This public engagement opened on February 5, 2018 and will close on February 23, 2018.
Important Check in daily to vote on new statements.
The Department of Canadian Heritage needs your help to better understand challenges and opportunities within the Canadian visual arts marketplace. We want to hear your perspective, whether you are an artist, a collector, a consumer or connected with the visual arts marketplace.
Join in: how to participate
We have created an anonymous virtual space where you can share your experience as well as your thoughts and ideas about issues.
Here are four ways to get involved:
- Vote: Vote on other people's statements (select agree, disagree or pass/unsure).
- Join in: If you want to add to the conversation, submit your opinion in the official language of your choice.
- Share: Share the link to this virtual conversation with others in your network. Understanding issues from as many diverse perspectives as possible offers true insight.
- Keep in touch: Interested in the results? Sign up to be kept in the loop, learn about upcoming activities and get the opportunity to further this conversation by attending an event in Ottawa in 2018.
Who can participate
While this conversation will be of special interest to those directly involved in the Canadian visual arts market, it is open to any Canadian. Breadth and diversity of participants will bring a better understanding of the market and ecosystem.
Backgrounder
The Department of Canadian Heritage is currently undertaking a series of activities to better understand the policy issues emerging in the current and future marketplace for visual arts.
Goal of the initiative
The intention is to engage people from across the visual arts ecosystem to explore the issues, tensions and interdependencies within the visual arts market. This is a fact-finding, exploratory initiative that will be complemented by other efforts, including the upcoming Visual Arts Market Survey that is co-led by Canadian Heritage and the Visual Arts Alliance. Both VAMEI and the survey are meant to provide insights about how to promote inclusive growth and benefit the range of visual arts actors.
Engagement platform POL.IS
POL.IS is a digital public engagement platform designed to gather feedback from large groups around a particular topic. It excels at gathering a diversity of opinion without giving priority to any particular aspect of the discussion. It also allows for conversations to evolve on a single platform, regardless of the official language with which a participant prefers to interact.
Questions about the public engagement and its platform
1) How does POL.IS work?
POL.IS is cloud-based, and can be accessed from any device. Participants can build a conversation with each other by “voting” (participant to indicate his choice by selecting agree, disagree or pass/unsure) on a list of tweet-style statements. POL.IS also allows individuals to submit their own statements, on which other participants can vote. As statements are added, the list of experiences and perspectives on which others can vote grows, creating a virtual conversation.
2) I came back to the website and can’t find any of the previous statements I voted on. Why?
POL.IS is very efficient and keeps track of which statements you've already voted on, provided you use the same device and browser when you return to visit the page. In this way you can always see and vote on the new statements that have been added by other participants since your last visit. It also allows you to contribute statements anytime they come to you, just like in a real conversation.
3) Why are you using an automated machine translator?
All initial statements will be translated in both official languages. However, content added by participants, as third parties, will be published in the language in which it is submitted. To facilitate greater understanding, automated translation is offered as a courtesy but we cannot guarantee accuracy. By using the automatic machine translation service, users accept the legal implications of any shortcomings or differences in the translation.
The goal of leveraging automated machine translation directly tied to our desire to have one robust conversation regardless of a participant's chosen official language. In order to engage communities across Canada and avoid having two separate conversations, we have created one channel where participants are free to engage in the official language of their choice.
4) Are statements being monitored?
Content added by participants, as third parties, will be monitored and we reserve the right to remove inappropriate statements including those that have obscene language or sexual content, threaten or defame any person or organization, violate the legal ownership interest of another party, privacy laws, promote commercial services or products, or are not topically related to the discussion. We will also ensure that there are no duplicate statements in order to not dilute the conversation.
5) Should I be worried about my privacy?
Not at all. All statements are submitted anonymously and monitored daily before being posted.
6) I’m interested in the final results. How can I make sure I am kept in the loop?
Sign up to learn about the results, upcoming activities and get the opportunity to further this conversation by attending an event in Ottawa in 2018.
Source: Government of Canada, Canadian Heritage
