GUELPH POLITICAST #24 - Scott McGovern, Ed Video Media Arts Centre

Scott McGovern (R) with former Politicast guest David Knight

As you may or may not be aware, in my other life I'm involved with Ed Video Media Arts Centre and sit on the board of directors. Why should you care? Well, that's a disclaimer for this week's Guelph Politicast, in which I sit down with Scott McGovern, Programming Director of Ed Video, to talk about arts and culture in Canada, why the the topic doesn't get much discussion in an election campaign, and how the life and work of artists living in Canada is often misunderstood.

As fate would have it, when Scott and I met to record the podcast on Tuesday, it came the day after the NDP and Tom Mulcair had a big, splashy announcement about arts and culture funding in Toronto. But as Scott and I talk about in the podcast, support for the arts means more than just increasing funding to the CBC, Telefilm Canada and/or the Canada Council for the Arts. It also means understanding how artists work, how they themselves are in essence small businesses, and the real economic impact of the arts on the country.

For the record, this is not Scott's first participation in a Politico project. You may recall an item from last fall's municipal election where Scott critiqued several election signs of candidates running for city council across Guelph. The article was a pretty big success, and remains one of the most popular this blog has ever run.

But enough build up, let's get right into this week's Politicast.

The theme music for Guelph Politicast is provided by Crazy Pills and their song "Break It Down" courtesy of Free Music Archive.

The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes here.

Look for new episodes of the Guelph Politicast Fridays, and remember that the Politicast Podbean channel is also the host for podcast versions of Open Sources Guelph. The previous Thursday's episode of Open Sources will be posted on Mondays. (Except next week, when we will post two episodes of Open Sources Guelph so that all the candidate interviews will be available before the election. Conversely, two episodes of Guelph Politicast will be available the next week.)

Stay tuned for future editions of the Guelph Politicast.