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Copyright Literacy Experiment

“My behavior helps create the situation to which I am responding” – Mary Parker Follett

Prepared by Mary Parker Follett

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Table of abbreviation or acronyms

CEP
Creative Entrepreneurship Program
CMI
Creative Marketplace and Innovation Branch
CPB
Copyright Policy Branch
IP
Intellectual Property
MDA
Mechanics – Dynamics – Aesthetics
OCADU
Ontario College of Art and Design University
PCH
Canadian Heritage
SCP
Sample Cohort Programming
STEEEPPV
Social, Technical, Economic, Environmental, Emotional, Physical, Political, Values
TC
Anonymized acronym to represent the identity of the lawyer

Introduction

What follows are the results of an experiment to assess the relative benefits of different modes of delivery of entrepreneurial training to artists and designers. The intention has been to improve understanding and comfort of individual creators in navigating the intellectual property (IP) regime in Canada. Research conducted by the Creative Marketplace team in 2017 – particularly “Creator’s Remuneration, Livelihood Strategies and Use of Copyright” – suggested that creators are not generally well-prepared to understand their intellectual property rights or to protect or monetize them. This work is in response to these findings.

The experiment was created in line with the Government of Canada’s agenda for experimentation and innovative approaches to support evidence-based decision-making. Artscape Launchpad, a division of Toronto Artscape Incorporated, collaborated with the Department of Canadian Heritage (PCH) over several months to assess how copyright literacy can better position creators to protect and commercialize their work within the context of existing creative entrepreneurship programs offered through Artscape Launchpad.

Although the scope has been initially limited to 18 creative entrepreneurs, participants in both A and B sample cohorts (9 individuals each) expressed an increased understanding of the mechanics of intellectual property and increased confidence in seeking out resources and support around these issues. The A sample was more likely to express negative impressions of the legal system (and the legal expert included in delivery) and a reduced confidence to demonstrate adaptive responses to IP issues or to advocate for particular shifts in how the IP regime operates. This is despite the fact that the legal expert embedded in both cohorts was the same individual.

The following summary recommendations can be made based on the outcomes of the experiment:

The application of legal knowledge in new contexts seems to be improved by both emotional connections to the intellectual property regime and a reflective practice of synthesizing different approaches to knowledge and meaning-making. In this experiment, intimacy was created through integration of expert knowledge into community-building activities prior to content delivery. Systemic understanding and systemic attitudes were supported in Cohort B by introducing intellectual property content as part of a learning journey at a large Indigenous media festival where questions of copyright are chronic and often seemingly in conflict with organizational values.

The experiment was initiated by the Creative Marketplace and Innovation Branch of the Department of Canadian Heritage (PCH). The Branch is, among other things, “responsible, through its policy-making activities, for ensuring that Canada’s copyright policy framework, a cornerstone of cultural policy, supports creativity, innovation and access to cultural works”. Copyright policy regulates the activities of creators, both directly through legislation, and indirectly through incentives to engage or disengage from the broader intellectual property regime. Improvements in how creators are educated on copyright contributes to increased creativity, innovation and access to appropriately compensated and protected cultural works for all Canadians.

The legal and business environment for creators, particularly creators embedded in small and medium-sized enterprises, is very complex. There are many resources available to help educate on copyright and intellectual property through online sites and in-person workshops and consultations. However, few are targeted specifically at creators and there is still significant confusion and uncertainty within the creator community, which can inhibit entrepreneurial activity and the confidence of Canadian creators.

The effective comprehension and application of relevant legislation, regulations, processes and industry standards is an ongoing challenge for creators and owners of intellectual property rights. The ability of creators to navigate the intellectual property regime is influenced by a range of factors beyond knowledge of the technical aspects of legislation and policy, and success allows creators to protect and commercialize their work in ways that incentivises creation, generates economic returns, and reduces uncertainty about the uses of creative work.

The Department of Canadian Heritage sought an opportunity to demonstrate the relative efficacy of different approaches to educating creative entrepreneurs about key issues, often technical, that influence their success in domestic and global marketplaces. This document outlines the results of this process of experimentation.

Through its programming, Artscape Launchpad equips creators with the tools, training, resources, mentorship, and connections needed to build sustainable businesses, including assistance with connecting to the marketplace. Artscape Launchpad builds programs around the idea that success in the creative economy depends on other people. Programs help creators build out the business side of their practice while developing the relationships they need to succeed.

Artscape Launchpad’s pedagogy is centered on how entrepreneurs can be prepared to work across boundaries in order to discover opportunities for cultural, community and commercial impact and is continuously seeking opportunities to critically examine approaches to educating creators.

Conceptual Framework

The experiment was driven by a desire to better understand the educational approaches available to support creators to understand and navigate the intellectual property regime in Canada. An experimental frame was selected in order to contribute to the existing body of research conducted by both government and non-government sources. The ideal outcome is an ongoing process of long-term, sustainable learning and renewal that supports the health of creators and the intellectual property system in Canada. The experiment should support learning which can then be applied to improving the system under examination.

Experiments that include human beings and their relationships must come from a place of profound care and compassion. Additionally, experimentation in human systems relies on a “systemic attitude” and a “systemic view” of the situation and thereby allows a “systemic understanding” of persons, groups, organizations, and processes.

Systemic attitude: An attitude that allows for multiple perspectives on an issue and that is comfortable with contradiction and complexity.

Systemic view: A view that is aware of the adaptations made by systems to reduce complexity and the real complexity and dynamics that may create incongruence between the system and its environment. Systems exist in the tension between durability and transience.

Systemic understanding: A frame that recognizes systems as multi-dimensional and possessing their own inner life, but only able to exist by being a subsystem of larger systems or communicating with other systems and building relationships.

It is convenient to think of systems as goal-oriented, deliberately and rationally designed forms, within which people act in a mostly rational manner. Systemic organizational theory overturns these assumptions by emphasizing processual qualities, proneness to conflict, as well as dynamics of complexity, ambivalence, and inconsistency as essential features. The IP regime in Canada has been designed with intent. However, complexity arising from its application creates unexpected behaviours and outcomes that must be considered and addressed.

