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Tough Times for the Arts in BC
The current arts funding crisis in BC has reignited embers of debate that have been recurring as long as our forest fires. I recently attended a closed-door rally for artists and arts administrators held at the Museum of Vancouver to strategize an industry response to the government's recent draconian cuts to arts funding in BC.
I was in a room with a whole bunch of people facing a future without revenue they were certain was theirs, furious with a government also facing a future without revenue they were certain was theirs. Ironic, eh?
I see no value at all in anger. If we get angry and try to communicate, the people with whom we are trying to communicate will respond to how we are speaking, not to what we are saying. If we want to be heard and understood, we have to communicate calmly and with all the cleverness and relevant information we can muster.
So I am not angry with our government. The government is us; we put them there. The trouble is, we artists are part of a larger we – the people of BC. And we artists justifiably feel that the people of BC do not value the arts enough. We see our collective lack of respect for the arts in BC in the priorities of our educational and political agendas and budgets.
And now, as the shock waves of the global financial meltdown ripple through our society, we find ourselves in an urgent and critical situation. Hard decisions have to be made now by every economic ecosystem: individuals, families, small businesses, large corporations, cities, provinces and our nation. No one is exempt.
When hard decisions have to be made, it takes time to make them fair, and when a crisis takes hold of the whole world, there is not time for wisdom, and a lot of decisions are made in panic. And in times of crisis, sadly, it is often the loudest or most aggressive (or corrupt) of us who win, not the most deserving.
When times were good, I learned a lot about the arts working at the Arts Club Theatre. At the time, under the inspired and visionary leadership of Bill Millerd, both the man and the institution seemed pathologically averse to debt. Most, if not all, of our peer organizations, however, seemed not to be. They routinely amassed debt and were bailed out by government.
I loathed this public policy of rewarding fiscal malfeasance while punishing responsible arts administration, but now that very policy is being applied to the banking and automobile industries worldwide. I abhor this policy, yet it is deemed wise by many experts; so suddenly, a lot of long-held social covenants seem to be being turned upside down.
We seem to be suddenly surrounded by paradoxes. What has long been deemed wrong is suddenly right. There are contradictions everywhere. Frankly, I find the current times frightening and not only because of the financial crisis.
Besides the financial meltdown, I am seeing a social meltdown. Manners are virtually gone. The concept of what is polite has disintegrated. I see elderly disabled people forced to stand on buses while young and able bodies people sit. And I hear hate and anger constantly spewing from the media.
Worse, I see an emerging population of people robbed of their futures. Instead of degrees, they get debt, a lost hope of owning property, impossible odds for the establishment of a life-long career and the probability of divorce. Where and how, exactly, do we foster a love and respect for the arts in the next generations?
And how do we expect government arts subsidy policy to change, exactly, in the face of the current financial and social problems? As I said, wise decisions take time. Our current government is in panic.
The arts community of BC has to think about what we want in the way of arts funding policies and express it, not just vent our anger. And we have to face that things are going to change. They have to. And government has to think about what is best for us – not about what's best for their party and the retention of power. Stephen Harper learned the hard way from the people of Quebec that cutting arts funding was not acceptable. He heard from everyone, not just artists. Gordon Campbell must hear from the people of BC that we value the arts. But we must also communicate wise and practical direction.
We must fight to restore a higher level of funding for the arts in BC: the cuts have been far too severe, too sudden and too many. But we must also make practical and difficult decisions about changing past practices. Artists and arts organizations are going to have to adapt the same way that all families and enterprises are.
More than ever, the things we make and do will have to consider the market. Our audiences and customers are going to have to support us more, and we are going to have to figure out how to make that happen. The coming HST, the decimation of corporate largesse and these government funding cuts mean more than ever that it will be individuals who will have to support the arts.
Tough times are ahead. We are the solution the arts need – all of us; each one of us, every day. We must buy as much of our entertainment as possible locally, just as we move to do our food shopping locally. Turn off your TVs, get out of the movie theatres and get involved with our concert halls and galleries and get as many people as you can to do the same.
Remember to sign-up for Chris' Career Boosting workshop in Victoria at http://www.opusframing.com/survey/boost.html
About Chris Tyrell
Chris is an artist and the successful writer of the book Artist Survival Skills. He teaches two courses at Emily Carr, gives workshops throughout the lower mainland, and maintains a lively community at his website: www.artistsurvivalskills.com.
Comments
Can you say "Atlas Shrugged"? It is time to read that book,either again or for the first time. It is here now; mediocrity reigns and all the old artists are on antidepressants or thinking of killing themselves. The young would-be creatives are also being killed off, with Ritalin, having been diagnosed by tired over-worked adults battling their own problems as unmanageable and ADHD. Decorative art is the new fine art and interior decorators the new curators.The emperor remains naked to this day.
