Now is your time to voice your opinion on P.E.I. culture

Survey will be live until June 5

Image | Anne of Green Gables stained glass

Caption: Is it Anne, is it visual arts, is it music? The government wants to know what's important in P.E.I. culture to you. (Susana Rutherford)

Prince Edward Islanders are being encouraged to fill out an online survey that will help guide the province in designing a 10-year cultural strategy.
"We ask what is important to people when they think about P.E.I. culture?" said Michelle MacCallum, director of cultural development at Innovation PEI.
"It's to see what people's understanding of culture is, and also what's most important to them."
The survey was posted this week(external link), and in the first day more than 400 people filled it out.

Pop up coffee discussions

MacCallum has also been holding roundtables with cultural and community groups, as well as open discussion groups at coffee shops around the Island.
These have been very popular, she said, and drawing a wide range of different kinds of people.

Image | pe_michellemaccallum

Caption: Michelle MacCallum said coffee shop pop up consultations have been very important. (CBC)

"At the end of it they said, 'I wish we could have these all the time. We don't ever come together to just talk about culture,'" she said.
"We realized we weren't just collecting information from people. We were actually contributing to the capacity for communities to have conversations with one another about what's important to them."
The survey is available until June 5, and MacCallum said that will mark the end of consultations.
From June through August MacCallum will work on a draft of the strategy with the help of researcher Bonnie Stewart from UPEI.
The finished strategy will be launched in September.