Furthermore, systems theory is a worldview and an attempt to explain. However, it embodies reflexivity, as the process of explanation refers to and disturbs the entity under examination. The system is changed through the process of experimenting with it. The process of intervening generates outcomes just as the content of the intervention does. Disentangling this is difficult and ultimately unnecessary.

In a complex system such as the creative industries or the intellectual property regime, there are no linear causalities between an input and an output. Rather, the system changes its internal state as a result of one of its inputs or outputs. Moreover, the same input can lead to different outputs at different times and different inputs can lead to the same output at different times. Strictly speaking, one can no longer distinguish between input and output.

Complex systems are not defined by their numerous components and the complicated operating logics of their relationships. They are more than their dynamics or the interactive sequence of patterns. The fundamental core feature of complex systems is that they alter their internal state. By recursive operations of the system, that is, by repeatedly running the same patterns, which are based on the results of ongoing operations, small deviations are quickly acuminating ---the system becomes turbulent and tilts into a new mode of function.

Creators and their creative enterprises can be understood as dynamic systems that interact with larger systems and integrate the living systems of its members. Complexity and dynamics are fundamental characteristics of these systems and must be represented in experimental design and delivery. The pedagogical design for the B Cohort addresses this by humanizing the legal expertise introduced to the program (integrating the human system) and complicating the legal knowledge shared by introducing it within the context of an Indigenous media arts festival (interaction among systems).

The intellectual property regime in Canada is complex in terms of both the mechanics that define its activity and in terms of the dynamics that emerge from the operating mechanics. To cope with this complexity, creators and other stakeholders of the IP system have developed repeatable patterns of action, behaviour, and thought. They reduce the complexity of incidents to a tolerable, manageable level. These patterns take the form of habits, rituals, modeled behaviours, expectations, prejudices, meaning constructs, and worldviews. The process of reduction makes events seem predictable and adapts the creator’s system to the perceived needs of the situation at that point in time.

New knowledge that fails to shift these repeatable patterns of action, behaviour and thought will not increase the capacity of creators to navigate the IP regime.

Evidence from the Creator’s Journey and the Containment Workshop illustrated that the inner life of creative enterprises is maintained through the continuous reduction of complexity. Control is maintained through shared symbols, hierarchies of values and intention, customs, rituals, role assignments, structural hierarchies, and above all through the objectification of agreements (contracts).

Objectification of consensus and difference takes place both through the construction of artificial structures (collectives, transactional barriers, contracts, etc.) as well as through internalization (habits, perception and expectation patterns, behaviour, prejudices, etc.). Objectifications allow for permanent distinctions to be made; what is important or unimportant, useful or useless, permissible or prohibited, desirable or undesirable, true or false and so on. Making such distinctions means making selections and, from a system-theoretical point of view, can then be understood as information. Put another way, as a creator or a system of creators selects from all the noise generated from the intellectual property regime an element and assigns it a specific meaning, the specific element becomes defined and formed – it has importance for that creator and thereby becomes information for ongoing self-referential operations.

The systemic view focuses attention on the tension between the ongoing development of an organization and its desire to harden the internal organizational structures. Creators adapt their patterns to accommodate their understanding of the systems they must navigate. The reduction of complexity allows the creator to act but may hinder their survival, adaptability and learning as they interact with the intellectual property system. Objectifications not only limit the available behaviours that an organization can deploy to adapt to its environment, but also the information that it can make use of in decision making and other organizational activities.

The framework applied to this experiment holds that creators, and the manner in which the self-organize, define a multi-dimensional social system that has its own inner life but can only exist by being a subsystem of larger systems and by communicating with other systems through the building of relationships.

The A sample in our experiment allowed creators exposure to ‘information’ that the intellectual property system deemed relevant. Creators were free to seek feedback from a representative of the legal system based on their ongoing challenges. The assumption was that this arrangement would improve technical competence in addressing current needs but would do little to support adaptive competence in dealing with unfamiliar or emerging issues of intellectual property.

The B sample asked creators to develop empathy and intimacy with a representative of the intellectual property system with less emphasis on the information being exchanged. Creators were then stimulated toward alternative perspectives, patterns of thought, and interactions by simultaneously presenting fully-realized systems that seemed to hold contradictory or incompatible values and objectives. Specifically, the intellectual property system was introduced within the context of a large Indigenous media arts festival that deals with intellectual property indirectly and directly as it maintains a commitment to the expression of Indigenous values and ways of knowing. The intent in the B sample was to dissolve rigid, stifling loops within creators caused by ossification of structures by encouraging the visualization of contradictions and providing time and space for individual and collective reflection. Sample B also encouraged ongoing thinking, reasoning and perception using systemic categories

While Sample A offered numerous heuristics derived from a single perspective (that of a representative of the legal system). Sample B offered fewer heuristics but multiple perspectives that related to the entire spectrum of interactions among individual, social, structural, material, symbolic and cultural aspects of system activity.

The Experiment

The Copyright Policy Branch of the Department of Canadian Heritage engaged with the Ontario College of Art and Design University and Artscape Launchpad to design and deliver an experiment to evaluate the relative efficacy of various approaches to instruction (pedagogical models) to improve the ability of creators to understand and navigate the intellectual property (IP) regime in Canada.

Hypotheses

The original experimental frame was for Artscape Launchpad and the Department of Canadian Heritage to collaborate to evaluate the efficacy of:

  1. Embedding copyright literacy into a comprehensive entrepreneurial literacy program versus as a stand-alone product;
  2. Providing instruction in a networked format that supports the co-creation and application of knowledge.

The initial hypotheses were that:

  1. Information-centered or expert-centered approaches to sharing information about copyright and IP were inadequate. Information needed to be integrated into comprehensive entrepreneurial literacy;
  2. Retention and application would require communicative and collaborative approaches to education. Essentially, information would be contextualized and applied in a networked format.

A third hypothesis emerged through the containment process which was that:

  1. Diverse communities (in terms of experience, perspectives, and heuristics) would be required to effectively mobilize and apply IP knowledge effectively

Timeline

November 2017: Meetings between the Department of Culture and Heritage and Toronto Artscape Incorporated to define experimental parameters and contracting.