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." ALBERT EINSTEIN
It's somewhat ironic that Ayn Rand's writing is a big part of the problem. Aside from the fact that she was a mediocre writer, her libertarian ideas had an important influence on the ideological shift towards neoliberalism in the 1980s (smaller governments, bigger corporate sector, radical individualism). Today the Campbell and Harper governments are continuing to act on the logic of this philosophy. Unless we as a society recognize the underlying problem, nothing much will change.
Arts workers engaged in this protest have been pretty sophisticated in this struggle so far; I don't see any of the half-cocked anger or bottle-throwing you imply. I think it is important to distinguish between anger and protest; they are not the same thing. When experienced old-timer strategists and MLAS from both the NDP and Socred sides are counselling us that the time for negotiation is long over and it's now time to yell and fight or risk losing everything, we're more likely to take that advice than calls for a type of "moderation" that is misleadingly likened to giving elderly ladies a seat on the bus. If you have talked to this gov't, you will have realized that they are in no mood to politely negotiate - not to mention even respond openly to communications or requests for meetings. They've already decided that our dinosaur neo-third-world resource extraction industries deserve massive breaks (the HST is entirely designed for the oil industry, full stop) while social spending is chopped to the bone. It's not just about the recession and the deficit - it's also about an entirely ideological agenda that this recession in some ways helps along by justifying - and in this I agree with you entirely, Lostintheblues. The government is only interested in the giant infrastructure projects that benefit their corporate friends; the Olympics is one such project. Under this old-style, brutal Darwinian model there is no place for the arts let alone civil society, and that's why it's okay to put in a staunchly conservative ex-insurance adjustor as Arts minister, and a cabinet with similar views. The arts sector would have much more easily swallowed cuts commensurate with the other sectors - say between 10 and 25%. 90%, though, is a nakedly ideological attack. Period. It's not about the money, as we already know, since everything given to the arts comes back in spades - and that's why no other province has cut the arts, because they realize arts spending is a no-brainer form of recession stimulus. This government is up to something else entirely, and the civil unrest all over the province shows that people are waking up to that. As a final note, "we" didn't vote for these people. A minority of British Columbians did, whether you take voters or all BC'ers into account. And they need to be reminded of that. I'm with you on strategy - we want our funding back - but it's on tactics that we differ. As a final aside, it would take decades to develop the kind of private support for the arts that you see in larger US cities, for example. We have neither the population, the tradition nor the current economic health for that. Public funding is always going to have to play a role here.
Thanks for your insight and intelligent advocacy Mr. Tyrell. Over the last few months as revelations of the funding cuts continued to emerge, I found myself attending not only more arts meetings but more shows and events than usual. Though my income as a cultural worker is precarious, I have intuitively responded to the funding crisis as bees do when threatened with fire; I have gorged myself on the richness of such events as the Renfrew Ravine Moon Festival, Bard On The Beach (3 shows), In The House monthly concerts (2 shows), Curio at the Cottage Bistro, monthly Means Of Production Artists Resource Collective tea parties, a Writer's Festival talk by author Ian Rankin, an original production by the Traveling Alchemist's Outreach Society, the Fringe Festival and the opening of the 1422 Williams theatre space, to name a few.
So I couldn't agree with you more Mr. Tyrell: "We are the solution the arts need". I would only add my encouragement for individuals to support Vancouver's amazingly diverse cultural offerings not only through financial means but by volunteering wherever possible. As a producer of free community festivals I can affirm that such direct involvement can make an enormous difference to all involved.
You are correct, there is a breakdown in civility. One of the first such breakdowns was Minister Krueger's pronouncement, in the absence of any communication or consultation, that nobody in the arts was concerned about what was then a 40% cut. When he was deluged by correspondence telling him that there was concern, he sought a meeting with the Alliance for Arts and Culture, where he complained that people were not respecting him. He then gave an interview with a Kamloops newspaper where he pretty much boasted about his ability to piss people off, and how the complaints he received were proof of his potency as a politician.
Another such breakdown was Minister Coleman's telephone interviews about the $77 million in Gaming revenue that the government stole from charities, back at the end of August. He said that "these groups" felt "entitled" to money -- in fact, it isn't a matter of groups, but of a covenant with the people of the province, that money from casinos and other types of gambling was to be used to support charities who provide community services, including those in the arts. Later, in September, confronted by the community on this issue, Premier Campbell and Minister Coleman gave a press conference to justify their actions. In a nutshell, they said "we can do whatever we want with this money, and nobody can stop us". So, yes, a vast breakdown in civility.
