mr.x
Feb 29, 2008, 6:08 AM
B.C.'s mastering the art of getting serious about culture
MAX WYMAN
Special to Globe and Mail Update
February 28, 2008 at 12:27 AM EST
Buried in the excitement about B.C.'s landmark "green budget" was an announcement that suggests that the country's most westerly provincial government is finally getting serious about culture.
At the end of a budget that was strong on climate change, the economy, health care, education and housing, Finance Minister Carole Taylor announced: "To honour our 150th birthday as a province, we are creating a new, $150-million BC150 Cultural Fund. It will generate approximately $8-million a year."
On top of that comes $105-million for arts and culture projects, including $9-million to "restore and revitalize" the Vancouver East Cultural Centre and establish an endowment to help with its operating costs; $3-million for a new Aboriginal Art Gallery and a World Women's History Museum; and planning money for a new National Maritime Centre for the Pacific and the Arctic, in North Vancouver.
These new investments hint at a significant shifting of provincial attitudes toward the arts and cultural activity. It appears that the province's government has been listening intently — not only to its own standing committee on finance and government services, which made strong suggestions for increased cultural funding in its prebudget report, but to the province's arts community.
Arts advocates in British Columbia claim that the province has languished for years in the lower reaches of the "league standings" of provincial support for the arts and culture — although the way those standings are calculated is not exactly hard science.
According to the B.C. Alliance for Arts and Culture, the current level of funding for the B.C. Arts Council ($14.2-million) places it seventh in Canada in terms of per capita funding from provincial arts funders.
But executive director Andrew Wilhelm-Boyles admits it's difficult to quantify the exact amount any province spends on culture, since many have funding sources that operate in addition to their central funding agency (provincial lottery money, for instance) and that could skew the figures.
During the standing committee's prebudget consultations, the arts and culture lobby pressed hard for an increase in B.C. Arts Council funding to $32-million.
While the committee's recommendation didn't specify numbers, it did call for new financial support "such that B.C.'s total arts funding from all government sources is not less than third-highest amongst the Canadian provinces." Its report said the committee "strongly believes that arts and culture activities should receive sufficient per capita funding, particularly in light of the approaching 150th anniversary of B.C.'s founding as a Crown colony and the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympic Games."
The new $8-million in cultural-fund money won't go directly to the B.C. Arts Council, but Ms. Taylor said the funding body will "in its official role, advise government on how this money can best be used to support initiatives in every community — from our smallest communities to our largest cities."
Add it to the amount currently spent by the Arts Council, and — using the Alliance's per capita calculation formula — B.C. shifts exactly one spot up in the standings, to sixth, behind (in order) Quebec, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta and Nova Scotia.
What's frankly more important than this numbers game, though, is what these new investments say about the climate for support for cultural activities in British Columbia. Clearly, the province's politicians are catching up with the recent literature on the benefits of putting money into cultural activity — and recognizing that it has a role to play in delivering many of their broader economic and social goals, goals the new budget directly addressed.
At a provincewide, province-sponsored B.C. Arts Summit in 2006, which I moderated, participants called for a significant program of new investment that not only sets the professional arts community on a firmer operational footing but "takes into consideration the relationship of arts and cultural activity to recreation, community development, education and the diverse cultures of the province." The arguments for that kind of support for cultural activity and the creative industries are becoming widely understood.
Premier Gordon Campbell has long been an enthusiastic supporter of literacy initiatives — he even posts reviews of books he has read on his website. And he talks an eloquent and convincing line about the transformative human values of the arts whenever he's in a room where he thinks he won't be laughed out of court.
In fact, it's those human values, in the end, that are the foundation of any case for investment in creative activity. But for those who need more convincing, a host of other arguments exists.
They include the economic benefits that spin off in terms of employment and their ripple effect across society on human skills and creative capital.
They include the way that creative professionals add value to a region and attract business investment (see the views of Richard Florida and others on the value of what he calls the "creative class").
They include the contribution that cultural activity makes in building diverse and harmonious communities, and in fostering urban vitality, pride of place and overall quality of life.
They include the way that cultural activity has a positive impact on health and crime — particularly youth crime, and the way that exposure to creative activity develops the kind of imaginative and fulfilled individual who is going to drive the new information and imagination economy.
They are all arguments that have been gaining increasing traction in recent years in the cultural, educational and business communities. Now they seem to be catching on with our provincial politicians as well.