November 2017 – April 2018: Weekly meetings among key stakeholders in Copyright Literacy experiment through phone conferencing.

December 2017: Experimental framework outlines steps and areas of responsibility

January 2018: Creator’s Journey Workshop delivered to better understand the lived experiences of creators (6). Workshop delivered by subcontractors from PCH.

January 2018: Containment Workshop delivered to cross-section of IP community (16) to elaborate themes, uncover assumptions, and clarify experimental intent.

February 2018: Decision points (February 6, February 20) to finalize experimental design in consultation with experiment partners and contracted legal expertise.

February 20 – 26, 2018: Pre-workshop interviews conducted and recorded. Semi-structured qualitative interview techniques with target of 10 interviews (8 completed)

February 26 – March 1, 2018: “A” Sample Cohort Programming (40-hour comprehensive Creative Entrepreneurship Program)

March 5 – March 8, 2018: “B” Sample Cohort Programming (40-hour comprehensive Creative Entrepreneurship Program)

March 9 – 16, 2018: Post-workshop interviews conducted and recorded. Semi-structured qualitative interview techniques with target of 10 interviews (7 completed)

April 2018: Evaluation of data and pattern assessment

April 2018: Stakeholder meeting in Ottawa to discuss initial findings

May 2018: 1st draft of report provided

Existing Pedagogy

Artscape Launchpad’s approach to instructional design is derived from practices and concepts developed in the world of video games and focuses on the creation of generative spaces that give rise to innovative ideas and solutions that are shaped by collaborative approaches, diverse perspectives and systemic understanding. While many entrepreneurial training programs focus on individuals or small teams, Artscape Launchpad centres on networks of people who can bring together and re-combine different ideas and concepts from diverse domains. The concept of entrepreneurship is seen as relational and social, understood through the ongoing interactions that contribute to positive change.

Programs apply a hermeneutic approach that accommodates the relationships among community members and with their environment. Instructional design is focused on providing direct and shared experiences to groups of people that would improve the communicative field within which entrepreneurial activity is embedded. Rather than promoting a personal inquiry into how meaning is sought and made, design focuses on collective inquiry into meaning and sense-making.

Although various modalities are supported, including 40-hour intensive and staggered programs, day-long programs, and shorter 2.5-hour workshops, consistent elements include the reframing of complex problems, the suspension of existing system constraints, and help for participants to look at problems through a lens that is not shaped by existing practices. Once the solution space has been reshaped, new solutions can be traced.

The pedagogy has generated positive responses from participants and is seen as a pragmatic response to a diverse learning community dominated by artists and entrepreneurs that are often uncomfortable or antagonistic to formal, Western institutional models of learning. Over time, the approach to designing these spaces has become established as praxis, with a distinct vocabulary and grammar.

Although in a state of constant refinement and evolution, the approach to learning spaces developed and deployed at Artscape Launchpad is known simply as MDA. The term MDA is an acronym for Mechanics – Dynamics – Aesthetics and is drawn from its use in video game design and research (Hunicke, LeBlanc, and Zubek 2004). The MDA model offers a way of ensuring systematic coherence in created environments. The core insight of the MDA model is that, “thinking about games as designed artifacts helps frame them as systems that build behavior via interaction” (Hunicke, LeBlanc, and Zubek 2004). Traditional approaches to instructional design are too often positivist. A ‘media’ model of instruction assumes that knowledge is presented and knowledge is consumed and any errors in transmission are embedded in the sender or the receiver. Even when the communication is understood, it requires a significant leap of faith that the receiver will be capable of applying that knowledge in a meaningful way or in a social context.

Broadcast approaches are inappropriate when attempting to encourage the collective creation of knowledge and the spanning of disciplinary boundaries. Video games, as artifacts, only exist in the context of interaction. There is a constant interplay among subjective interpretations of the experience of a game and the objective progression of the game as players make decisions based on their interpretations of the game environment. What this suggests is a different way of approaching the design of learning spaces. If a social learning environment, like a game, only exists through its interactions, then the design focus needs to be on the nature and experience of those interactions (the aesthetic). Rather than prioritizing what the designer wants the learners to do, the focus is on how the learners need to feel in order to generate more positive interactions within the learning environment.

An aesthetic approach creates conditions within which new desirable behaviours are more likely to emerge that are intrinsically derived and centered on positive interactions with other learners and learning objects. The MDA approach is not about manipulation or ‘gamification’ but rather about designing spaces and experiences that are more likely to inspire the application of perspectives and heuristics required to address the adaptive challenges of entrepreneurs.

As a design approach, the MDA model has proven particularly effective in:

As an approach and praxis, the model seems appropriate as a strategy for preparing learners to succeed in an economic and social context defined by cross-disciplinarity, complexity, and change.

The MDA model is an iterative methodology that simultaneously considers the learner’s experience of system dynamics and the controls that enable those system dynamics. As the learning spaces are targeting transformational adaptations in perspective and behaviour, focus on controls is eschewed in favor of a focus on aesthetics. Artscape Launchpad’s understanding of entrepreneurial development centres on the ongoing process of learning about learning rather than a set of competencies or behaviours to be practiced and applied. Structured reflection on aesthetic experience and collective processes of meaning making allow groups to interrogate existing patterns of behaviour and apply new behaviours as demanded by the designed context. Through collective inquiry into a shared aesthetic experience, a group can begin a process of adaptation to the emerging context. Groups transition from “what does this mean to me” to “what does this mean to us” to “how might we move forward”.

Experimental Design

Initial design occurred through consultation between PCH and Artscape Launchpad. The Creator’s Journey Workshop and the Containment Workshop further elaborated initial design themes and provided a framework for conducting multi-variable testing based on alterations in existing curriculum design and pedagogy.

Two instances of the Creative Entrepreneurship Program offered consecutively in late February and early March 2018 were selected as sites for experimental delivery. Artscape Launchpad applies an aesthetic of generosity to all learning environments and the two instances of the Creative Entrepreneurship Program selected for the experiment were unchanged from existing designs other than the key variations necessary to evaluate the accuracy of the hypotheses previously described.

