Advisory Committee Update #4

At its most recent meeting, Council struck a Diversity Committee (Kimberley Rampersad, liaison), responsible for making recommendations to Council (based on member input) on how Equity can better serve/represent its members from diverse communities. As with the other advisories, members who expressed an interest in participating in this committee will be contacted regarding involvement. 

Info for all the Council advisories is available at EQUITYONLINE.

Advisory Committee Update #3

At the May meeting, Council added an Atlantic Advisory (Robert Seale, liaison), responsible for linking up with the Atlantic membership. Mandate development for a Diversity Committee is underway, and will be complete for June. I'll post details here when that is done, and info for all the advisories is available at EQUITYONLINE. Members who expressed an interest in participating in the new advisories will be contacted regarding involvement. 

In addition, Council made some determinations on the following suggestions:

Senior Artists – Equity took part in the Senior Artist Research Project, concluding in 2010, and Council will be reviewing those results to determine how to best put them to use at the committee level. We'll be coming back to this in June.

CTA Level 2 Monitoring - Staff will be preparing a comprehensive engagement report at the end of the summer, incorporating contract data and patterns observed to that point. Council has deferred decision on a committee until that report comes in and we have more information.

At this point, Council has completed most of its work on the advisory committees for the term. As previously noted, there are a couple to be finalized in the next month or so, and some proposals are slated to come forward again in October for review. Of the remaining topics, all represented less than 1% of the submissions, and will be addressed as discussion topics throughout the term, rather than as committees.

We received over 600 submissions, on a huge range of topics, and all were very illuminating. Even those that did not result in a committee will be used to inform Council's discussions going forward, and quite a few will be of use to staff in determining topics for upcoming negotiations, and improving service. 

Council's job is to act as an informed agent of the membership, and thanks to your input, we are able to do the job that much better.

Honours Schedule Change

Since 1975, Council has regularly solicited nominations from members across the country for deserving honourees in (now) four categories. The nominations and support material are reviewed by a Council committee, and the final candidate list is presented to Council for approval. The awards themselves are presented at a honours evening to which the general membership is invited.

Going forward, Council will be changing the honours schedule from an annual to a biennial activity, and will be combining the presentation event with the national AGM. This change is intended to save money, since the expense of holding the event is not inconsiderable, and neither is the cost of bringing honourees in from across the country. The new schedule will maintain Equity's ongoing commitment to peer recognition, while recognising the financial situation in which the association currently finds itself. 

The first presentation under the new schedule will take place in February 2014. Nominations already received in 2013, as well as any held over from previous years, will be considered for presentation at that time.

The upside of this change, however, is that if you have been considering nominating a colleague for one of the honours, you now have a bit more time in which to do it. If you catch yourself thinking "people really ought to know how special that person is", head to the nearest computer, or give the office a call, and submit a nomination. That is exactly the kind of person the honours exist to celebrate.

                                                                                       

Life Membership is awarded to members who have made an outstanding contribution to the performing arts within the jurisdiction of Equity. It recognises not only an extraordinary career, but also colleagues who have gone "above and beyond" in other ways that contribute to the benefit of either Equity or its members.

Honorary Membership is awarded to an individual who is not an Equity member, but who has made an outstanding contribution to Equity and/or its members, or to the performing arts within the jurisdiction of Equity.

The Larry McCance Award is awarded to a member or to a former staff member, who has made an outstanding contribution to the Association and its members, through elected representation, notable service on staff, or other exemplary action and advocacy.

The CAEA Award of Distinction may be given to any organisation, individual, or group of individuals, excluding current staff, in recognition of significant contribution within the realm of live performance benefitting the membership of the Canadian Actors’ Equity Association.

Full details on the honours categories, as well as a nomination form and instructions, can be found here. Nominations are accepted all year, and will automatically be considered for the next available round of honours, depending on the submission date.

Advisory Committee Update #2

At yesterday's meeting, work on the next two advisory mandates were completed. There is now an Ontario Caucus (Mark Brownell, liaison), responsible for linking up with the full breadth of the Ontario membership, and an Opera Advisory (Wade Nott, liaison), responsible for connection with all disciplines working in opera across the country. As with the others, members who expressed an interest in participating in these will be contacted regarding involvement.

In addition, Council made some determinations on the following suggestions:

Insurance – the majority of the submissions in this area centred around the desire to strike a committee to review our insurance plan and propose improvements. However, the plan has just completed a major overhaul and was relaunched only three weeks ago. Council would still like to consider striking this committee as a feedback mechanism on the new plan, but will table the idea for 6 months and review it again at that point. This will allow more time for members to have experience with the plan.