In a budget that placed such stress on the economy, health and education, this new set of cultural initiatives makes a surprising amount of sense.
MAX WYMAN
Special to Globe and Mail Update
February 28, 2008 at 12:27 AM EST
Buried in the excitement about B.C.'s landmark "green budget" was an announcement that suggests that the country's most westerly provincial government is finally getting serious about culture.
At the end of a budget that was strong on climate change, the economy, health care, education and housing, Finance Minister Carole Taylor announced: "To honour our 150th birthday as a province, we are creating a new, $150-million BC150 Cultural Fund. It will generate approximately $8-million a year."
On top of that comes $105-million for arts and culture projects, including $9-million to "restore and revitalize" the Vancouver East Cultural Centre and establish an endowment to help with its operating costs; $3-million for a new Aboriginal Art Gallery and a World Women's History Museum; and planning money for a new National Maritime Centre for the Pacific and the Arctic, in North Vancouver.
These new investments hint at a significant shifting of provincial attitudes toward the arts and cultural activity. It appears that the province's government has been listening intently — not only to its own standing committee on finance and government services, which made strong suggestions for increased cultural funding in its prebudget report, but to the province's arts community.
Arts advocates in British Columbia claim that the province has languished for years in the lower reaches of the "league standings" of provincial support for the arts and culture — although the way those standings are calculated is not exactly hard science.
According to the B.C. Alliance for Arts and Culture, the current level of funding for the B.C. Arts Council ($14.2-million) places it seventh in Canada in terms of per capita funding from provincial arts funders.
But executive director Andrew Wilhelm-Boyles admits it's difficult to quantify the exact amount any province spends on culture, since many have funding sources that operate in addition to their central funding agency (provincial lottery money, for instance) and that could skew the figures.
During the standing committee's prebudget consultations, the arts and culture lobby pressed hard for an increase in B.C. Arts Council funding to $32-million.
While the committee's recommendation didn't specify numbers, it did call for new financial support "such that B.C.'s total arts funding from all government sources is not less than third-highest amongst the Canadian provinces." Its report said the committee "strongly believes that arts and culture activities should receive sufficient per capita funding, particularly in light of the approaching 150th anniversary of B.C.'s founding as a Crown colony and the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympic Games."
The new $8-million in cultural-fund money won't go directly to the B.C. Arts Council, but Ms. Taylor said the funding body will "in its official role, advise government on how this money can best be used to support initiatives in every community — from our smallest communities to our largest cities."
Add it to the amount currently spent by the Arts Council, and — using the Alliance's per capita calculation formula — B.C. shifts exactly one spot up in the standings, to sixth, behind (in order) Quebec, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta and Nova Scotia.
What's frankly more important than this numbers game, though, is what these new investments say about the climate for support for cultural activities in British Columbia. Clearly, the province's politicians are catching up with the recent literature on the benefits of putting money into cultural activity — and recognizing that it has a role to play in delivering many of their broader economic and social goals, goals the new budget directly addressed.
At a provincewide, province-sponsored B.C. Arts Summit in 2006, which I moderated, participants called for a significant program of new investment that not only sets the professional arts community on a firmer operational footing but "takes into consideration the relationship of arts and cultural activity to recreation, community development, education and the diverse cultures of the province." The arguments for that kind of support for cultural activity and the creative industries are becoming widely understood.
Premier Gordon Campbell has long been an enthusiastic supporter of literacy initiatives — he even posts reviews of books he has read on his website. And he talks an eloquent and convincing line about the transformative human values of the arts whenever he's in a room where he thinks he won't be laughed out of court.
In fact, it's those human values, in the end, that are the foundation of any case for investment in creative activity. But for those who need more convincing, a host of other arguments exists.
They include the economic benefits that spin off in terms of employment and their ripple effect across society on human skills and creative capital.
They include the way that creative professionals add value to a region and attract business investment (see the views of Richard Florida and others on the value of what he calls the "creative class").
They include the contribution that cultural activity makes in building diverse and harmonious communities, and in fostering urban vitality, pride of place and overall quality of life.
They include the way that cultural activity has a positive impact on health and crime — particularly youth crime, and the way that exposure to creative activity develops the kind of imaginative and fulfilled individual who is going to drive the new information and imagination economy.
They are all arguments that have been gaining increasing traction in recent years in the cultural, educational and business communities. Now they seem to be catching on with our provincial politicians as well.
In a budget that placed such stress on the economy, health and education, this new set of cultural initiatives makes a surprising amount of sense.