Project Update – February 2020

On December 11 2019, the Community Planning and Economic Development Committee (CPED) heard a project update on the Sharing Our Stories plan. The presentation shared a draft framework including a Vision, Pillars, and Goals for the plan. View the presentation to learn more about the suggested directions for the plan.

Over the coming weeks, the municipality would like to gather feedback on the draft framework for the plan. Please send us your comments and suggestions.

Looking ahead, the Sharing Our Stories team will bring a draft of the plan to CPED in Summer 2020. After this there will be an opportunity for the public to provide comments and feedback on the draft plan.
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What is the Sharing Our Stories Project?

Our culture and heritage includes many different components and perspectives that make this region unique. The municipality supports culture and heritage in many ways including festivals, public art, heritage buildings, natural landscapes, archives, and museums just to name a few. The 2014 Regional Plan identified the need to create a plan to assist the municipality in clarifying its vision, principles and priorities to more effectively guide investments and decisions related to culture and heritage. Also known as the Culture and Heritage Priorities Plan (CHPP), the Sharing Our Stories project will clarify the municipality's role in supporting culture and heritage by:

Analyzing the municipality’s current support for culture and heritage by reviewing existing programs, policies and complete best practices research
Completing targeted stakeholder and rights holder engagement, youth engagement, and provide opportunities for broader public input.
Developing and prioritizing a set of actions with timelines to improve how the municipality supports culture and heritage.

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Draft Vision and Principles

A draft framework has been developed with a Vision, Pillars, and Goals to guide policy objectives for the plan. Find the draft Vision, Pillars, and Goals highlighted below. View detail on the Pillars and Goals and how they work together (scroll down through the presentation).

Vision
We will celebrate culture to strengthen our sense of place and belonging.
We will support connection and inclusion through cultural expression.
We will uphold the principles of Truth and Reconciliation.
We will create a region that reflects the diversity of the people who live here.
We will be stewards of our heritage and cultural resources and look to the past to enrich the future.
We will value and support creators, artists, and performers.
We will promote the cultures of the Halifax Region and share our stories.

Pillars
•   Stewardship: nurturing our cultural resources, maintaining them, protecting, and renewing them
•   Connection: recognizing and valuing the unique yet often underrepresented or untold stories and histories within our region
•   Celebration: Supporting all people that live here, including newcomers, and people of all ages, abilities, cultural heritage, and interests
•   Access: Providing opportunities for everyone to participate and enjoy culture and heritage

Goals
1. Express Culture through Place
2. Support Cultural Capacity
3. Value Creativity

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What is Culture and Heritage?

Culture is how we understand, express and communicate our unique perspectives and histories, and the medium through which we celebrate the diversity of experiences and identities in the Halifax Regional Municipality.

Culture includes the broad spectrum of arts and creative expression, community character and identity, culturally-held practices, languages and traditions. Heritage is a critical component of culture—it’s our cultural memory and how we can better understand the culture of our place and time through the lens of those cultural forms, traditions, arts and expressions that preceded and informed it.

Culture is the substance of our shared and unique identities, and the dynamic basis for defining who and what we are as a people.

Below are examples of culture:
A STORY SHARED—over a pizza baked in the community oven in the Dartmouth common.
A LANDMARK—meeting a friend at the Public Gardens.
A CELEBRATION—listening to traditional music at L’Acadie de Chezzetcook.
A FUTURE EXPRESSION—supporting NSCAD grads as they pursue careers in the cultural industries.
AN ANNUAL TRADITION—gathering for fireworks on New Year’s eve.

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How does the Halifax Regional Municipality support Culture and Heritage?

Nearly every department of Halifax Regional Municipality is involved in some way in supporting culture—from the Municipal Archives, to Planning & Development, to Civic Events. While the municipality currently offers a variety of opportunities in the arts, cultural and heritage sectors, it has not yet established coordinated priorities on the allocation of these resources- How are they employed? Who are they directed to? And, How do we measure success?

The Sharing Our Stories Project is an undertaking of the municipality intended to clarify its role in cultural investment, and includes assessment of current programs, identification of gaps, and the rationalization of overall investment in Culture toward the maximum benefit of all residents

Here are some examples of how the municipality supports local culture and heritage:

The Grants to Professional Arts Organizations program directly funds not-for-profit arts organizations and specific arts projects each year. The program funded 31 organizations and 9 individual projects in 2019-2020.
The Halifax Regional Municipality is the first municipal government to create a Gord Downie & Channie Wenjack fund Legacy Space in City Hall.
You can borrow from our collection of over 150 musical instruments using your library card—just like you borrow books.
We've named our newest ferries after Nova Scotia civil rights activist Viola Desmond and Rita Joe, a Mi’kmaw artist, songwriter and craftswoman from Eskasoni First Nation in Cape Breton.
The municipality acts as a steward of the Shubenacadie Canal Cultural Landscape by protecting the area as parkland.
Memory keepers, the Municipal Archives houses images, words, artifacts and objects that tell our civic history. The municipality supports many community museums in telling our stories.
Barrington Street Revitalization project: $3.9 million budgeted in tax incentives and grant programs to revitalize the street.
Staff time, equipment and resources like transit are donated in support of Nocturne: Art at Night, bringing art and wonder to the streets of Halifax and Dartmouth.
The municipality provides a grant to the Middle Musquodoboit Agricultural Society to host the annual Halifax County Exhibition. This traditional country fair has been in existence since 1884 and continues to attract visitors to its livestock competitions, displays, and local vendors.