Cultural Human Resources Council

“TAMYC for Aboriginal Artists” Grant

2014-2015

 

The Cultural Human Resources Council (CHRC) was awarded a one-year grant in September 2014 to revise one of its core resources. The agency was established in 1994 as a sector council and its mission is to initiate, co-ordinate and promote human resources planning management, development and training in the cultural sector. CHRC developed The Art of Managing Your Career (TAMYC) to provide emerging self-employed artists and cultural workers with pertinent and practical information to better manage their careers. Despite the success of TAMYC in the broad cultural sector for over a decade, the CHRC received feedback that this resource was not being accessed or sought out by many Aboriginal artists and cultural workers. As such, it set out to revise TAMYC to meet the needs of Aboriginal artists, including special consideration for those in Canada’s North.

CHRC’s The Art of Managing Your Career Workshop for Aboriginal Artists teaches business skills to self-employed Aboriginal artists in the context of their unique worldview and perspective. The resource includes 135 slides, a Trainer’s Guide and a Participant’s Workbook. This rich and powerful material covers the five chapters in TAMYC, while also giving Aboriginal artists a context for their art: e.g., through a unique exercise in cultural mapping; some history of the treatment of Aboriginal art in Canada; and consideration of the placement of their art in the public, commercial and/or community realms. The Art of Managing Your Career Workshops for Nunavut Artists was created to “speak” to the geographic and cultural realities of Nunavut artists.

In order to help seed the workshop throughout Aboriginal communities, CHRC delivered the workshop as a pilot to 18 trainees from across the country in a train-the-trainer session provided in both English and French. These trainers will continue to provide pilot training on an ongoing basis through March 2016 and over 60 Aboriginal artists will be trained.

For more information on TAMYC for Aboriginal and Nunavut Artists please visit the CHRC website www.culturalhrc.ca.