I first met Tracey on September 21, 2021 at a Processing the federal election during a climate emergency Zoom event organized by the Climate Emergency Unit. Since then, we have kept in touch through our participation in SCALE (the Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency network).
Our 30-minute conversation covered a lot of ground, however, we only touched the surface of Tracey’s vast experience and network of collaborators in the cultural industries, so I hope that another conversation is in order down the road!
Tracey has over 30 years’ experience in Canada’s cultural sector. She spent more than a decade at the National Film Board in Vancouver, where she earned producer or executive credits on dozens of documentary film, animation and digital projects. She’s also held contracts with organizations like Inspirit Foundation, Mindset Foundation, DOC, Roundhouse Radio, and the David Suzuki Foundation. Tracey is author and founder of Story Money Impact, the charitable society that brought us Good Pitch Vancouver and Story to Action, plus other initiatives to advance education around media impact. In 2013 she was named ‘Woman of the Year’ by Women in Film & TV Vancouver. She is currently Managing Vice-President, BC Branch, at the Canadian Media Producers Association, where she passionately represents and supports BC-based independent film and television producers.
I was touched by this quote from Tracey near the end of the conversation:
I'm mindful that with the climate emergency, it's so existential that it's captured my attention perhaps most strongly because I really hope that in the kind of complicated dynamic of the wonderful, wild world that we're in right now, that it's one thing that will impact all of us. Not the same way, certainly, there are those of us living in different parts of the world that will be affected in different ways, but it's such a global community, it has to come together in all the ways that they can. So, we do need the scientists and we do need all of the work being done across all of the important social issues that are happening right now. And we really do need the storytellers to validate that their story driven, narrative driven, emotionally driven pieces of work will help to touch people now to change their behaviour or will help to soothe or reassure or be with them in the world post transition.
Tracey mentioned the following links during our conversation:
Transcript of e85 tracey friesen (in memoriam) - narratives of resilience
Note: This is an automated transcription that is provided for those who prefer to read this conversation and for documentation. It has been verified but is not 100% accurate (some names might not be quite right). Please contact me if you would like to quote from this transcript: claude@conscient.ca. I have also added web link to make it more practical.
Claude Schryer
conscient podcast episode 85. I'm with Tracy Friesen in her apartment here in Vancouver. I met Tracy just a few weeks ago in person here in Vancouver, but we're working together on SCALE, which I've talked about a lot in this podcast. I’m really happy to get to know Tracy better. She is a climate champion and a cultural worker of the highest order. I'll ask her to introduce herself and then we're going to talk about some of her work and some of the issues and passions that we share and some of the concerns we have for our world. Tracy, welcome. Who are you?
Tracey Friesen
Thank you, Claude, and welcome to my little nest here in the West End of Vancouver on Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh territory. I am 30 years in the Vancouver film and television sector across a whole bunch of different aspects. I started in post and visual effects and then I spent a decade at the National Film Board, which I imagine we'll come back to. And in the last 10 years I got involved in understanding and focusing on the power of media to affect social change, which led to writing a book called Story Money: Funding Media for Social Change and starting an organization called with the same name. I also took some full-time jobs in that period of time. I spent a couple years with the David Suzuki foundation and a couple of years with a radio startup called Roundhouse. And right now I am working full time with the Canadian Media Producers Association (CMPA), the B. C. branch based in Vancouver, which is an industry association that supports independent Canadian production companies.
Claude Schryer
Well, I'm sure there's more to the story, but that's good to know that you've been in the cultural industry world, but also working on environmental issues, social issues and social change. So maybe we'll start with that. Tell me the story of Story, Money, Impact. You've set up a structure because there was a problem, I assume. So what was the problem?
Tracey Friesen
Well, good deduction. Toward the end of my time at the National Film Board, something dynamic I started noticing were documentary filmmakers who so many of them are so driven by a social issue of some sort. And often in that structure there, I mean really literally, you see people mortgaging their houses, you see families being broken apart almost, you know, for the pure need and wish and impulse to get these stories out to community to do the change that's embedded them or that's intended by the filmmaker and at the film board. Luckily at the film board, which is amazing, we live in a country that supports that kind of cultural product with, with public money.