The Creative Entrepreneurship Program (CEP) is a 40-hour program that can be delivered intensively (32 hours of classroom instruction over 4 or 5 days with 8 hours of home-based work) or staggered (weekly or longer intervals between instructional elements). The program asks creators to confront hard questions about the business side of their creative practice, identify allies that will move things forward, and practice new ways of organizing to get things done in a fast-moving and constantly-changing sector.

Topics include funding, copyright, business models, community engagement, branding, technology, and emerging markets and audiences. Design centres on interactions that encourage a sense of generosity within the learning community. Specifically, design centres the ability of participants to contribute to the success of their fellow learners while uncovering unexpected or novel relationships that can advance their creative ambitions.

Creative Entrepreneurship Program (CEP) Objectives

Daily Agenda (Summary)

Day 1: Who are you? Why are you here? Mapping the external terrain. What’s the idea? What value do you create? What’s the insight? How do you fit? Organizing the work and the boundaries.

Day 2: Designing interactions and collaboration. Partnerships. Telling your story. Why do relationships matter?

Day 3: What’s the business model? Observations and interpretations. Being legit. Case studies. Talking about money. The hustle.

Day 4: Insights and implementation. Prototyping and testing assumptions. Other sources of revenue. Business development strategies.

Day 5: Telling your story … again and again. Social media. Industry connects and next steps. Mapping the internal terrain.

Both instances (A and B Sample Cohorts) had the same lead facilitator and worked in the same classroom setup. Other than the differences described, the curriculum was consistent across both cohorts. Tuition was offered for free to individuals willing to participate in the study, though they were not informed of the substance of the experiment prior or during delivery. Class sizes were identical. Group A started with 10 but a mid-program withdrawal left the group at 9. Group B had 9 participants throughout.

Cohort A had 3 out of 9 participants identifying as new Canadians, 6 out of 9 describing as coming from a community of colour and an age range of early 20s to early 40s. Disciplines represented include photography, poetry, music, community arts, dance, film, advertising, visual art, and museums and gallery services. Two of the participants identified as male, and seven identified as female.

Cohort B had 2 out of 9 participants identifying as a new Canadian, 7 out of 9 describing as coming from a community of colour and an age range of early 20s to late 50s. Disciplines represented include music, photography, dance, theatre, visual art, arts education, graphic design, and festival organizing.

The A/B structures tested can be summarized as follows:

  1. Legal expert provides a 150-minute session on issues of intellectual property and the law on day 3 of the program design. They are present only for the session and provide contact information for follow-up where requested;
  2. Legal expert provides a 45-minute briefing on intellectual property and the law on day 3 of the program design immediately prior to a site visit with an Indigenous film festival based in Toronto, Ontario (ImagineNATIVE). They are present on Days 1, 2 and 4 from 13:30 until program close (16:30 or 17:00) as a participant while not offering legal expertise, content or facilitation.

Experimental elements

Creator’s Journey (January 23rd, 2018)

This workshop was led by representatives from OCADU with support from Canadian Heritage and Artscape Daniels Launchpad. The full-day workshop invited six creators as participants and was dedicated to understanding the creators’ journey and their needs. The objectives were to establish creators’ knowns, known-unknowns, and unknowns throughout the creators’ journey, to identify creators’ pain points and needs, and to open up conversation about how copyright information and knowledge should be delivered to creators.

Key questions

A creator’s persona was created by looking at STEEEPPV (social, technical, economic, environmental, emotional, physical, political, values) factors affecting a creator’s process and barriers and tensions affecting her access to means for maximizing value to her work. The persona was then presented to participants as a narrative describing the creator’s journey. Participants were then asked to validate the creator’s journey map, with emphasis to include personal key events that they have experienced.

Containment Workshop (January 25th, 2018)

The Containment Workshop was intended to interrogate the levels of confidence in the framing of the issue presented by the Department of Canadian Heritage to the implementation team. The workshop allowed various stakeholders to examine if the existing frame of the issue was appropriate and useful (and shared with others). Containment is a means to collectively explore, visualize, and synthesize essential beliefs, assumptions, wishes, and intentions of people in a system prior to beginning a process of problem solving. The output is a shared understanding of the broader context and its importance for future action.

The focus in the workshop was on the collaborative group (who is relevant), system activities (what interactions are relevant) and overall stability (how is the work grounded) in order to commit to the experimental process. Containment involves interrogation of hitherto valid mental models and implicit assumptions. Revision was the likely output. From this a “container” would be created – a collaborative attention toward mutual intentions, assumptions and convictions.

This is particularly important when talking about complex systems. A "system" can best be translated as “framework of effects,” or “effect structure.” Different influencing variables interact with each other and are linked back to one another or to themselves. A complex system has many possible inputs, many possible outputs and unknown link patterns and dynamics. Also, the boundary between what contributes to the effect (of the effect) and what is merely the environment will only become visible over time. Superficial framing of a system can inadvertently replicate past patterns and limit the solution set available to the experiment.

The following themes were central to the design of the “Containment Workshop”:

Contextual reference: Since complex systems consistently change their functioning patterns, one can only understand the framework of effects in relation to a given context. A shared context allows for a shared examination of a framework of effects.

Path dependency: How the system reacts to a given input depends on its history. There is no reverse transaction for previously processed functions. The past cannot be recovered because the functional patterns have changed qualitatively. Selecting some paths and ignoring others must be done explicitly.

Reference to the whole system: In order to define a particular system, a certain understanding of the overall system is required. Mapping internal and external connections allows for a better picture of the whole system.

The group size at the Containment workshop was 15 with representation from the following communities:

Experimental Design (February 1st – 16th, 2018)

Cohort A and B Recruitment (February 8th – 23rd, 2018)

Participant Profile: Broadly, Launchpad programs consist of creators that identify with one of the 17 National Occupational Classifications that comprise the creative industries in Canada. Many are early or mid-career and have evidence that their work is valued but not approaches or supports to advance those ambitions. Launchpad participants are diverse disciplinarily, demographically and geographically (outside the downtown) and express a feeling of being ‘peripheral’ to mainstream arts activity. Many are receiving small grants ($1500/$2000) but not at levels that support a livelihood. Nineteen participants were recruited to participate in the experiment. Ten were allocated to Cohort A and nine to Cohort B. Work requirements caused one participant to withdraw following Day 1 of Cohort A, so both groups ultimately had nine learners.

