Let's Co-operate

If ever there was a time and a place to look at re-localizing economic activity, it would be - here and now. This past week two more Windsor manufacturers called it quits. We lost another 600 automotive sector jobs and even worse will be the loss of the gel-caps jobs that represented some of our precious economic diversity.

Both companies are owned by corporations outside of the Windsor/Essex region. Neither corporation has any reason to consider the impact moving these operations will have on our city/region or the people that will be hurt. It’s not that these plants didn’t make money, or the quality of their work was anything but top-notch. The problem was they weren’t making enough money. And that is unfair. But it will continue as long as we rely on big corporations to drive our economy. Somehow we need to take control of the way we work and earn, spend and invest. We need to keep our money and company profits in this region.

In the course of last weeks comments, urbane cyclist asked, “What do we do about it (our economy) as a municipality? Because that is the level that scaledown is working at, that is the level that we can impose solutions.”

The easiest local economic system I could see us starting around here would be a series of co-ops. This would allow farmers, artisans, trades people and others an opportunity to share the cost of running their business with their customers. This kind of set-up is ideal because the customers and the business operators will develop the kind of relationships that used to exist before the big-box when the Main Street merchants knew their customers and worked hard to make sure they were satisfied and the customers felt appreciated. Those relationships are missing in our world today. You go to a big-box and there is no personal service. The employees are anonymous and the people that come in are just customers/consumers. Scaling back our economic world is not much different from our built world. We really don't connect with people anymore in our day-to-day because everything is so out of proportion to the individual. We need to make that connection, to work together to raise ourselves up again.

A co-operative economy would just be the beginning. As the individual businesses grew they could set-up on their own and expand and reinvest in themselves and the community. A co-op would foster the start-ups and after a while we could have a thriving local economy that, if supplemented with some new large corporate investments would make Windsor/Essex a great place to live and work again.

Congratulations to St. Clair Students

I’d just like to highlight a Windsor Star story and congratulate the St. Clair College, Interior Design Students on their fantastic work. These students beat out some very high-caliber schools to finish first and third out of a field of 45 schools (Canada, U.S. and England) each school was represented by three teams.

This just further demonstrates the talent of our young people and the quality of our post-secondary institutions.

1st Place
Second Year Students
Jeff Wortley, Megan Whittal and Tammy Bourke

3rd Place
Third Year Students
Cassandra Kotva and Magda Trzos

Only the first three places were reported but St. Clair's other entry was submitted by:
Third year students
Sheila Golez, Curtis Linder and Brooke Simon

For more information on the competition go to http://www.idec.org/

P.S. I had an image of the winning entry but blogger is not letting me upload.

The Arts Part 1: Introduction and Funding

I would like to begin with a disclaimer: I know very little of the history of Windsor's Arts Scene, my comments simply as an outside observer and are meant to provoke discussion vs. being a judgement on our arts groups.

My first experience with an arts Incubator was in Kalamazoo, Michigan where I was sent by the International Downtown Association to look at the downtown as a model for Windsor. Its an idea that seems to not be able to gain any traction in Windsor.

In London Ontario they have the Arts Program or TAP, although it is in financial difficulties you have to admire the ambition of the project. Conversion of a 15,000 ft2 bldg with a 100 seat theater. The Arts Program provides

- Exhibition space
- Performance Areas
- Educational Arts Program
- Arts Business Skills
- Mentorship Opportunities
- Arts Related programs
- Artist Studio's

Funded with a 2 year trillium grant of $100,000 in the year 2000 and another $130,000 in the year 2002 Trillium still obtains $13,000-$15,000 in city grants each year which are used to pay its property taxes. (Funding to be discussed on Tuesday)

The only comparables I'm aware of in Windsor are Artcite and the Arts Council office located in Walkerville with about 2000 feet of exhibition space between them. This is not a "jab" at Windsor, it's a contrast in what is possible. Remember if it exists elsewhere, you can't argue that its not possible here.

We have the vacant buildings for something like this. We can talk about the Pelissier Street parking garage main floor, the recently opened gallery by Christian Aldo in a creative partnership with a building owner that sees vacant bldgs made attractive.

There is so much to talk about but unfortunately today I only have time for the intro. This is where the blogging community comes in...

Next in the series are the parts entitled "The Arts mean Business" and "Funding"