But even there, some films got, you know, a decent amount of support for their distribution and marketing and outreach stage and some didn't. So the filmmaker would do, would spend 1, 2, 3, sometimes 4 years getting this film to screen and maybe it might do, it might go on an educational broadcaster, do two festivals, end up at that time on a DVD and then start gathering dust. And so the gap in my mind was all of this potential embedded in these films for activating people that was not being harnessed. And in Canada there was no mechanism, none, zero, outside of this public, you know, the CBC or the NFB and some of the public funding that supported some of the film's launches to get financial support for that phase of a films project.
So most independent producers and filmmakers would need to go on to producing their next film to keep, to be sustainable, to have any kind of livelihood. And these films would not do as much as they could do. So seeing that I was motivated to try to figure out what was happening in other parts of the world. How was this dynamic kind of universal? And what could we learn if we looked, looked outside and the moment the life changing experience for me was being invited to an event called Good Pitch in San Francisco. I was just, I was still at the film board but on my way out I'd already given notice, and I was going to figure this out. And Good Pitch is an event that was started by an organization in the UK now called the Doc Society, then called Brit Doc.
And it brings it together, a collection of films, five, let's say into a daylong public space with a highly curated audience of say 200 people, where somebody literally works like full time for three or four months to get the right 200 people in that room. And then if you can imagine, a much more generous version of something like the Dragon's Den. So these film teams go up, they talk about their project and then a moderator pulls, it's like an auction, pulls gifts and pledges from the audience and from a table at the center to help this film achieve its greatest potential. And it's just like through the course of. I've been to two of them in New York after that, I did that first one in San Francisco and I'm like, oh, this is what it looks like when a group of interested parties come together to help make sure a documentary film is seen by as many people as need to see it so that typically the kind of markets for films would see people pitching possible buyers. But this, in this audience, it's not for profits. It's foundations, it's impact investors, it's philanthropists, educators, all of the people who might give money, of course money is good, but also might say, I'm going to put that in my curriculum, that film.
I'm going to host a screening on Capitol Hill. You know, I'm going to introduce you to these, you know, this well-known person who's an influencer who will spread the word. And over the, over a course of about an hour for each film, people are standing up at microphones all over the space making pledges. Beautiful thing. And so I was like, this is the thing. And it got me then to recognize that there were foundations in the US and the UK and Australia that supported the outreach phases of films and meeting that global network really of impact investor or impact producers and those who recognized with an aligned mission, a filmmaker is as needed in the ecosystem as are those who use their films. It changed the dynamic.
Instead of this kind of desperate artists looking for money, it's like, no, we are, we've been waiting for nothing more than that project that you made so that we can activate our community to fight for this cause.
Claude Schryer
I assume one part of that is understanding the story properly, right? Because if you're going to invest in the impact of something, you have to know what the person is trying to say. So because some films are, you know, take some time to understand what the issue is. So I'm impressed by that because it's a gap in the arts in general. That great work is being produced that's not being seen or perceived or having the impact that it could or should have. And so how does that connect then to the climate emergency? I guess some of the work is about environmental issues, but also related social issues, I assume, like inequities and the full range of things that need to be addressed to have a just world and a just transition.
Tracey Friesen
Yeah, I mean the certainly story money impact was more broad, as was the National Film Board. You know, across any number of social issues. My own heart has always been with the climate, with the environmental issues, with climate being. Being Caribou was one of the first films that I did at the NFB that was thematically related to the environment. And I saw how that film, which was given to every American senator along with a coffee table book, there were screenings that were happening. We saw that film change the political legislation in the U. S. i mean, of course There were other factors, but there was a huge amount of the impact was this tool being used by the Alaska Wilderness League to try to prevent drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
And it worked, right? So I might talk a little bit about that one, because it's a good example. One of the reasons that it worked is it was an. It actually came off as an adventure film. It was bookended by this incredible, important issue. And then at the end, they went to Washington D. C. with their story.
