Arts and Heritage St. Albert has finally ended its search for a new executive director. In the end, its board didn't have to look very far for the right person to fill the opening.
Ann Ramsden has been announced as the new head of the not-for-profit organization, the sixth in its 15-year history. She is now responsible for the day-to-day care and operations of the city-owned cultural destinations and resources, including the Musée Héritage Museum, heritage sites and the Art Gallery of St. Albert. Before this, she was the director of the museum for the previous eight years. She had been in place as the acting executive director since January after the resignation of her predecessor the month before.
The search was delayed in order for the board of trustees to take care of some pressing business first, including implementing the new stewardship agreement with the city, among other things.
"We just got our new slate of board members, we got our AGM out of the way, and literally I said right after, 'Look, this is what we're concentrating on here for the next month. What are we going to do?'" explained Brent Luebke, the chair of the organization's board of trustees.
"Once we got all the paperwork out of the way with the city and got the board in place and got everybody up to speed, people started saying, 'Are we going out for a search here? What are we going to find?"
That headhunting, he speculated, would likely have turned up the same field of candidates that had been attracted during the last search. He said that the board wasn't interested in treading old ground, especially if it meant it would bring someone without as much direct experience as Ramsden.
"We've got perfectly great people within the organization. Is there any reason why we shouldn't be hiring her to do this role? It was a very short, simple discussion. It was more of a determining factor to find out if she was interested."
Ramsden has a masters degree from the University of Alberta as well as a diploma in cultural resource management from the University of Victoria. She first started with the museum in 2003 as its collections co-ordinator.
Her instalment as the executive director means that there is now a vacancy for the director of the museum. She said that it would likely take another month or two for that decision to be made. The first item on her agenda, however, is to go through strategic planning in the fall.
"That's going to start to set the direction we want to take."
For her part, Ramsden is very optimistic about the future of the city's cultural life thanks to the organization's guidance.
"I'm very committed to the Arts and Heritage Foundation," she stated. "There's plenty of opportunity in the community to become involved, to do more exhibits that the community wishes to see and for us to provide the programming that's necessary for that."
Luebke praised Ramsden for the high respect that she has obtained in the cultural industry, expressing his utmost confidence that she will continue to strengthen the collaborative partnerships that exist with all of the organization's stakeholders.
He said that the position has been revamped to some degree, adding that a lot of those changes reflected the new stewardship agreement with the city.
The past and the prologue
She succeeds Paul Moulton who left in mid-December 2012 after holding the position for four years. He resigned over a fundamental disagreement with city council and its management team during prolonged negotiations over renewing the organization's stewardship agreement. The dispute was in regards to changing the funding structure.
That battle lead to a stalemate and also resulted in the resignation of another board member.
In the end, city council drew a line in the sand and said that the organization had to accept their proposal or it would take back the city's arts and heritage assets, which would have left the organization with no purpose.
Luebke took his post in early January as well. The board met and accepted the new stewardship agreement soon after. It took effect on April 1.
The new fee-for-service model requires Arts and Heritage to submit invoices for funding, rather than getting funding in advance through grants.
