Arts Cuts Memo Contest – Send a memo to the government!

Above, Arts Cuts Ribbon by Fiona Curtis/Steven Brekelmans. Below, Knitted Arts Cuts Memo by knitgirl, and submission from BC composer John Oliver. Tree at bottom is by Anonymous. Click on photos to go to the Flickr page.

Here are the contest details from the Arts Cuts Memo team:

CALLING ALL BRITISH COLUMBIANS! Who can make the most creative “memo” to the BC Liberal government, reminding them that BC arts and culture can’t survive cuts of 92%? The message of the memos is “Restore Arts Funding Now.” It’s a BC-wide contest and collaborative yellow-sticky-art exhibition, and there will be prizes (TBA) for adults and children. If you’re not an artist, that’s even better! It is calculated that there are 3 million arts supporters in BC, whether it’s of music, festivals, galleries, plays, performance art, or literature. Communities all over BC have already been sending strong messages that the arts are at the centre of their communities, both socially and economically. Everyone is imaginative enough to make a creative Arts Cuts Memo to send to the government, reminding them that we don’t want to see the total destruction of arts infrastructure and homegrown arts in our province! Once dismantled it will take decades and far too much money to rebuild.

RULES

Using yellow sticky memos/post-it notes, you can make any 2D or 3D object you like – we suggest using at least 20 post-its, but even just one is fine! Paint it, decorate it, anything you like. Just make sure the words “Restore Arts Funding Now” appear somewhere on your piece. Then photograph it and send it to us or upload it from your Flickr to our Flickr pool (instructions below), and you’re done! It would be nice if we could have most of the entries by mid-December, though prize-winners will be announced in January at a date TBA. Even after winners are announced, we will continue collecting them until the budget – because it’s not just about winning! It’s about reminding the government.

PRIZES – TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON! If prize tickets are in Vancouver, and the winner lives outside Vancouver, a hotel stay will accompany the prize.

HOW DO I SUBMIT A PHOTO OF MY PIECE?

1. Please include your name, community and the artwork’s title, if it has one.

2. If you are already a member of Flickr, please upload ONE OR TWO photos maximum of each piece to your Flickr photostream, tag it “artscutsmemo“, and then upload it to our Flickr pool. The higher the resolution the better!

3. If you’re not registered on Flickr (you can get a free account here), please just send your photo (or 2 photos maximum) of your Arts Cuts Memo to artscutsmemo at yahoo d0t com and we will upload them to the pool. You can send us photos up to 5 MB. The bigger the better!

Christopher Butterfield at the Art Matters Rally in Victoria

“Art is a nation’s most precious heritage, for it is in our works of art that we reveal to ourselves and others the inner vision which guides us as a people. And where there is no vision, the people perish.”  - Lyndon Johnson

Christopher Butterfield, composer and Professor of Composition at the University of Victoria, speaking on the legislature steps at the Arts Matter rally in Victoria today:

“I never thought in my life that I’d quote Lyndon Johnson, but he made a rather extraordinary statement. Now remember this is an American president saying this, and I’ve never heard any politician in this country, at a federal or provincial or any other level, use these words. This is what he said: “Art is a nation’s most precious heritage, for it is in our works of art that we reveal to ourselves and others the inner vision which guides us as a people. And where there is no vision, the people perish.” I would like Mr. Campbell, or his minister of culture, to get up in the legislature and quote those words of Lyndon Johnson. I would like them to guarantee the arts in this province, not just a future but a future long beyond the time everybody is dead and gone. I’d like us to grow.”

Thanks to Christopher Ruffell for the video (click below), which also features a speech by Dianne Searle which makes the excellent point that these cuts are not about economics, since it’s proven arts funding is a lucrative investment for the government. Christopher Butterfield’s speech begins at 4:05.

Atom Egoyan Speaks Out Against the BC Arts Cuts

Victoria-raised filmmaker Atom Egoyan issued a statement today condemning the BC Liberals’ cuts to arts funding. Egoyan joins a list of prominent British Columbians and Canadians that includes William Gibson, Douglas Coupland and Margaret Atwood. In his statement he said:

“I owe so much to the development of my early career to support I received from the BC Cultural Fund, which provided me with a much needed scholarship. It is truly devastating to think that a new generation of BC artists can’t rely on their provincial government for this crucial encouragement and vision.”

