learned for the 2023-2024 ACAC which was shared during their onboarding.
2022 Capital and Operating Budget - December 2021
•ACAC unanimously recommended that Council prioritize the third year of funding for Culture|Shift
•Shared as a letter and spoke directly to Council
2023-2026 Draft Capital Plan - April 2022
•ACAC wrote a collaborative letter, shared with Council, which pushed for additional funding for the following:
•Chinatown Grants & Partnerships
•Vancouver Cultural Spaces Fund & Cultural Land
•Firehall Theatre Renewal and Expansion
•Cultural Infrastructure Grants
Cultural Heritage Asset Management Plan (CHAMP) - May 2022
•The ACAC unanimously passed a motion to support the draft CHAMP as circulated to the committee.
2023-2026 Capital Plan - June 2022
•ACAC spoke directly to Council commending the increase in funding for the Firehall Theatre and highlighting the continued shortfalls to the following:
•Chinatown Grants & Partnerships
•Vancouver Cultural Spaces Fund & Cultural Land Trust
•Cultural Infrastructure Grants
Supported other Advisory Committee Motions - September 2022
•Motions for Honoraria on Advisory Committees
•Motions to include seniors and healthy aging planning in the City budgets