Welcome to the Canadian Arts and Culture Forum, a recent innovation from Compuserve Canada. I'm Cathleen Bond, your forum manager.

I come from a background in cultural commentary. I've worked for CBC radio and television for the past six years. I have directed and mounted theatrical productions, written series television, worked on design magazines and am currently enjoying the challenges of writing for new media. That's how I landed at Compuserve.

Each weekday I'll post a daily 'Arts Alert' tipping you off to the latest news and links on the Canadian arts scene. Plus I'll fire off a weekly column on something that's current or controversial but most definitely Canadian.

But that's not the half of it -- the rest of the forum comes from you, the Compuserve community.

The Community
This forum is designed to use Compuserve's unique technology (which we've been using since 1969, a long time before the Internet ever took off!)

This forum allows communities of people with common interests -- in this case, people interested in Canadian arts and culture -- to chat, post messages, debate, share files, and participate in a dialogue.

How do you do this?

First tip-off is to read the daily Arts Alert on the Forum homepage, which often contains links to the most interesting and timely message sections in the Forum.

Message Areas
This is where Compuserve members can post and read messages on an "electronic bulletin board." This is where you can talk back to me and everyone else in the forum. Or you can start a topic of your own. You can ask questions, provide answers, participate in discussions, or search for message topics of interest.

For your convenience, we've broken this down into the following main subject areas:

• Visual Arts
• Theatre
• Books & Mags
• Music & Opera
• Dance
• Architecture & Design
• Film & TV
• New Media & Digital Arts
• Cultural Policy/Funding