Egoyan grew up in Victoria, BC, and now lives and works in Toronto. He is the director of many feature films including The Sweet Hereafter and Ararat. He is also an artist and a trained musician, and has often worked in an interdisciplinary way, collaborating with musicians and composers and producing art installations for the MoMA in New York, Artangel in London and the Venice Biennale. He wrote the 1998 opera Elsewhereless and directed the Canadian Opera Company’s Salome in 1997 in Vancouver.

Egoyan’s statement, along with those of many other prominent British Columbians, was first published here.

“Could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?” – Gabrielle Roy

“Could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?” is a quote from Gabrielle Roy, one of Canada’s most celebrated authors. Unbeknownst to most Canadians, this line appears on our $20 bill. It’s juxtaposed with images of BC First Nations artist Bill Reid’s sculptures “The Spirit of Haida Gwaii” and “Raven and the First Men.”

There’s some kind of peculiar irony in the fact that a statement of the indispensability of the arts is inscribed right on our money, when money is the very thing that the arts in Canada are so short of. A vast country with a small population always relies on some degree of public funding for its arts, and in turn, it relies on its arts for its identity. And not just its identity, either, but also its social and economic health, its morale, its innovation, and many other things. But in BC these days, it seems that the arts and money coincide mainly on paper – on the twenty dollar bill and nowhere else. BC doesn’t just receive the least provincial funding per capita of any Canadian province – it’s dead last, and by a very, very large margin. (Update: as of September 2010 it’s $6.50 per capita compared to the $26 per capita national provincial average.) A second irony related to the Bill Reid sculptures is that in BC, lack of cultural funding also hurts First Nations communities. Had he still been alive, sculptor Bill Reid would without doubt have been vocally opposing the BC Liberals’ obliteration of arts funding.  Graphic by the Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance, via Decimating the Arts in Canada. Please note that the 90% funding cut figure is now somewhere between 55-75%, but that’s beside the point: the $6.50 per capita compared with the Canadian average is all you need to know. Click here for high resolution version.

Gabriola Island Puts a Face to the Arts

Gabriola has made a great contribution to the BC-wide “Face of the Arts” Flickr campaign. See all their photos in their Flickr set here! The Face of the Arts campaign was kicked off in Golden, BC, and is spreading around the province via Flickr. Vancouver participated in the project last night at The Wrecking Ball political theatre revue, and those photos will be forthcoming. If your community wants to get involved in this campaign, Golden’s Kicking Horse Culture site explains how to start. Flickr has been a very useful tool in this fight against the BC arts cuts, and speaking of Flickr, please take a look at this really fun new BC-wide art project and contest – The “Arts Cuts Memo” contest. Please participate in these BC-wide projects – they’re beginning to have an impact on the government, on public attitudes toward the arts, and on future BC cultural policy.

Welcome to Arts Cuts PSA Theatre!

Two excellent new PSAs to add to a growing collection of videos on the BC arts cuts issue. Please pass them around! The whole community, artists and arts supporters, appreciates the colossal amount of work that was put into these productions.

Letter to the government by Laura Di Cicco, Artistic and Managing Director, Fugue Theatre

Laura’s letter is in response to a letter from Margaret MacDiarmid, MLA, which is also printed below, so you may want to read that letter first:

Dear Ms MacDiarmid,

While I appreciate your response, I do feel frustrated with the “form” rhetoric I am receiving and hearing from your party.

I and my community are asking for a restoration of funding to 2008/09 levels, not to 2002. How can that possibly support inflation levels? Wages, fees and general costs have increased since then, yet you are proposing a reversal??

Secondly, the arts and culture sector are such a small portion of the government’s budget. Why strike people who are already down? I am not interested in what the government has done in the past at this point. I am only interested in what it is doing now and what it will do in the future.

If the government is so supportive of arts, culture and sport, why such drastic cuts? Just stating that the economy is in trouble isn’t enough, especially since we represent such a small portion of your budget. In tough times, my preference is to reinforce investment in arts and culture because it is an economic stimulant. You seem to be gaining revenue with the imposed HST and much higher gambling limits. Where is that money going?

Frankly, it is scary to me that your party is so un-concerned about the impact this is going to have on people’s lives. Not only in the arts and culture sector, but in sport and education as well. Gambling was made tolerable because much of the revenues were going out to charitable causes. Now, it just seems like the government is propping up addiction so it can benefit for itself. Where is the government’s commitment here to public service?