It gets worse, of course. Various government members have stuck to the argument that a dollar given to the arts is a dollar taken away from starving children, a curious stance to take for a government with such an atrocious record on child poverty (and one which is cutting programs that feed children). Minister Krueger sends out messages telling the people of the province that the budget for the arts is better than it has ever been, and then turns on his heel and tells us that there are cuts because there is no alternative. Well, which is it then? The Minister's behaviour toward the people of the province is filled with incivility, disrespect, and duplicity. So, yes, a vast breakdown in civility, one you would be correct in pointing out.
I have to disagree that the government is in panic. Rather, they have calculated that cuts to public services, to health, and to culture can most safely be made just after an election. They are well settled into a cycle of bingeing and purging, which they began in 2001: first devastate everything that you do not value; then follow up by shifting tax burden away from your supporters an on to people with little economic power; satisfy the private interests that will finance both your political career and your career after politics by giving away public assets and by outsourcing public services to them in lucrative deals; then, as you get closer to the election, tell the public that surprisingly the fiscal situation has gotten much, much better; before the election, give away small sums of money to individual voters to prove your benevolence; then after the election, tell them that public finances are very bad, and massive cuts (affecting mostly people who would never vote for you) are unavoidable. Binge and purge. And the lies propagated to the public to justify this bingeing and purging are the worst kind of incivility, and the very picture of "fiscal malfeasance".
Mr. Keith Higgins' observations are astute. You, Sir, have clearly been watching and listening to the cycles of political rhetoric we have been subject to in this province.
The level of intelligent, reasoned discussion from many artists regarding the decimation of arts funding raises some hope.
More of us are voicing the increasing erosions to civil society.
As we are struggling to make comment on purse strings we do not directly control, will we look to new collective models to raise funds? Will we lose some of our partisanship and create bridges to each other across disciplines? Will there be a decided difference in the works produced that will reflect directly on these effects cuts have created (ie, will works use their media to comment on the state of financial avenues of power that have been withdrawn to usurp commentary upon the issues)?
It is a sad day when issues of trust in our public service become the core of our work.
My work feeds kids a kind of food that isn't on a plate; it nourishes hope in a time of increasing cynicism, giving them a human being interested in how they think, express, view the world, inspires them to be in a world run by money mad adults far removed in their avenues of power who forget creating thinkers is as important as resource extraction, nepotism or cycles of politics.
Sir, your analysis is so incredibly incorrect, you have bought the line/propaganda of the Govt. What you are calling a "financial meltdown" is in actuality only a shifting a wealth yet again to the wealthy. There is a direct link between the deficits that BC is experiencing and the incredible profits being seen in some sectors of the economy.
THIS IS FACT:
The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), which is the country’s top bank, reported a record net income of $1.56 billion for the third quarter ending July 31 (2009)- up 24 percent from the same period last year.
The bank’s revenues rose to $7.82 billion from $5.91 billion during the same period in 2008.
“Our record results this quarter reflect the strength of our franchise, and our ability to take advantage of opportunities and drive efficiencies,” said bank president and CEO Gordon M. Nixon.
Toronto Dominion Bank (TD Bank), which is the second largest bank in the country, also reported higher profit of $1.30 billion during the third quarter, 17 percent up from $1.11 billion during the same period last year. Its revenue also rose to $3.54 billion during the quarter, up from $3.14 billion during the same period last year.
TD Bank president and CEO Ed Clark said, “While we expected TD’s businesses to hold up well under the weight of a global recession, their resilience is remarkable and has exceeded our expectations.”
The shift in wealth was done in collusion with the Govt. DO YOU NOT KNOW THAT THE FORMER FINANCE MINISTER, CAROLE TAYLOR NOW HAS A POSITION WITH TD BANK? Your approach, the milquetoast approach won't do anything. I will certainly never buy anything from your store again as I don't want to support yet another compliant and ignorant voice.
Such a great conversation... here are a few more links to dialogue on the cuts:
Speaking out against the BC arts cuts
Headshot: A Portrait of artists in British Columbia
YouTube: Stop the Cuts PSA
the FM Hole: Stop BC Arts Cuts!
A Sad List of Cuts
The Tyee - Flex Your Muscles, BC Arts Community
We also recommend checking Facebook for updates on how to get involved. Just search for the group: "Organizing against Campbell's cuts to the arts"
I am currently watching the dismantling of the Delta Arts Council Firehall Centre for the Arts in my community. Despite continuous activity and fund raising to carry arts programmes for children and adults the Council cannot survive without the grant from the government. In North Delta the Arts Council represents the only arts venue outside of the school system for dance, performance, visual and literary arts - there is nowhere else to experience these artforms within our community, and it looks as if our community will be artless, as it was 20 years ago.
Why is it that neo-conservatives are so backward? The Campbell government has the dubious distinction of introducing not bland or trite arts culture but instead it will be a no art culture. Even Hitler had more of an arts philosophy.
At least I am encouraged by the insightful, comprehensive understanding of the problem by Chris and the readers of this article.
faith
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