At yesterday’s Canada Council for the Arts annual general meeting, director and CEO Simon Brault announced a major restructuring of the governmental organization’s granting program.

“We need to simplify our administrative and decision-making processes so that artists and organizations can devote more of their creativity and energy to their art practices and interactions with the public, and less trying to wade through the maze of an excessive number of programs,” he said.

Currently, the Canada Council operates 142 grants, which will be “simplified” into approximately 10 national, cross-disciplinary programs that “cover all fields of artistic practice and its outreach in Canada and the world, and that take into account the specific issues of current arts disciplines and emerging art forms.”

During his remarks, Brault emphasized that funding amounts will not decrease and that the Council’s peer-jurying system will remain intact. Brault also announced a new program for aboriginal arts to be run out of the Canada Council’s Aboriginal Arts Office. (First Nations, Métis, and Inuit artists remain eligible for other grants.)

More details about the changes will be available by the summer, with a new plan anticipated by 2017.