But the story was a couple following the caribou migration on foot for seven months just to see what it was like to be them and how hard it was for them to get to their calving grounds and to represent the fragility of the herd. And so it was adventurous, it was funny, it was shot by the couple all by themselves. It was intimate in their tent. It was broad vistas.
It was amazing. And so people were watching it because of. This was their honeymoon, right? Because of this story. And then they were so impacted by what they saw. It was visceral, right? And so I think that the learning through some of the projects that I've had a chance to either work on or just to study and do a deep dive is how do we touch?
How do we touch people's hearts? I mean, sort of speaking the obvious, it feels like now, but there's still this impulse to put data and stats and figures and we're going to make people realize that this is really important, and we have to pay attention. But I find even myself as an interested party, that kind of washes over me and then I lose touch with it. So to activate people's. Their hearts, their feelings, they're attracted to a story. How is this going to end? Give them a reason to be rooted at their seat.
To watch what's going to happen is really important and to show solutions. I'm a huge believer in solutions journalism and in showing the vision of what, how a world could be different. So in this quite old now film, it's like 15 years old. You got to see the vista where the caribou are living and how beautiful and untouched it is. And that ability to imagine a different future or imagine our world in a certain way, I think helps to give us enough hope and optimism to go on a bit of a pooh. But it's one of the reasons why I was really drawn to Seth Klein's book A Good War, because it had the story of World War II, which is a story I've avoided, frankly, a lot in my adult life. I Found I have an aversion to the war and to military history, and I just didn't pay a lot of attention to it.
That story is woven through the book, but most importantly, that roadmap of solutions is there too. So there's something to kind of not just feel despair, but like, yes, okay, this is something maybe that's doable. And here's a model that worked in the past and this is how it might look like moving forward (excerpt from e26 klein – rallying through art):
Claude Schryer
Yet, as you know, we're working with the Climate Emergency Unit. A number of their staff are working with us in SCALE, this organization that you and I are working on and one of the gaps we're finding or one of the opportunities. I don't like the word opportunity because it sounds commercial. Right? One of the responsibilities of the arts and cultural sector. Maybe responsibilities is not the right word. I'm not searching for a word that says how can the arts and cultural sector step up and play a larger role in the climate emergency.
And the work that you've done, I think is a really good model because it's an amplification model, it's an impact-based model and that's what we need to do. The artists are there, some of them are not sure what to do in terms of greening practices, lobbying.
Where do I start? What do I do? How do I use my skills as a creative, resilient person to address such a complex issue? So just in general terms, what are your thoughts on what Canada, the Canadian arts and cultural sector, can do more and better to address the climate emergency?
Tracey Friesen
I see two levels and they're both really important with that question one is literally what can we do? And that's about sustainable production practices. The CMPA Association I work for now along with a lot of stakeholders, Reel GreenCreative BC here in BC, Ontario. I mean there's people are coming together right now in a very big way and looking at the footprint of the sector, it's been that Real Green's been alive for more than 10 years. So it's been around. But the urgency is being felt right now and I'm sensing it within our own organization and elsewhere. Even the broadcasters in the UK coming together at COP and making commitments there in the CBC here in Canada just yesterday or two days ago announced that all future original productions will have to use carbon calculator and track their sustainability plan.
So there's that part that is happening and we like all sectors have to move on that much more quickly and figure out the ways to reduce emissions. It's a fairly emission heavy field, you know, it feels like it shouldn't be but particularly series production and drama production and the trucks and the, and the power and all of that is really significant and needs to be dealt with. So that's that Where I've spent more time is in, is in the content, right. And so what interests me right now is not there's still work to be done with the movable, the air quotes, movable middle, you know, the people who are becoming more awake to the urgency which we feel here in B. C. with repeated weather and climate emergencies like literally urgent emergencies here on the ground. So there is still opportunity or responsibility for storytellers to be able to, whether journalism or long form storytellers, to be able to harness that to, to amplify it and to show more people.
