Right now we have a very strong partnership with cultural services at the French embassy and, as such, I've been touring France quite a bit and being hosted by the Institut Français. I've seen many interesting models in France for how they support these kinds of interdisciplinary networks.

The one I recently visited, which I thought was really quite remarkable, was a small town outside of Paris called Laval. It had decided about 20 years ago to focus on really becoming well-known as a place that would understand, innovate, produce work, and convene anyone interested in virtual reality. That was 20 years ago.

As many of you on the committee know, it's the hottest thing right now. Fast-forward 20 years, and they have an incubator and an internationally renowned conference. They have scientific labs situated in the region. They have a bunch of start-ups. They have creators and artists who they're starting to integrate into their space. They have a cultural kind of facility for theatrical and immersive art presentations. All of this is in a tiny little town outside of Paris that most Parisians don't even know about. What that really represents to me is this idea of what I was talking about from the get-go, which is that the cultural hub does not need to look like what we think a cultural hub looks like. It doesn't need to look a gentrified downtown Toronto space with multi-use buildings, etc., although those are beautiful spaces to live in. They're great spaces to hang out in, and certainly they have contributed to the quality of life and to the quality of the arts and culture in a city.

However, I think what we're now finding as globalization takes hold is that we can start to reinvent our notion of what a cultural hub can be. I think it is about removing our biases between urban and rural areas. We need to remove biases about what disciplines and/or sectors make more sense to be part of a hub. I think this kind of mixing of things is really the most important part.

Then, most importantly, the role of an international network is really critical, because the world is getting much smaller and the opportunities for Canadians are really limited by the tiny market that we have. So striving for excellence and quality of content, of thinking, of talent, and of work, and supporting that across networks and then selling it globally is really what we aspire to do.

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