Direct Access money was the one sure thing that could help my organization stay alive. It was free from peer-assessment and organizations could benefit from its community-based mandate.  Now, the only thing I’m sure of is hope and prayer. Just imagine if politicians like yourself were suddenly told that up to 92% of your wages were going to be cut next year. Would you still want to be an MLA? Yet for artists especially, it seems we are constantly unemployed or underemployed. All because this is the career we choose. Why should we be punished for trying to improve life? Art improves lives and makes our souls rich. There are several studies that show its benefits. I think it’s the wrong path you are taking and I hope the BC Liberals will reverse the cuts.

Regards,
Laura Di Cicco
Artistic and Managing Director
Fugue Theatre

www.fugue.biz

In response to this letter from Margaret MacDiarmid, MLA:

Dear Ms. Di Cicco,

I am writing to follow-up on our September 8th meeting. Thank you for your patience while I gathered the information that I committed to provide you. When we spoke, you expressed concern about recent reductions in funding for the arts and I committed to provide you with some data regarding the state of arts funding in British Columbia.

From 2002 to 2005, annual BC Arts Council grants were consistently in the $11m range. Since 2005, the Government has increased BC Arts Council funding for four consecutive years, to the point where it reached over $18m in the fiscal year ending in 2009. Also in 2009 the Government provided supplementary funding in the amount of $7m, bringing the total BC Arts Council funding to an unprecedented $25m. Four years of steady funding, followed by four consecutive years of increases demonstrates the Government’s long-term commitment to the arts and recognition of the important role that they play in our community.

If you would like to learn more about funding for the BC Arts Council, you can review their annual reports here: http://www.bcartscouncil.ca/mediaroom/publications.htm
http://www.bcartscouncil.ca/mediaroom/publications.htm

In 2009/10, BC Arts Council funding will return to the $11m range. This reduction in funding is in response to a significant drop in Government revenue as a result of a global economic downturn. As we discussed in our meeting, in these circumstances the Government has been forced to make difficult decisions in order to ensure that key services such as health care and education get the funding they need in order to maintain the high quality of service that British Columbians have come to expect.

I understand that reductions in funding can be difficult and when those reductions are in an area that is important to you, they can be doubly frustrating. I hope you can take comfort in the government’s  track record on arts funding over the past eight years and in the fact that we are working day and night to build a foundation that will allow British Columbia to come out of this downturn stronger than ever.

Sincerely,
Margaret MacDiarmid, M.L.A.

It’s time for everyone to write another 30-second letter

Click!

Even if you have already written the BC government about the arts cuts, please use this easy webform now to send a new letter to Finance Minister Colin Hansen. It takes less than 30 seconds to fill in your information and click the submit button. This new letter urges Minister Hansen to accept the recent recommendations of the government’s own budget advisory committee to fully restore arts funding. While the committee’s recommendations were heartening, Minister Hansen is free to ignore them, so this fight is not over. We must keep up the pressure now. While the government remains quiet, arts organizations are one after another closing their doors and/or laying off workers. Let’s produce a deluge of letters, everyone, so that the government is loudly reminded of the huge social and economic benefits that public arts funding brings to BC. Please get everyone you know to send a letter, if you can. Thank you!

Fun facts and figures – Arts vs. Olympics

The BC arts cuts issue might technically be separate from the Olympic spending issue, but it’s becoming impossible to turn a blind eye to the fact that a huge amount of money is being found for the Olympics, while apparently $47 million or more can’t be found for the arts because “hungry children” have to be fed. Let’s look at some really striking numbers.

Olympics:

COST: $6.5-8 billion approx = Total estimated cost of Olympics (not including near-$1 bn convention centre)

BENEFIT: $4 billion –  UPDATE: now $1 billion –  Predicted Olympic economic benefits, downgraded this year from an earlier prediction of 8-10 billion, then downgraded to $4bn, and then downgraded again in Dec 2009/Jan 2010 to $1 bn.

Arts:

COST: $47 million = Total cost of arts funding BEFORE the cuts (2008 figures used here because 2009 saw abrupt Gaming cuts in the middle of the year, meaning a decrease of 40% in that already paltry $47 million. And 2008 is the most recent year we have tax figures for). 47 million is the bare minimum required to grease the wheels of an already lean arts sector, especially for smaller organizations and groups in smaller towns and remote regions

BENEFIT: $5.2 billion = Total contribution of the arts sector to the BC economy, annually – and that’s taxes only, not including arts and culture’s many proven economic spinoffs

It appears that BC’s golden egg is not the Olympics – it’s the arts. Which of the two is worth a sizeable seed investment? As an aside, Ontario increased its arts funding to over $150 million this year, because it understands the increasingly central role of arts and culture in the global economy. Aren’t the BC Liberals  supposed to be the party of good economic management, putting the economy first?