Pre-workshop Interviews (February 19th – 28th, 2018)

Communicative artifacts (vocalized and behavioural) were examined to explore effects of the experimental design. People are not easily influenced by direct action nor are they completely transparent. Structures are constantly reproducing themselves by means of communication. Entrepreneurs are constantly changing and creating new structures to address complexity and create order in the form of recollected history, structurally memorized (collective/organizational) successes, and coordinated perceptions and expectations. Internal structural order, sense constructs and worldviews lend safety and stability, but at the same time hinder responses to changes in a dynamic, rapidly changing environment. Pre- and post-workshop interviews provided evidence of shifts in how communicative artifacts evolved as a result of their participation in the workshop.

The interviews were conducted by Robert Wakulut, a lawyer who works with Artscape Launchpad in consultation with the experiment’s implementation team. Using a video conferencing tool, Mr. Wakulut conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews intended to surface the specific lived experience of the participants in interfacing with the IP regime. The interviews also allowed Mr. Wakulut to gauge current level of understanding.

The script for the interview was as follows:

Sample workshop A (February 26th – March 1st, 2018)

Both cohorts completed a short 2-page assessment of their current level of knowledge of the IP regime in Canada. The responses are included in summary as Appendix A. There was a strong correlation between self-assessed level of expertise and performance on some key technical questions posed, and there was little variation between the two cohorts in either professed knowledge or demonstrated knowledge. The responses were also contrasted with outcomes from the qualitative interviews to assess any shifts as a result of participation.

Sample workshop B (March 5th – 8th, 2018)

Single loop vs. double loop learning

In single loop learning, if an agent does not achieve what she is striving for, she will generally change her approach. Over time, she may even evolve new strategies. Through feedback, she learns to act in better alignment with her system (organization) and her environment. However, she could also think about her own desires, values and norms, and conclude that something is wrong in the relationship between her intentions and her approaches. Double loop learning allows a breaking up of thought patterns to activate the self-steering / self-organizing processes of an agent.

Sample Workshop A focused on providing tools to participants to engage in single loop learning. Content was shared that allowed participants to act in better alignment with the IP regime as a core component of their practice. Sample Workshop B attempted to encourage double loop learning by asking participants to examine their intentions and to reconcile various competing systems in order to activate self-organizing processes. The ability to integrate the embedded values of various systems encourages adaptive alignment with the entrepreneur’s preferences and approaches.

Post-program interviews (March 12th – 18th, 2018)

The post-program interview was intended to assess how communicative artifacts, including both available heuristics and perspectives, of participants had changed as a result of their participation in the program.

  1. How did you feel about the lawyer’s participation in the program?
  2. What did you learn that you didn’t know before?
  3. How has your understanding of the legal system changed as a result of your participation?
  4. What changes would you advocate for in how the legal system addresses intellectual property?

Data review (March 19th – 30th, 2018)

Reporting (April 2018)

Process notes
Containment workshop

The Containment Workshop generated four broad issues that suggested patterns of action for designing the eventual experiment.

  1. Issue of copyright as practice
    • Copyright literacy as a stand-alone subject to be learned vs. copyright literacy as a practice that needs to be practiced as part of a comprehensive entrepreneurship program
  2. Issue of copyright as distance
    • Copyright literacy to be learned with a community of fellow creative entrepreneurs vs. copyright literacy to be collaboratively constructed through interactions with a representative cohort of the IP ecology
  3. Issue of copyright as justice
    • Copyright literacy to be learned as an abstraction with cases included vs. copyright literacy to be developed through the creation of cases by embedding learners in communities impacted by the copyright regime
  4. Issue of copyright as accountability
    • Copyright literacy to be learned to advance an entrepreneurs creative ambitions vs. literacy developed in order to support others trying to navigate the IP landscape

In order to limit the variables applied to experimental design, the implementation team selected to work with elements of issues 1 and 3.

The Containment Workshop also raised important questions about what successful application of learning might look like in areas such as:

The pre- and post-workshop interviews were designed to reflect these questions. Pedagogical variations between Workshop A and B were also constituted so that these questions could be better understood.

Recursion

The process of intervention recursively altered the experimental frame. The process of experimentation (as opposed to the content of the experiment) surfaced key points that were not initially in scope.

Specifically,

  1. patterns of oppression are entangled in issues of intellectual property;
  2. technical responses (heuristics) differ significantly based on the perspectives held by responder; and,
  3. inter-subjective ‘spaces’ contribute to how information is received and transformed into knowledge by different individuals.

Specifically, these issues relate to how racialized and marginalized communities experience both the intellectual property regime and interventions to address gaps in understanding within the creator community. Different lived experiences suggest different needs based on self-perceptions of privilege. An opportunity for future study might study how gender and racial profiles affect the relationship between creators and intellectual property systems.

Outcomes

The experiment, in many ways, focused attention on the tension between the ongoing development of an entrepreneurial venture and its desire to harden internal organizational structures. Reductions of complexity allow for work to be done efficiently and effectively. However, as entrepreneurs interact with other systems in a dynamic environment, reductions of complexity can hinder or prevent the survival, adaptability and learning of the system. Objectifications not only limit the available behaviours that an organization can deploy to adapt to its environment, but also the information that it can make use of in decision making and other organizational activities.

The intention in Sample B was to encourage double-loop learning through a pedagogy that drew attention to the tensions between duration (internal reduction of complexity) and change (learning and growth) and between the inner world (intentions) and the environment.

The decisive difference between Sample A and Sample B was the intended learning process: pre-structured learning, expert knowledge, and recipes versus social learning and learning about learning.

The delivery of Workshops A and B suggested patterns of behaviour that were echoed in the data generated through pre- and post-workshop interviews.

