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September 07, 2010
Submitted by Alliance
VIEWPOINT: Why We Need Art Policy More Than Money
By Chris Tyrell: Thank God some arts funding is restored. But what does the future have in store? There is nothing but uncertainty ahead.
It is my thesis that artists who truly care about the arts should be fighting for policy and not simply money. For me, the greater problem is that the government does not know why it is funding the arts; it needs to say so! The “why” of arts funding should be the basis of its arts policy.
When arts groups get grants, they are not provided with measurable expected outcomes. The “peer review” system of juries focuses on artistic output and not fiscal prudence or best practices. In fact, for decades, governments rewarded poor performers with financial “bail outs,” thereby passively punishing success.
Vancouver City also supports poor performance. Their policy of granting residence status to, for example, the Vancouver Playhouse to the exclusion of other groups is not good policy. In spite of all three governments advantaging the Playhouse, the Arts Club has grown to three stages plus regular tours and year-round operation. And, the Arts Club owns its assets whereas the Playhouse does not. The Arts Club is proof that government “resident theatre” policies are fallible.
Governments, by not defining the purpose of the arts funding programs, have no “exit policy;” they cannot stop funding a client. Without establishing objectives for the funding they provide governments cannot measure performance and stop the funding when objectives are not met. And by not stating why they fund the arts in the first place, the delivery programs cannot be properly evaluated.
We need to know if, for example, the government values arts for everyone including the poor. If they do, access policies should be part of the formula for assessing its grant recipients. Or, we should know if the funding to the professional arts is for experimentation, risk and advancement: the forum for artistic R & D. Whatever our funding is for, we need to know.
Current policies with their orientation to perpetual funding cause our arts organizations to be arrested in their development. Instead of striving for a high degree of self-sufficiency, as some art organizations do (Theatre Sports, Arts Club Theatre, Cirque du Soleil), many accept a kind of permanent adolescence dependent on an allowance from a paternalistic government.
Imagine you have twin boys named John and James. You and your partner are having dinner one night and John comes in full of enthusiasm about a trip to Europe he wants to take with some friends. John asks you for $3,000 to fund the trip, saying it will give him a focus for his life when he gets back.
Imagine a week later and you and your partner are having dinner again and James comes in full of excitement about a possible trip to Europe that would cost him $3,000 and he says: “But get this, “Ace of Skates” will pay me $1,500 if I visit the skateboard parks in every city I go to and write up a report for them. Could you lend me $1,500?”
Who are you going to want to help most? If I were James and John’s parent, I would give them each $1,500, but if I could only afford to pay for one it would most definitely be James.
I believe good arts policy rewards values such as true innovation, universal access, fiscal best practices and minority expression. It also recognizes the value of participating in art making as well as viewing professional cultural products.
Going forward, we must use our creativity collectively to behave like James. Here in Vancouver, it is time to create and consider something brave to help ourselves and, like James, then ask for help.
It is time, for example, to consider having skilled professionals manage our collective mailing list to develop the whole of the Vancouver audience — this is something Vancouver arts organizations were not prepared to do when I co-founded the Alliance. The collapse of print and broadcast media, the shattering of audience cohesion, has had a dramatic and costly impact on arts groups who struggle for visibility in a very expensive city with dying media.
It is time for something even braver. Emily Carr University of Art and Design is scheduled to vacate an enormous purpose-built educational institution in Vancouver’s cultural heartland. What if the city’s leading art institutions and their visiting guests were able to run a profitable post secondary arts institute to their economic advantage?
I don’t know what the answer is, but if we want the public on our side we have to earn the supportive policy we want.
To make brave moves; to take risks. We need to act like James as we struggle to make art in a world that is increasingly urban, suffering economically, increasingly polluted and undemocratic in terms of distribution of economic wealth. We need to act like adults not dependent children.
More than ever, an all-discipline, all-sector conference on arts policy like Arts Access in 1973 is something that could produce inspiring collective innovation that would attract the funding we want.
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Opinions expressed in Viewpoint blog items are those of the authors and are not necessarily shared by the Alliance for Arts and Culture, its board of directors, or its members.
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Policy AND Money
Dear Chris:
I am really glad you have revised your viewpoint from your earlier opinion piece in the latest Opus Newsletter (http://tinyurl.com/389h9hf), "New Policies, Not Restored Funding". I'll revise a few of my responses, too!
I would still prefer to see a title like Why We Need Art Policy As Well As Money instead of the one here. And maybe that's your actual intent, since you go on to say artists who truly care about the arts should be fighting for policy and not simply money. [emphasis added]
I know that active discussions about how to invigorate arts policies are going on at the grassroots level right now. Another Arts Access conference might help develop those discussions further and include more voices. Good idea.
However, I'm sure that some organizations would be delighted to get some ongoing funding blocks for once, let alone “perpetual” funding. As one example, Island Mountain Arts here in Wells in the north Cariboo has played a major role in the region's culture for over 30 years. Yet in spite of its contributions, it has never received operational funding.
As a result, it has had to limp from year to year, trying to retain staff, trying to fit itself into eligibility requirements that are urban-based and simply do not fit our reality. An enormous volume of volunteer hours, unpaid staff overtime and underpaid performers subsidize its programming. This non-profit has done amazing work, but the support it receives is not commensurate with the effort.
Perhaps the world is becoming increasingly urban, but that doesn't explain the migration of artists like myself and a substantial critical mass of other visual artists and musicians to places like Wells where real estate is cheap and the cost of living lower than Vancouver's.
When I consider the massive transfer of resources from the hinterland to the Lower Mainland and the continuing decline in services we enjoy, though, I know that we are living under a colonial relationship at every level, including the arts.
Up here we definitely need improved, inclusive policies, but we also need a fairer share of the wealth that is generated in the boonies and is concentrated in the urban centres to the south. Our economy is extremely fragile, and tiny infusions of seed money have a huge impact.
One policy area that affects us and needs improvement is in the jury selection for grant adjudication. The BC Arts Council's stated goals include deepening the geographical diversity of juries. However, in one particular arts discipline during the last round of individual artists' grants, all but one was from the Vancouver area. The other juror was from Denman or Hornby Island - not very representative of BC as a group.
This urban jury awarded 92% of their grants to people in the Lower Mainland; only 5 individuals north of Kaslo had bothered to apply, such is the level of discouragement in the hinterland. This is a systemic problem and needs to change. The challenge is to keep juries free of political interference, while trying to prevent cronyism.
We don't just need renewed policies, though, throughout BC. We need legislation that favours artists. Tax exemptions for copyright income, as Irish artists enjoy. Status of the Artist legislation that gives Quebec artists important economic advantages.
The Glen Clark NDP government examined Status during Minister Waddell's tenure, but unfortunately shied away from implementing it, and lost an important opportunity to better artists’ lives. What are the opposition parties' cultural policies now?
So yes, let's get together to reinvent arts policy in BC. But let's not forget that artists need to make a living and that any society that wants to have a living, breathing culture in this Walmart economy needs to invest in the arts.
Surely we can all unite around the need for BC, with its vast resources and extensive cultural sector, to move out of its shameful position at the bottom of per capita arts funding in Canada.
best wishes,
Bill Horne
Wells, BC
p.s. It may be true that the government does not know why it is funding the arts, but I would suggest that this govt knows very well why it is cutting arts funding way out of proportion to its tiny percentage of the provincial budget. None of the answers they have offered make any sense, so my best guess is that they fear the awareness, creativity and critical thinking that are associated with the arts. But that's just speculation on my part ;-)