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1. What is a cultural observatory?
2. What is the Canadian Cultural Observatory? 3. What is Culturescope.ca? 4. How is Culturescope.ca unique? 5. How will the cultural development community benefit from the services provided by Culturescope.ca? 6. What kind of information can I find on Culturescope.ca? 7. What is the difference between this initiative, Culture.ca and the PCH Web site (or other sites)? Does Culturescope.ca duplicate this effort? 8. How long have you been working on this? 9. How many people are working on this initiative? 10. Who is responsible for this initiative? Who funds this initiative? 11. Will content be censored? Is there an editorial policy? 12. Who are the partners? How many are there? 13. Are there any private sector sponsors? 14. When was Culturescope.ca initially launched/released? 15. How do I read documents that are not .html? 16. I’ve lost/ forgotten my password. Can you email me a new one? Q: What is a cultural observatory? [#1] A: Cultural observatories may have various objectives, but essentially, they exist to observe, monitor and disseminate information back to the cultural sector in order to improve the quality of cultural policy research and development. The establishment of cultural observatories is a recent global trend, which began in Europe and has since taken hold on various continents. Many regions, countries and localities have created their own observatory in the field of culture or are now taking steps to do so. TopQ: What is the Canadian Cultural Observatory? [#2]A: The Canadian Cultural Observatory is an information service for all who are interested in Canada’s cultural development. The Observatory supports cultural development in Canada by: The Canadian Cultural Observatory is funded in part by the Canadian Culture Online Strategy. The Observatory is a collaborative initiative of the Department of Canadian Heritage whose programs and policies are about Creating Canada Together. TopQ: What is Culturescope.ca? [#3]A: Culturescope.ca is an award winning, collaborative and bilingual on-line interactive hub of the Canadian Cultural Observatory, developed in partnership with the not-for-profit, private and public sectors. Culturescope.ca is committed to improved access to digitized cultural policy and research content in Canada’s official languages, English and French. To ensure that information published on Culturescope.ca accurately represents a broad range of perspectives and approaches, an inclusive, representative, and voluntary Editorial Work Group guides the website’s editorial process. Representatives include researchers, planners and managers from the arts, heritage and cultural industries, as well as from within the Department and its portfolio agencies. TopQ: How is Culturescope.ca unique? [#4]A: There does not exist a pan-Canadian entity with the mandate of the Canadian Cultural Observatory. Environmental analyses conducted by the Observatory underlined that currently no interactive hub is available to Canadian cultural development professionals that provides single-window access to specialized information and knowledge pertaining to cultural development in Canada and the world. TopQ: How will the cultural development community benefit from the services provided by Culturescope.ca? [#5]A: There are numerous benefits to the cultural development community, such as: TopQ: What kind of information can I find on Culturescope.ca? [#6]A: Visit Culturescope.ca to access: TopQ: What is the difference between this initiative, Culture.ca and the PCH Web site (or other sites)? Does Culturescope.ca duplicate this effort? [#7]A: No. Culturescope.ca provides information and knowledge sharing services targeted to a specific clientele: Canadian cultural development and policy professionals. By contrast, the Culture.ca Gateway, www.culture.ca, helps all Canadians deepen their understanding of Canadian society and its diversity. The PCH Web site, www.pch.gc.ca, provides easy access to information to all Canadians about the Department of Canadian Heritage’s programs, policies, publications and events. TopQ: How long have you been working on this? [#8]A: Core funding for this initiative was initially given in July 2001 for a 3-year development plan. Since then, with the participation of Canadian companies and specialists, as well as key subject-matter partners, the Department has conducted feasibility studies, research and planning, as well as proof-of-concept development and testing for the Culturescope.ca initiative. In addition, a series of cross-country briefing sessions were held in 2002/03 in order to sensitize the cultural professional community about the Culturescope.ca idea, and to learn more about what the users were looking for in a Web site like this. This feedback was highly valued and in many ways shaped the development of the first version of Culturescope.ca. The most recent version of Culturescope.ca, version 2.0, was released in March 2006, and is based on the feedback and suggestions of Canadians, including the Culturescope.ca Editorial Working Group. TopQ: How many people are working on this initiative? [#9]A: The Canadian Cultural Observatory is located within the eServices Branch of the Department of Canadian Heritage. Five employees are currently dedicated to the development and promotion of the Observatory products and services, such as Culturescope.ca. TopQ: Who is responsible for this initiative? Who funds this initiative? [#10]A: The Canadian Cultural Observatory receives limited a-base funding from Department of Canadian Heritage as well as support from the Department’s Canadian Culture Online Program (CCOP). The CCOP funds exist to foster a deeper understanding of Canada and its rich diversity by stimulating the development of, and ensuring access to, quality Canadian digital cultural content. These funding programs are part of the “Tomorrow Starts Today” announcement made on May 2, 2001, on the Government's strategy to ensure the growth and development of Canadian culture. The Canadian Culture On-line Program (CCOP) supports the digitization of Canadian cultural content with emphasis on the creation of original French language content and content for young Canadians. TopQ: Will content be censored? Is there an editorial policy? [#11]A: The primary editorial objective is that, in as much as is possible, content will be driven by the users, the community of practitioners in the domain of cultural development. To achieve this, Culturescope.ca is divided into two main sections: the collection of resources, which exists in the public domain, and Culturescope Groups, which consists of private on-line work groups of cultural development practitioners. Culturescope Groups allows space for on-line communities to collaborate and share knowledge and ideas, and is subject primarily to the editorial guidelines established by the editor of a respective community, in consultation with that community’s membership. The Canadian Cultural Observatory, if necessary, may provide high-level editorial oversight. Specifically, the Observatory will be working with on-line groups to establish how the publicly accessible collection of resources could benefit from content that might be identified as useful. Editorial decision-making is made both by the Culturescope.ca Editorial Working Group as well as staff at the Canadian Cultural Observatory. Content suggested for publication to the collection of Resources is reviewed prior to acceptance and inclusion. Selection of resources, issues, discussion topics, news, and technical data for publication to the collection of Resources of Culturescope.ca is at the discretion of the Canadian Cultural Observatory, and is, to the extent possible, based on fact, careful analysis, and the needs of Culturescope.ca’s target audience. Moreover, content will be assessed against the guidelines of the Editorial Policy and the Important Notices, published on the Web site. TopQ: Who are the partners? How many are there? [#12]A: Current partners of the Observatory contribute in a variety of ways, including strategic and topic-related advice, content for publication in the Culturescope.ca Resource Collection, cost-sharing on content creation opportunities, and serving on-line communities in Culturescope.ca Groups as editors. These Partners include: Private / NGO: Canadian Cultural Research Network Creative City Network The Canadian Conference of the Arts Hill Strategies Research Inc. Government Departments / Agencies: The Canada Council for the Arts Library and Archives Canada Statistics Canada - Cultural Statistics Program Association of Canadian Studies Department of Canadian Heritage: Canadian Culture Online Program Strategic Research and Analysis Strategic Policy Aboriginal Affairs Copyright Branch Knowledge Centre Arts Policy Branch TopQ: Are there any private sector sponsors? [#13]A: There are no private sector sponsors at the present time. TopQ: When was Culturescope.ca initially launched/released? [#14]A: Culturescope.ca was officially launched in November 2003 at Accounting for Culture: Examining the Building Blocks of Cultural Citizenship Colloquium. The colloquium was a partnership event of the Canadian Cultural Research Network, the Department of Canadian Heritage and the University of Ottawa. 150 attendees from the cultural research community participated in the launch. TopQ: How do I read documents that are not .html? [#15]A: Some of the documents on our site have originated outside the Commission and are in a format other than HTML. These documents may require the use of a special reader. [.pdf] Documents with a .pdf extension require the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader, available at http://www.adobe.com [.zip] Documents with a .zip extension are zipped documents and can be 'unzipped' using Winzip, available at http://www.winzip.com [.doc] Documents with a .doc extension are MSWord documents and can be opened with a Word viewer available at http://office.microsoft.com [.xls] Documents with an .xls extension can be read using an Excel viewer available at http://office.microsoft.com TopQ: I’ve lost/ forgotten my password. Can you email me a new one? [#16]A: Simply enter your User Name in the ‘Username’ box, enter nothing in the ‘Password’ box, and click on the ‘Login’ button—your User Name must be entered correctly. A page will appear with the heading “Error: Incorrect password”; please click the “E-mail me my password” located below the ‘Username’ and ‘Password’ fields. Your password will be sent to the email linked to your account within a few minutes. What if I’ve forgotten/ lost my User Name as well? If you have forgotten/ lost your username, please contact the site administrator. |
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Culturescope.ca is a service of the Canadian Cultural Observatory and its partners.
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The Canadian Cultural Observatory and Culturescope.ca do not endorse and are not responsible for the content of external sites. Links will open in a new window.
Some of the material available in the resource collection originates with an organization not subject to the Official Languages Act and is available on this site in the language in which it was written. |
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