By Fatima Baalbaki
Peter Honeywell works amid the chaos of boxes, folded newspapers, paintings and half-eaten chocolate bars. It’s hectic, but it’s where this local arts advocate gets some of his most important work done.
“It’s all about creating environments that are more enjoyable and peaceful,” he says about his arts advocacy.
Honeywell, executive director of the Council of the Arts in Ottawa, is an ardent supporter of local arts in a city with sparse government funding.
Theatre Ontario recognized Honeywell’s work for Ottawa’s art community last month by presenting him with the Sandra Tulloch Award for Innovation in the Arts for his “passionate commitment to deepening the scope of the arts in Ontario.”
The award was established in 1998 as a tribute to Sandra Tulloch, who was then retiring as the executive director of Theatre Ontario. Honeywell has known Tulloch for 15 years, and says he felt honoured when she called him to tell him he won.
“I nearly dropped the phone,” the 53-year-old artist says with a grin. “I thought she was looking for a reference. But she said she was calling to tell me I’d been selected, and that’s when I dropped the phone. It’s quite sweet.”
Although Tulloch is not on the recipient selection panel, she recommended Honeywell for the award a few years ago. She says she was pleased the panel chose him this year.
“Peter exemplifies the spirit of this award by going above and beyond his duty as executive director,” she says. “The winner has to have a combination of tenaciousness, generosity and a passion for the arts, and he has that.”
But in a city that ranks last nationally in terms of government arts funding from all levels, Honeywell’s work is cut out for him.
A 2003 comparison of Canada’s seven largest cities by the Department of Canadian Heritage placed Ottawa in last place behind Toronto when it received $10 million in government arts funding that year. Toronto received $63 million, while Montreal ranked first with $90 million.
Honeywell says the city’s funding is “dismally low,” adding that the City of Ottawa needs to focus more attention on artists, and less on the city’s big art galleries.
“Creativity does not happen at the National Arts Centre… it is just a presenter,” he argues. “The living, breathing artists that make art happen live in the community and it is that group that has not been fully compensated and encouraged to do their work.”
Honeywell spends a lot of his time persuading Ottawa’s municipal government to give more money to local arts groups and programs.
He is a member of the City of Ottawa’s Arts Investment Strategy Committee, which succeeded in getting $1.5 million in new funding in the 2007 budget. Honeywell says this money will go to festivals, sustainability and diversity funding and arts grants.
Honeywell joined the Council of the Arts in Ottawa 20 years ago as its festival producer.
When the organization ran into major administrative problems in 1989, he accepted the role of director.
“I said I would take it on for 18 months to get it into shape and I’ve been here 18 years,” he says, laughing. “It was a real challenge to take on an organization and rethink it and re-orient it.”
He considers his reshaping of the council the act that earned him the Sandra Tulloch Award. He recalls how the council faced a big deficit, management problems, and was simply overstretching its resources when he first joined it.
“We were victims of our own growth,” says Honeywell. “We did everything. We were the big basket that everybody would throw their wishes into.”
He says he fixed the problem by focusing the council as a service organization for artists. He did away with much of the programming projects that were draining the organization’s funding and handed them on to local art groups.
Now, the Council of the Arts in Ottawa dedicates its resources to advocating the importance of the arts in the city and representing artists and their concerns to local government and businesses.
The council also organizes workshops for artists on issues like how to apply for grants and invest in facility projects.
But Honeywell’s love for the arts did not originate in the boardroom.
He is an artist himself and attributes his love of art to his grandmother.
She was also an artist and he remembers growing up with her art surrounding him.
“There was always clay and paint around the house,” he says. “Making things with her hands was part of her communicating with us as children and I enjoyed that part of my exploring as a kid. I was one of those arts kids, one of those creative beings.”
Honeywell describes himself as a “seventh-generation Ottawan” with deep roots in the city. He grew up in Manotick and remembers busing out every day to attend Gloucester High School.
Although he became seriously interested in the arts during high school, he gave up on formal schooling when his application to the Queen’s University arts education program was rejected. Because that was the only program he was truly interested in, he abandoned the idea of university altogether.
Instead, he joined a visual arts tutorial that a former high school art teacher was running. He and a few classmates then got their own studios on Sparks Street, where they experimented with different types of art.
“It was very funky, very ‘70s. It was really quite a fun couple of years,” he recalls.
Honeywell found his true passion in textile design after he took a trip to Mexico in 1973.
Textile artists weave thread and yarn into cloth using artistic designs. In Mexico, Honeywell visited numerous weaving centres and co-operatives, looking at textiles in all parts of the country.
“I was fascinated with what I had seen. It was also the ‘70s, a time where there was a resurgence of the hand-made,” he says.
Honeywell’s art career officially began when he got back from Mexico. At the age of 20, he opened his own textile design shop in the Byward Market.
He also developed an interest in sculpting baskets, which he did for a long time.
A collection of his basket sculptures was exhibited at Ottawa’s Saw Gallery last year.
Honeywell sculpted baskets and wove cloth passionately for 13 years before the products he was making became readily available in the market and competition forced him to close down his shop.
Honeywell says he hasn’t produced art since he entered the field of arts administration 20 years ago.
“Art is something that can’t be part-time,” he says. “Either you throw yourself into it all the way or it doesn’t work.”
He says he enjoys the administrative side to the arts because there’s always a new challenge to overcome.
While trying to convince people of the importance of the arts is sometimes frustrating, Honeywell says he is inspired by young artists who plan on pursuing their careers in Ottawa.
Jerry Grey is one visual artist that Honeywell has worked with for decades. She has produced numerous public pieces of art, including a series of portraits of seniors which was on display at the Ottawa Art Gallery on Daly Avenue.
Grey says the great thing about Honeywell is his enthusiasm for the arts.
Apart from giving her good advice, she says he has helped her with numerous grant applications for her projects.
“He was a great person to bounce ideas off of. And he doesn’t give up, he’s very positive,” she says. “His biggest contribution to this city is his continual encouragement of funding for art groups.”
With his strong motivation for the arts, it shouldn’t be too hard for Honeywell to encourage people to support them.
He says he believes art is important to everyone’s lives, even if they aren’t professional artists.
“It’s essential to a fully-lived life that you have art. This is not a thrill, it’s something that for centuries and centuries has been part of every society, and every fully-lived person has to have art as part of their existence.”