And what's starting to interest me is stories of resilience for a post carbon world. What are we going to need for our emotional well-being? What are we going to need? It's going to be a different world not long from now if we do this and we have to do this, we have to, this transition has to happen and there's going to be a sense of loss and sacrifice and challenge not just with what's happening externally from a climate point of view, but in how we're going to have to make changes to our lives and reorient our energies in terms of our advocacy. And so I feel like there's an opportunity for artists, I'm more connected to the film and television sector and the documentary community but throughout the system to be able to provide realistic and yet reassuring narratives about what the upside of all this might be. And I hope that we'll be able to then move toward a vision of the future that is going to be different but is still going to have beautiful elements to it.
Claude Schryer
But when we had a chat a few weeks ago, that really resonated with me. That idea of the post carbon world or the sort of. It's a type of speculative fiction, though not necessarily fiction, because we're going to live it. But I think artists play a really important role there. And not just sounding the alarm, because the alarm has been sounded pretty loudly and those who haven't heard it, it's there. But the inertia, I think, can be addressed by. By organization, by providing tools and getting the funders to change their expectations and government policy and all that.
But the artists brings. You use the word heart, you know, and I don't want to become too sentimental, but I do believe I get moved, deeply moved by words, by images, by sounds that go far beyond the science that I read. I intellectualize the science and I understand and I love scientists. I think they're artists as well, quite frankly, or cultural workers. But there's something about what a story, you know, you talk your projects on story, money, impact, what a story can do to change the world. I truly believe, whether it's an indigenous traditional story or it's a settler telling a story, those stories need to be heard, they need to be told, and then people need to talk about them and have that dialogue without the fear of, you know, of panic. Because the panic comes when you realize how bad things are. Right? People are starting to feel it now in their bodies because it's all around us.
But I'm rambling a bit, but I'm interested in. So I'd like to go a bit further in this idea of how do we get then storytellers, be the filmmakers or theater artists or whatever form of storytelling. How do we get them to have. To have the means to tell those stories and for those stories to be impactful.
Tracey Friesen
And part of that, I feel, is the shared experience. So we've really been denied that in the last almost two years with the Pandemic. I know that story Money Impact, and it's helmed now by Executive Director Sue Biely, and she took the program online, a project like Good Pitch Online, as well as can be expected, and has kept it alive. But what we're all missing is the moment after collectively enjoying an artistic shared experience. So keeping in my lane here, I'll talk about documentary film. When people are in a theater together, watching a film together, there's a moment might last for 10 minutes, where if you've been touched, you'll do damn near anything to try to support that cause. Anything. I imagine you felt it.
I can think of dozens of times that I've come out of my seat. I'm looking like, please, may there be a booth so I can at least leave a donation somewhere. Please may there be. You know, there's a. You're in that activated state. It's a high opportunity moment for there to be actual change. Somebody making a pledge for behavior change or somebody doing something specific to that cause or promising to support an organization that supports the cause.
It's amazing how quickly we lose that. You know, by the time someone goes home, they might still look something up that's related to it and maybe do a little. By the next day, they might tell one or two people. And then. And then. And then they're, you know, with the onslaught that we have of audio, visual content and communications, it's sort of gone, you know, and so we can keep it. And filmmakers and impact producers and others do everything they can to try to keep that alive by continuing to communicate about it. But there's that lived experience and what can happen when people who have a shared passion for that cause can be mobilized collectively. So that can go across, of course, all types of content. It can happen in an art gallery, and it can certainly happen after a dance performance or after a theater performance. So I'm anxious to have that return in our lives.
It's starting a little bit now, and for there to be. I hate to. It always comes back to. But it's true. We need to honor that as part of the production process. There needs to be funding for that. In the states with impact documentaries, many that show up.
In my book, their production budget and their impact campaign budget were the same, you know, or very similar. Sometimes the campaign budget was higher. There'd be, you know, films like Food Inc. Or Bully or, you know, they might have a 3 making the numbers up here, but let's call it a $300,000 production budget. And they would have, like, a $300,000 impact campaign budget. It's amazing what you can do when you can take films to two communities when you can almost hearkening back to the good old days of the NFB's Challenge for Change program in the 60s and 70s, where actually people went to the communities and sparked conversations and then took those conversations back to the other communities and sparked enhanced conversations. So it's important work and it's happening with story, money, impact. There's a project called the Klabona Keepers about land defenders, largely women, Indigenous women in Iskut in British Columbia and their very successful efforts around defending their territory from resource extraction.