Auditions and Engagement Opportunities – Council needs more information on the possible mandate for these two committees, and I will be contacting those who expressed an interest in participating to see if we can flesh that out a bit.

Member Education – this has a lot of overlap with our new Communications and Education Committee (Aaron Willis, liaison). We will be reviewing this to see if there is a specific branch of the proposal that would be a good mandate for a separate committee in this area, or if the committees are best combined entirely.

Diversity – mandate development for this committee is underway. As a side note, this is also a hot topic in general for Council, and will likely dovetail with that work.

Agreement Ratification – this topic is already on the Council agenda for debate. Council will table this suggestion until that discussion is underway, so that if a committee is needed to complete that work, a mandate can be developed to suit.

New Members – Council is about 80% done on reviewing our approach for welcoming new members into the association. We will table this suggestion for 6 months until that work is complete, and a committee mandate can be created in keeping with the update.

Working Conditions – no committee will be struck for this topic, since working conditions vary widely across the different agreements and policies, and ample input opportunity is already available as part of the negotiation and review cycles for each.

Rehearsal Models – The Directors, Choreographers and Fight Directors Committee (Vinetta Strombergs, liaison) has agreed to take this on.

Regional/local Support Committees – mandate development is underway for one to support the Atlantic Region.

Review work will continue on the remaining suggestions.

Advisory Committee Update #1

The first four of the new Advisory Committees were formally struck at today's Council Meeting, and they are:

• Equity Independent and Small-Scale Theatre Resource Committee - Mark Brownell, committee liaison 
• Member Communications and Education Committee - Aaron Willis, committee liaison 
• Directors, Choreographers, and Fight Directors Committee - Vinetta Strombergs, committee liaison 
• Stage Management Committee - Allan Teichman, committee liaison 

The contact info for members who expressed an interest in participating in these committees has been passed on to the liaison for consideration. Because each committee has a requirement for representative composition, it will be up to the liaison to put together a group meeting that standard.

In April, Council will begin work on the next set of committees, so stay tuned...

Advisory Committee Survey Summary

In prep for the inaugural meeting, Council got its first look at the detailed Council Advisory Committee survey results. We still have to work our way through them, but we wanted to share the overall picture with you right away.

331 submissions were received from a total of 216 members, which is great. Up to three suggestions were solicited per response – half of submissions included at least two, and one-quarter included three. Even better, almost half the respondents indicated that they would be willing to serve on at least one of the advisories.

Here are the results ranked by frequency.

Topic Category	Submissions
Independent/Small Scale Theatre (action/monitoring/flexibility/help)	55
Communications (general/transparency/social media/simplify/inbound PR)	33
Stage Management issues	19
Director/Choreographer/Fight Director issues	16
Insurance	15
Member Education (general)	13
Audition conditions	13
Diversity issues	10
Agreement Ratification (eligibility to vote)	8
Merging with ACTRA	7
Engagement opportunities (increasing)	7
Working conditions	6
Rehearsal Models	6
Regional/local support committees (various)	6
New Members (welcome and education)	6
CTA/Level 2 Monitoring	6
Senior Artists	5
Guest Artist Policy	5
Concessions (to working terms)	5
Advocacy	5
Opera	4
Member Linkage	4
Cost reduction	4
Women's issues	3
TYA issues	3
Professional development	3
Producer's issues	3
New media	3
Dues	3
Discipline based (none specified)	3
Cultural community outreach	3
Western office	2
Fees	2
Child performer's issues	2
Miscellaneous	43

Each submission was assigned a short topic heading based on the main point being made. Then, related and compatible categories were combined – the top two suggestions are good examples of this. The "miscellaneous" item at the end includes all those for which only a single submission was made, and where none of them combined easily with a higher-ranking category.

Along with the committee proposals, general comments were also requested at the end of the survey, and we received 59 of these. In a few cases, they were used to reiterate or expand on the suggestions already made. Almost all of the remainder commented on the change in advisory structure, and responses were overwhelmingly favourable. Council is pleased to see the new system meet with such a positive response, both in the number of proposals received and the enthusiasm for the idea.

Council will be reviewing the overall patterns in these results as a priority item and making a determination on which committees will be struck as part of the initial slate. Committee mandates will be developed from the proposal material, and members can expect to see the first committees formed early in the new year. Finally, Council will set up an ongoing application procedure, so that advisory suggestions may be submitted at anytime going forward. You'll hear more about that once it's in place.

As always, we welcome your comment and feedback. You can contact me at president@caea.com, or Aaron Willis, Second Vice-president at councilcontact@caea.com,or either of us through the national office.