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2. The Politics of Our Work: Interview with Ashok Mathur
- Wilfrid Laurier University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
28 Ashok Mathur is a novelist, artist, and cultural organizer whose work focuses on issues such as diasporic identity, cultural politics, and creative responses to reconciliation in regional, national, and global contexts. His first book, Loveruage (1993), was followed by the novels Once Upon an Elephant (1998) and The Short, Happy Life of Harry Kumar (2001). His most recent novel is A Little Distillery in Nowgong (2009). Mathur is Canada Research Chair in Cultural and Artistic Inquiry at Thompson Rivers University, where he directs the think tank and research space, the Centre for Innovation in Culture and the Arts in Canada (CiCAC). Kit Dobson: We want to start by asking you to describe your experiences working with funding bodies in Canada for the arts, specifically bodies like the Canada Council for the Arts, provincial bodies, and any others that you’ve interacted with. Ashok Mathur: Let’s talk about my history with the Canada Council first, as well as with the provincial body in Alberta, because that’s where I started with my writing. There was an interesting shift in these funding bodies around creative practice in the late ’80s and early ’90s, when I was just starting to develop some work. This shift was around questions of diversity and making sure that the funding that was coming in was actually reflecting the work that was being produced out there. I came in at a good time to get support for the type of work I was doing, which, because it wasn’t mainstreamed or particularly known, probably wouldn’t have been supported at a different time. And I haven’t been tremendously supported, but I have been effectively supported. My first book was not done with support, but my next two novels both got support, and the current one has support from places like the Canada Council. I tend to look more to the national body, the Canada Council, than to the provincial ones, which have been more successful for me, for the type of work that Interview with Ashok Mathur 2 ThePoliticsofOurWork Ashok Mathur 29 29 I’m doing. So the funding bodies have worked for me. I’ve also worked as a cultural worker, of course, for literary organizations, for arts organizations, and that too has been critical. I know that we will get to address some of the issues and problems around what those funding agencies do, which is also important, for example, thinking about whether one works toward producing work targeted at getting support from those funding agencies, and that sort of thing. But a thing that one of my colleagues who just moved here from Australia has noticed is that there is a substantial infrastructure supporting the arts here that’s not there in Australia. So that is good. But if you talk to Canadian artists or writers about that, they’ll say, “Well, it’s not that good,” right? Well, it’s differently structured, and it has been supportive for a lot of emerging artists, but there is a lot of criticism around the Council, too, about whether it serves the inner group or otherwise. KD: So, along those lines, what would distinguish successful applications to those bodies from unsuccessful ones? You could talk about either your own experiences or those of your colleagues, or just speak out of your general sense of the application process. AM: That’s a very tricky question, because so much depends not only on the funding body but on the specific program itself within that body. But I would say that, in general, based on my experience from sitting on various Canada Council juries, the clarity and innovation of a project is absolutely tantamount. So if you had a project that seemed to be interesting, but people didn’t see how you could pull it off, didn’t see the end result, then that would be the thing that would lead to a rejection. Smaro Kamboureli: Innovation is a concept that is very much in the air right now. Do you think that innovation signifies different things for different funding bodies? Is the idea of innovation linked to dissemination, or the kind of appeal that a project may have to a general public? Or do you think there is some kind of consensus—however vague—about what constitutes innovation? AM: Probably not a consensus, but, when I’m on the other side of the table, as a jury member, I’m looking at...