And that film's just about done. And that film will go to Indigenous communities are the main initial audiences that the filmmakers and the community wish to see this in order to inspire and give real tools and to show other communities how the Klabona Keepers did it. And that's an amazing and bringing youth along for this intergenerational dialogue and exchange that happens best in a kind of environment. It's high touch work because it's small groups of people coming together in different locations. And what I would love to see is the Canadian foundation sector really see and honour the value of that stage of an art practice and do what they can to support it financially so that this impact lands well.
Claude Schryer
That's duly noted. And certainly SCALE is looking at how it can contribute to helping the sector have the tools and resources that it needs. Scale won't do it, but it can influence those. And we're talking to a number of foundations right now and funders who are really curious about what the sector. But you know, it comes back to Seth Klein. I agree with you. A good war.
I've done two interviews with Seth (Klein) now, just did one last week and he's brilliant and very committed to arts and culture, all the sectors. But he really making a pitch that arts and culture can play a very distinct role, a very powerful role. Powerful in the best sense of the word, powerful. But we need to organize ourselves. He's suggesting that agree on A set of 10 demands or principles and have that be your key messages going forward that work needs to be done. And of course, the arts and cultural sector is recovering from COVID and people are now we live in a hybrid digital world and so the current landscape has a lot of potential. But how do you then move forward and not go back to the old ways?
Because we know the old worlds are unsustainable mostly what does this future look like? So that role of defining and creating space for people to feel good about a future.
I'll play an excerpt. I sometimes insert excerpts. There's Ian Garrett's a colleague of ours in Scale who gave a lovely little sentence about how he sees the future. I'll just insert it now (excerpt from e54 garrett – empowering artists):
Claude Schryer
So Ian is somebody who I admire a lot because he walks his talk, you know, he's a teacher, he's an activist. But I think also artists provide that sense of possibility, you know, yes, there will be a future. And you've certainly done important work and setting foundations for that impact piece to become more. More important, as you say, it tends to be. I mean, there was a time in the arts, for instance, we thought, if you produce the work, the people will come. Excellence drives everything. And, you know, you have a whole lot of excellence. And if there isn't a sense of integration into the web of society or the texture of society, it might not go very far, no matter how good it is, or it'll stay at a very thin level.
Tracey Friesen
It's a crowded marketplace. Right?
Claude Schryer
Yeah. And demands for our time and social media also, for better or for worse, is there taking people's attention. So we're coming near the end. Tracey, is there anything that we have not covered?
Tracey Friesen
Yeah, I just want to riff off what you just said there. I think also there are so many important issues. We're in an incredible period of time around identity and around everything to do with privilege and reconciliation and racial reckoning. There's so much that is so important to be given space and time at the same time. Right. And so that is an issue, disability. I mean, the reason that I know Seth is because I produce his mom's film.
So Bonnie Sherr Klein did a film at the NFB when I was there called the Art of Disability. And there again, another example of sort of demystifying and destigmatizing and putting out into the world what it's like to be living with disability and not always be on a pedestal. And to you, and the whole structure of that film is five artists using their art to show what their worlds are like and to be able to find a voice and allow for this kind of public discussion around disability, you know, and so that's important. Like, there's so many important issues. And I'm mindful that with the climate emergency, it's so existential that it's captured my attention perhaps most strongly because I really hope that in the kind of complicated, dynamic, kind of wonderful wild world that we're in right now that it's one thing that will impact all of us not the same way. Certainly, there are those of us living in different parts of the world that that will be affected in different ways. But it's such a global community has to come together in all the ways that they can.
And so we do need the scientists and we do need all of the work being done across all of the important social issues that are happening right now. And we really do need the storytellers and to validate that they're story driven, narrative driven, emotionally driven pieces of work will help to touch people now to change their behavior or will help to soothe or reassure or be with them in the world post transition.
Claude Schryer
I think we'll leave it at that. Thank you, Tracey.
Tracey Friesen
Thank you, Claude.