Canada is a service economy. The services sector makes up about three-quarters of the country’s economic output. Technicians, managers, designers, and operators whose work is local by nature; the people who deliver that work live here, pay taxes here, and build their careers here. So, in a service economy, we are not fighting for the work — Canadians already do it. We are fighting for ownership of the value that work creates.
Curiosity, community and transparency are in the centre of the Venn diagram that represents our values at Bespoke Audio Visual. These fundamental core values shows up in everything we do; our behaviour, our designs, our questioning strategy, and our participation in the industry.
As I reflect on the year that was 2023, I can’t help but focus on how far we have come. When I turn my mind back to January, supply chains were only just starting to recover from almost two years of restricted supply. We couldn’t buy microphones because more urgent electronics took priority on microchips. We couldn’t buy lighting fixtures because the automobile industry took priority on LEDs for their headlamps. The labour force in our industry was rebuilding, retraining, and trying to keep up with the unrelenting pent-up demand for live events that had accumulated over the life of the pandemic.
As a dedicated advocate for 2SLGBTQI+ rights, I have proudly changed our company's logo for Pride every year. However, recent discussions around the appropriation of the rainbow flag by corporations have led us to question the impact of such actions. In this article, I will explore the dilemma we faced this year and delve into the question of whether rainbow logos genuinely support the 2SLGBTQI+ community or unintentionally dilute the significance of Pride month.
As a business owner, navigating the ever-changing landscape of the live event production industry can be challenging. In an effort to find inspiration and collaboration, I turned to the Event Production Network (EPN). Their values of camaraderie, mentorship, and shared knowledge fit perfectly with my needs and the design of the network meant that we found a home with like-minded business owners. As of April 2023, Bespoke Audio Visual has been one of three Canadian members of the EPN for four years. Through this blog, I’d like to talk about our experiences and learnings with the EPN.
Obviously, I won’t miss the bad parts of the pandemic. I won’t miss the constraints on our movement and the effect on our business. The friends and family members we have lost or left behind will be the awful and lasting reminder of this moment in time. Obviously, I won’t miss that; but for the first time in my lifetime, our entire community, our entire country, have been fighting the same fight and every citizen has had to pull in the same direction.
I had an opportunity recently to drive through downtown Toronto. It’s been 17 months since I have spent a substantial amount of time in the city which I live. It struck me that the landscape is entirely different from when I left it in March 2020. Buildings that once existed are gone and brand-new buildings have been built in their place. Parks have sprung up, streets have been closed and redirected, walking and biking paths have been opened. Most notably, the CaféTO program has changed the landscape of some of the major arteries and the city feels more like a European walking city than it does the old City of Toronto.
A year ago... I departed with my family for a pre-March break trip. As we left Toronto, public officials assured us travelling was safe and this little-known virus was contained. Days later, the WHO declared a pandemic, and the world in which we knew disappeared in an instant.
