It's the second time around for High Bluff's Roberta Christianson.

She's been named Chair of the Manitoba Arts Council, which is the arm's-length agency providing funding for the arts across the province.

Christianson was contacted about it about ten days ago, and immediately accepted. She was in the position before, from 1993 to 2000.

"But to say it is a changed world would be an understatement," she says, "Digitalization, new technologies, have changed how the arts function, and I think that the Arts Council, and all the funding models, are going to have reflect the new way of creating, producing, and using the arts."

Christianson doesn't see her rural background as a factor in her position.

"I think it's really important that we look on almost every sector as having its own ecology," she says, " And so the ecology needs a lot of components -- it needs the professional arts, it needs amateur arts, it needs audience, it needs performers. They come from anywhere, and I think that the arts funding, in some way, has to enhance that."

She stresses the arts encompass a wide spectrum.

"I think so many people, when they are asked whether or not they support the arts, think so very narrowly about what the arts are," she says, "And you'd be hard pressed to get through your day without the arts -- if you like computer games, if you like paintings on your walls, if you like garage bands, there's art in your life, whether you know it or not."