Specifically, creators in the program were subjectively interpreting their interactions with the legal system in a number of ways.

  1. How they felt about the ‘expert’ (their ability and agency to create room for that expert to contribute to their journey – subjective personal)
  2. How they experienced the method of delivery (presentation versus embedded in a site visit)
  3. What they learned (the new information they added to their toolkit - heuristics)
  4. How the legal system regulates their interactions (broader awareness of why/how the legal system informs what they do and how – perspectives)
  5. A normative position on the current state of the legal system (whether it effectively regulates creative activity or not – subjective systemic)

Regulation here refers to how the system shapes the dynamics of creative work rather than in a strictly legal sense.

Initial knowledge levels were low, with 13 of the 17 participants correctly answering 3 or fewer of the 5 questions asked as part on intake. Eight of 17 participants also offered very low levels of confidence in their abilities. With only one exception, scores correlated closely with the self-assessed level of competence.

Those in cohort A provided detailed responses to questions related to points 1, 2 and 3 above but were less able to reference any broader awareness of how the legal system informs what they do and how (4,) or to take a normative position on the current stage of the legal system (5).

Those in cohort B had less to say about their relationship to the expert and to the method of delivery but more to say about how the broader system regulates their activity (4) and opinions about how the legal system needs to evolve.

1. Perceptions of expertise

Those in cohort A frequently described the lawyer (anonymized as TC here) in terms that objectified. They had 2.5 hours with the expert and she delivered a PowerPoint presentation on key legal issues for creators. Many claimed to have learned new things but indicated a negative or reductionist view of the lawyer. One participant described how "most people were very off-put by that session" and how “she wasn’t one of us”. A participant pointed directly to the design variance in his feedback, offering that "she wasn't there for the whole time and it didn't mesh" and how it “felt bad to have someone come in and tell you how to do something".

Others were less antagonistic toward the lawyer, yet still described her in terms that centered on her function in instruction. One participant felt that the lawyer was "very good at explaining her role" and that she was "a bag full of knowledge" although she did profess that, "it felt a bit overwhelming".

A third interviewee had forgotten the name of the lawyer and needed to be reminded. She remarked, "Who's XXX? Who's that again? Oh yeah, I remember her. She was very knowledgeable ... Knew a lot ... Like a drill sergeant. Very, very, very on the ball" and shortly thereafter lamented that copyright is “not the funnest subject".

Cohort B spent more total time with TC, although TC’s participation was limited to joining in conversations and activities as any other participant might, often in small group or paired structures. Although introduced as a lawyer, no participants in cohort B sought guidance from TC until after her presentation on day 3 and the visit to ImagineNATIVE later that morning. When asked about TC and her participation, interviewees offered a more nuanced description of TC as a person.

One interviewee offered that TC was effective due to her artistic training and that "because she was an artist, she could anticipate" the types of questions that artists would have. The same interviewee confessed that engaging with a lawyer was a fear before the program but that now “a process of understanding has begun”.

Another participant in cohort B was generous in her praise for TC. She discussed at length how she has "talked to TC in our settings. It opened my eyes". She continued that, "it was great having her there. I was very happy that she was there and we could go to her at any time" and that, "I think her input and her being in the class, even participating, was very encouraging and very helpful". When asked if it changed how she perceived lawyers, she responded that "Yes, definitely. She was really cool, down to earth, very easy to talk to, very encouraging. She gave her expertise and advice when needed. She really did change my perspective. I thought she was just going to be a sit in." Later on, she offered that "she was very intimate with each of us. She got to know what we were trying to do and gave input when we needed it and opened our eyes broader to what we were trying to do". As a result, the participant felt more comfortable with lawyers where before “I felt intimidated. My questions don't really matter" but now "I feel more comfortable to just be myself and ask ‘what does this mean? What does that mean?’”

It isn’t surprising that embedding TC into programmatic elements that asked her to participate as a peer increased intimacy within cohort B. While both groups made claims to increased knowledge of intellectual property, the real shift can be seen in questions centered on how the broader system operates and in making arguments for how the regime might evolve.

2. Delivery method

Cohort A received a 2.5-hour workshop on intellectual property for creators. Content was dense and accompanied by dozens of slides that were made available to participants following the workshop through a Dropbox link. Cohort B received 45 minutes of instruction on intellectual property. The 45-minutes session was delivered in the lobby at 401 Richmond in Toronto, a busy building full of arts organizations including ImagineNATIVE, the world’s largest presenter of Indigenous screen content. Slides were impossible given the location and many of the participants were forced to stand or sit on the floor. Immediately following the content, participants visited with a former executive director and current board chair at ImagineNATIVE to discuss the organization’s history, opportunities, and challenges. Participants had been asked to watch a short film the evening prior that spoke to some of the issues Indigenous people (in this case a Maori singer) experienced in trying to commercialize music in Germany.

Cohort B was presented with insights into two independent and interdependent systems, the intellectual property system and collaborative approaches to Indigenous media production and presentation. They were then asked, through structured reflection, to reconcile the values and dynamics of each system as they related to their practice and to each other.

Cohort A responded to the traditional workshop structure by commenting on both content and approach. One participant lamented the "excessive amount of time on copyright" and how they "spent a lot of time on the tactical procedures of trademarks". She continued to say that the “Old school ways of copyright are "off-putting"” and how the "fixed approach was off-putting, felt like an intruder".

Another participant in Cohort A perceived the interaction as antagonistic and how it "felt very us vs them". She added that she “didn't realize there were so many buckets and divisions" and how she “felt the legal part was very condensed".

Cohort B described their experience more in terms of tensions and integrations. One participant, commenting on the conversation with ImagineNATIVE and the film they watched previously, offered that "what I felt was the law is fixed in a way" and that you "have to keep yourself covered". She went on to elaborate on the need to figure out a path to maneuver around and through the law. This suggests a different mindset as the law is experienced as a living and dynamic thing rather than as a set of rules disconnected from a core purpose or from each other.

3. What they learned

Both cohorts claimed to have increased their knowledge of intellectual property.

