Final notes

We are days away from the end of classes in the Corporate Communications and Public Relations program that began in January of this year. There are eight weeks of placement in the field ahead, though not all of us will complete that course this September. There has been surprisingly little attrition, with 28 “survivors” out of the original 30, gasping toward the finish and about to reap our rewards.

In this second semester, we have been weaned away from classwork and constant group work, as well as from the cafeteria, the closest thing to a hearth at Centennial College’s Centre for Creative Communications. I think we have missed the noisy gatherings there – the joys of communal eating.

An experience like this – seven months of intensive learning in an environment that is as competitive as it is collegial – is going to stick. At this moment, I think most of us are happy to bid adieu to most of our fellow classmates. Yet, I do not doubt there will be a lot of fond feeling when we think back on this particular group of characters and the crazy things we did just to get through the program.

When I applied to the program, I thought that the emphasis would be on communications and not public relations. Not so. Whether because of the mix of instructors, imperitives in the market or student priorities and demands, PR is the reason for this program’s existence.

I have avoided PR. There, I said it. Here’s one reason: I have known a number of journalists in both my personal and professional life and I can honestly say that not one of them – good, kind, intelligent people all – ever had the time of day for my opinions. I cannot deal with lack of respect in the workplace.

I wished for a placement at Harbourfront Centre, a place where I might employ my knowledge of literature (the Interational Festival of Authors), theatre (the World Stage Festival; the Premiere Dance Theatre); contemporary visual art (the Power Plant) and even gardening (the Music Garden.) As a communications intern at Harbourfront I will be kept busy marketing and promoting any combination of the 4,000 events that are hosted and produced by this cultural hub each year.

I wish all of my fellow students well and will miss a handful of them very much. But where there is a will – or a networking opportunity – I am certain we will meet again.

The accidental blogger

That, perhaps, is what I should have named this site. I have been an accidental librettist and an accidental curator, so there is a precedent for the moniker.

My name is Anna Camara and I am a Toronto-based writer and communicator.

In November 2007, I wound up the last of the half-dozen assignments I had taken on after leaving my long-time position as director of communications for a small arts organization. Contract work found me, unbidden, but neither my CV nor my professional network were generating job interviews for full-time positions. I tend to stick with people and projects for a long time and was in search of the next place to land, possibly for five to ten years.

There was a hole in my resume under ‘education’ – great as it was, theatre school in the 1970s did not confer credibility on a 25-year career in communications. During the pre-Christmas panic, I rifled through my teenage son’s college brochures and rushed to meet the Humber and Centennial College application deadlines.

So here I am, into the second and final term of the post-graduate Corporate Communications and Public Relations program at Centennial College’s Centre for Creative Communications, a few city blocks north of my home in Riverdale. (Not exactly by accident.) Our online PR instructor, Melanie McBride, has provided a context for this foray into social media and I am happy to explore its possibilities.

That said, I have always been a bibliophile. I visit my local public library three or four times a month, read three or four books a week and try to make 25 per cent of my reading non-fiction. No amount of blogging, tweeting, or e-mailing will replace my passion for writing and reading – on paper, from paper.

As a learner, I am a curious and skeptical autodidact – a lifer. I learn by reading, observing, questioning, listening and talking. This forum offers the opportunity to learn in the way that suits me best: dialectically. If I can have an evocative exchange – or share a good joke – with only one person here, I will have learned something valuable.

For me, process is almost everything – there is no part of my personal and artistic life that does not inform my writing craft, so this blog will be open-ended and, if it evolves, will do so organically.

I’ll end this post with a quote from an essay called The Art of Immemorability by American poet and critic Charles Bernstein, found in a favourite book, A Book of Books:

“I want to reiterate that one medium does not conquer another. It is not a question of progress but rather of a series of overlays, creating the web in which our language is enmeshed. Technology determines neither art nor politics and art is never free from the effects of technology. Technology informs, but it does not determine.”

What do you think?