When the BC government agreed that arts and culture were the “Second Pillar of the Games,” the arts sector didn’t realize that the BC Liberals intended  to allow the full weight of the Olympics to crush arts and culture altogether. Thanks to these cuts, BC’s arts sector will be a crumbling pillar, and BC’s 78,000 arts workers (more numerous than forestry workers) will certainly feel unwilling or unable to support to an event that has shut them out. As a sector, the arts already enjoys a smaller share of government help or subsidy than any other. And yet the arts’ tax contribution to BC’s GDP is enormous. And that’s only the economic contribution made by our homegrown arts  - there’s also the vast and indispensable social role that arts have been proven to play in BC, for social health, peace, liveability of all communities large and small, tolerance, innovation and for ensuring that we retain our distinct identity.

When the BC government argues it has to feed hungry children instead of stewarding a key sector, when it claims that it can’t afford spending for arts, education, health and other necessities, even while it finds billions for a 2-week event, it’s demonstrating its economic incompetence and irresponsibility. And given its claims that there’s no money left, it’s pretty galling to watch it so easily come up with, to give just one example, $486 million for a retractable stadium roof. Perhaps its priorities are its friends in construction, or maybe in corporate sports? And yet its supposed Olympics profits have melted away. Meanwhile arts & culture and tourism, two of the global economic system’s most promising growth industries – and two enormous future opportunities for BC – take huge hits in BC through a) a blind lack of arts policy, and b) an HST attack on arts revenues as well as tourism’s predominantly small businesses.

Are members of the BC government’s caucus really willing to countenance the increasingly disturbing economic story revealed by these numbers?

Arts cuts needs to be reversed immediately before damage to infrastructure and brain drain become irreversible. One after another, arts organizations are folding. If something isn’t done soon, that Second Pillar is going to look pretty broken by the the time the Olympics get here. The government’s own Finance Committee has recommended a reversal of arts cuts, but there is absolutely no guarantee the government will listen to these recommendations and reverse its position in March. We need assurances now, before any more crucial community organizations close their doors.

Write a letter (sample letters here or easy webform here ) to the Premier and the Ministers, especially Finance Minister Colin Hansen:

Premier Gordon Campbell
gordon.campbell.mla@leg.bc.ca
Fax: 250 387-0087

MLA: Hon. Kevin Krueger (Min. of Tourism, Culture & the Arts)
kevin.krueger.mla@leg.bc.ca
Fax: 250 953-4250

MLA: Hon. Rich Coleman (Gaming) – retraction of Gaming funds for arts charities
rich.coleman.mla@leg.bc.ca
Fax: 250 356-7292

MLA: Hon. Colin Hansen (Min. of Finance)
colin.hansen.mla@leg.bc.ca

Sources:
The Tyee – November 2009
The Vancouver Sun – January 2009

Prince George votes 2,593 to 37: Retraction of Gaming funds is a Bad Decision

Over the course of a theatrical run, Theatre North West in Prince George asked audience members to vote on whether they thought the BC Liberals’ retraction of Gaming funds promised to charities was a good or bad decision. The landslide results were as above (one wonders who the 37 were). Read the article in the Prince George Citizen.  From the article: “TNW already had their funding slashed once this year in the gaming funds storm, but it was restored when threats of a legal challenge caused the government to rethink cancelling the three-year contracts they forged with some charities. TNW was one of them.”

“We all have a job to do, we just want to get on with it,” said Ted Price, TNW’s artistic director. “The arts, culture and not-for-profit sector is a huge employer – bigger, now, in B.C., than even forestry. We don’t want that lost over what is really a small amount of money when compared to the other envelopes of money the government has in play.”

Also discussed in the article is the BC Association for Charitable Gaming’s planned legal challenge to the government, according to President Susan Marsden. “They (lawyers) have already gotten beyond the point of thinking we have a case. We do have a case. We are two to three weeks away from making an announcement about the legal action we may be pursuing. We have already started fundraising, not using gaming funds, for that potential legal action. The action will be on behalf of all gaming fund recipients in the province. We are just putting together the core group for that.”

Smaller groups are hit much harder by these developments than larger groups with other sources of operating funding. And it’s the smaller groups who often play a disproportionately large role in the community, leverage the most volunteers and create far more employment per dollar.