One participant from Cohort A said that he had "learned more about the details of IP", while another felt as if, "a lot of things I didn't even know about were being given to me". Yet another participant offered that "I know a little more than before". When asked to expand, he said that, “I know better what kinds of questions to ask like when should I consider getting a lawyer". Finally, another interviewee stated that she "learned about moral rights which is helpful to know".

Cohort B offered a similar story of increased knowledge. One commented that "a lot of the conversation about intellectual property was very, very new for me" and “that information, I would have to go back to it, if I wanted to grapple with it". Another comment related to finding new knowledge was "I think I would know what questions to ask" as well as having “a better u nderstanding of where to look".

4. How legal system regulates action

Cohort A was less able to articulate how the legal system currently regulates their actions. When they did adapt a systemic lens on their participation in the IP regime, the language tended to centre on rigidity or fear. In some cases, the resistance to the lawyer generated new paths of inquiry. One interviewee asked "what's a relevant way for this community and how we work to be able to apply some of these copyright necessities without compromising our relationships and integrity as artists". The assumption here was that the IP regime inevitably compromises relationships and integrity as artists. She also left the program worrying that the IP regime was "not as fluid as I thought it was before". She elaborated that "it didn't feel like an extension of what we're already doing. It felt like we had to go against our intuition or our way of working to be able to fall into place with that system that exists". She added, that, it "felt very formal, not like creative entrepreneurship which is 90% based on relationships" and that "there are many more layers than are apparent in these agreements".

Another participant contrasted the rest of the program with the legal component, stating that “I left with more life tools than business tools” and that she "learned a lot of life skills, particularly about generosity”. However, she hadn’t found “opportunities to apply the legal component yet”.

Another interviewee stated that she "learned a lot about IP and how you can get screwed". A fourth offered her primary take-away as an increased need to put “things in writing" due to a "fear of being exposed or not protected".

Cohort B was better able to articulate an understanding of how the legal system operates on them as creators. One participant repeatedly referred back to her experience at ImagineNATIVE. She sympathized greatly with the Indigenous creators and understood that how one interacts with the IP regime is “a choice and then choosing a path”. Her learning was also framed in adaptive language, arguing that, "I think I would know what questions to ask" and, "I do have a better understanding of where to look".

Another interviewee from Cohort B stated: "I had been researching on my own. I was holding a lot of misinformation". The program seemed to have demonstrated the limits of current knowledge, as she also stated, "my understanding has changed to an extent. I still have a lot more to learn…I'm paying more attention because of the program". The interviewee had actually gone to the library to take out a few books to fill in key gap areas.

5. Point of view on the IP regime

The survey offered at intake asked participants what changes they would like to see in the intellectual property regime and rules in Canada. The ability to take an informed position on a system is a key piece of evidence that participants are able to engage productively with the system as well as its internal logic and assumptions. Of the seventeen responses received, five were unable to offer a response. Another five argued for more information or more accessible information for creators. One spoke to issues outside of the intellectual property regime (grants). Three looked to digital issues, though with low granularity in terms of what a change should offer. Two offered very specific recommendations tied to their current practice. Finally, one participant spoke to the underlying logic and assumptions of the system by stating that, “it should be about generating value for the artist before the industry”.

Those in Cohort A, when asked about the changes they’d like to see, offered little new information. Two participants were unable to offer any recommendations, despite one of them having offered some recommendations during the intake interview. A third interviewee, “wants the government to have a course for entrepreneurs”. A fourth interviewee stated that she had nothing to advocate for as she, “didn't see any glaring holes” in how she was protected.

Cohort B generated fuller responses to the question, and often tied these responses to their experience with ImagineNATIVE. In discussing trademarks, one participant offered: "I can see where they're useful and I can see where there are possible problems". Another recognized that legal expertise is not so different than artistic or technical expertise and that many, "have highly developed skill in one part of our life" and that working across these boundaries can strengthen everyone. Another interviewee from Cohort B offered several responses despite having offered no response during either the written or recorded intake processes. She “wants more education for artists in various settings” and believes that the “system should do a better job of ensuring that artists get full benefit of their work”. She has also applied the legal knowledge she gained to her other business, which exists outside of the creative field. The transferability of skills suggests adaptive capacity coupled with an ability to critically reflect on how the current system operates.

Recommendations

Creators develop patterns of thinking and behaviour over time to reduce the complexity of operating an entrepreneurial venture with mixed market models and diverse stakeholders. However, the durability generated through these objectifications can become maladaptive over time. One participant laughed at how misinformation about copyright in music led to fellow artists being asked to leave the room when work was being composed. The pattern of behaviour strained relationships and was based on misinformation that had been internalized as routine.

Successful education requires that the ossified structures be challenged in ways that allow for new forms to take hold. How a participant subjectively receives new information plays a critical role in both their ability to critically reflect on the assumptions underpinning the system that gives rise to the information and their willingness to engage in collective sense-making in order to apply the information to their own lived experience.

Based on the pedagogical variations offered to two cohorts of creative entrepreneurs taking part in a comprehensive program of entrepreneurial training the following recommendations can be made.

  1. Intimacy with the mechanism of delivery reduces barriers to internalizing new information and situating it within broader systems of activity. This was realized in this experiment by including the ‘legal expert’ as a full participant in aspects of the program. Participants were able to engage with the ‘expert’ as a human being first, thus creating a greater willingness to make sense of the legal information when offered. Reflexive rejection defined Cohort A in a way that didn’t appear in Cohort B, despite the core content and the source of the content being unchanged.
  2. There is a desire to disentangle content from the other systems with which it connects. However, by offering multiple perspectives on multiple, interpenetrating systems, hermeneutic processes are triggered which initiate a process of individual and collective sense-making. Specifically, seemingly contradictory or incompatible systems can be juxtaposed in order to create a richer understanding of those systems separately and as they relate to each other and the learner community.

Appendix A: Understanding of copyright

  1. What is copyright?
    1. A system of law for protecting brands, ideas, and inventions.
    2. A system of law that provides the exclusive right to reproduce and publish original works.
    3. A system of law that provides the exclusive right to copy other people’s original works.
  2. Can you copyright an idea?
    1. No – How would we create anything new if only one person could monopolize ideas?!
    2. Yes – that is the whole purpose of copyright law
    3. No – Ideas are protected by patent law
  3. Does copyright apply to the internet?
    1. No - If I put a copy of my original photograph on the internet, copyright no longer applies, anyone can take it.
    2. No – the internet is the public domain
    3. Yes – the internet does not inherently change my rights under copyright law
  4. Someone paints a moustache on the Mona Lisa. How is this action against the law?
    1. It infringes the painter’s moral rights.
    2. It infringes the painter’s copyright
    3. It infringes the painter’s trademark rights
  5. Does copyright need to be registered to exist?
    1. Yes – you must register your copyright with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office to enjoy the protections of copyright law
    2. No – Copyright arises automatically in a work that is fixed and original
    3. Yes – you must register copyright in every jurisdiction in which you plan to display the work

Correct Response Frequency

17 completed of 19 participants

5/5 correct: 2/17 (11.76%)
4/5 correct: 2/17 (11.76%)
3/5 correct: 5/17 (29.41%)
2/5 correct: 3/17 (17.65%)
1/5 correct: 2/17 (11.76%)
0/5 correct: 3/17 (17.65%)

Appendix B: Questions and responses of the respondents

  1. How confident are you in your understanding of the intellectual property regime and rules in Canada? Why or why not?
    1. Not too confident because I'm not a lawyer
    2. I do not feel confident of my understanding of IP law in Canada. This is largely because I did not encounter it directly in my work here so far.
    3. Somewhat confident. I feel I understand what needs to be patented but I do find myself hesitant to share resources because I am worried about theft.
    4. I am not confident at all
    5. I have no clue. Because I think I did not need to know and it's too dry a subject. Sorry: (
    6. Not confident enough because I need more legal information.
    7. Comme ci, comme ca
    8. I'm more confident now that I know the specifics in regards to intellectual law. Know that are specific ways to protect myself, moving forward this will help me with the little that I know currently.
    9. I worked as a photo editor for a stock photography company so I am familiar with copyright as it applies to that industry. Of my main takeaways about Intellectual Property is that there is a lot of grey area to navigate. And most photographers that I worked with, myself included, find it confusing.
    10. Somewhat confident. I am familiar with the rules and regs big picture, but as a creator I am not confident in what my rights are when entering into a contract, etc.
    11. Somewhat confident based on what I have learned at school. I do not understand more 'gray areas' when multiple collaborators are involved/digital spaces/global initiatives in which boundaries are blurred
    12. Only relatively confident in the rules surrounding my practice (photography) as I haven't had much interaction with copyright issues.
    13. I have an understanding, but not in depth. No prior experience except in music class.
    14. I actually am not versed in this area. I have never heard of the regime.
    15. I do not know what "intellectual property" is but I am very eager to learn. I've researched the art of business for some time now and I haven't come across that term as of yet.
    16. Pretty confident but would like to experience it more practically, especially within the creative industries.
    17. Not at all. Have never had them explained before. Thank you.
  2. How well do you think the current regime and rules support creators?
    1. Not well, because the writer of the 'contract' always writes in their favour
    2. No response
    3. Not well. A lot of work is given for free, a lot of designs are copied. Whatever works gets copied.
    4. I am not well-versed on what is currently available. More can be done to make information accessible.
    5. OMG! I don't know. Wish I did know.
    6. Not very well. Many large companies are still stealing artists' work styles. Many emerging artists do not fully know copywrite legalities.
    7. Probably not that great considering we have merged from an analog to the digital world
    8. The current regime will help us creators have clear guidelines in place to better safeguard our ideas and original works. Most of what we do is collaborating and seeking inspirations for our endeavours. It's important we know the lines that are drawn before as for protection.
    9. Most artists don't understand copyright. There is very little education and resources available for artists to learn how to protect themselves. I have learned about copyright the hard way through experience and negative consequences. I know that much of copyright and intellectual property fall in a grey area and must be evaluated on a case by case basis
    10. Unsure. Seems like corporations and institutions have resources to understand their rights (lawyers, etc.) but creators do not have the resources to be as informed. The power relationship also clouds things. The regime may or may not be sufficient. It is the practice of it that may be uneven.
    11. I believe copyright is inherent in Canada and residents are protected by default without formal registration, however this becomes less supportive when looking at how artistic work is (or in most cases is not) given credit if commissioned by an organization - the people who pay take credit for the work
    12. I think (as far as my knowledge goes) that the current regime has improved and provides fairly good support for creators.
    13. I think they are building up the rules, but also in some cases aren't. There are a lot of funds for arts and artists, but a lot of stipulations preventing the artist from access.
    14. No response
    15. No response
    16. Not very well. Often creators don't have time to think about this aspect of their practice. Education in creators' language, tailored to their journey is necessary.
    17. Getting better
  3. What changes would you like to see in the intellectual property regime and rules in Canada?
    1. It should be about generating value for the artist before the industry
    2. No response
    3. Video based copyright similar to music. If the video follows the same theme/pattern I think there should be protection similar to how melodies are protected.
    4. No comment
    5. Sorry!
    6. Have them published in laymen's terms
    7. Digital intellectual property rights
    8. I think if I could have a one-on-one with a professional that can give me a verbal session on how intellectual law will specifically affect my business personally, will be a help for someone like myself
    9. More education and information about intellectual property
    10. Not sure ... Plain language access? Someone available to help creators with questions they may have on IP.
    11. More definitive guidelines rather than loosely defined rights for copyright - protection beyond borders and in digital spaces
    12. Perhaps more protection or education when it comes to how the regime covers intellectual property in the digital/web realm
    13. I would like to see grants for Indo-Caribbean artists to document art based around culture and provide more funding for artists without much of the barriers (contractually speaking) sometimes innovative arts ideas don't fit neatly into the present process criteria, but are viable opportunities.
    14. No response
    15. No response
    16. More accessible language. More sharing of knowledge, more resources and tailored support (i.e. Building capacity within communities)
    17. More information readily available.

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