Exactly

Great article! The cuts to the arts made by the Liberal government are a disgrace and an insult to one of our most important economic sectors. BC's per capita arts funding is among the lowest, if not the lowest, in the country. Perhaps our scenery is so beautiful that the Libs think we don't need anything else. They're wrong.

Artists are already lowest paid group in our society -- we should try to reverse that, not reinforce it.

as I said to Premier Campbell...

Dear Premier:

Recently, the Globe and Mail asked, "What legacy, Vancouver?" The article suggested that the improvement in infrastructure will be the most lasting effect of the Games. I beg to differ.

Vancouver's downtown is more alive than its been since the 1986 Expo. Fuelling that excitement are the many arts performances, from the aboriginal paviliion to concerts at Robson Square's rebuilt ice rink to impromptu street performances. The art gallery is packed, there's a lineup going halfway down the block for the Bay's Olympic souvenir store, and the nightly parties at the city's two live venues draw thousands. Across False Creek, Granville Island is attracting visitors not only to the French and Swiss pavilions, but to its regular galleries, workshops, and the colourful public market.

Art works. Art draws people. Your government recently cut arts funding by up to 90 percent, while even the most conservative audits prove there is a financial spin-off from publicly funded arts, which more than repays the investment.

Mr. Premier, people are drawn to cities by the excitement generated by events, not by widened highways and subways. While infrastructure is important, its what is IN the city that draws people, and the lasting legacy of these Games will be not memories, not souvenirs, not a subway to the airport, but a global impression of a city that is worth visiting and investing in, a city--and a province--that radiates self-confidence. This doesn't come from posters and politicians, but from the people, and most visibly, from the arts community.

After the party is over, I think you should review your decision to cut arts funding. Nothing draws a crowd quite like a line-up, and nothing creates a buzz and line-ups like arts events.

BTW, here's a positive, culture-generated buzz: http://vimeo.com/9451898

Calgary 88

Well, artsey folks, wander around Calgary a bit and try to find any left over Art from the 88 Olympics. Very little.
Then have a look around for infrastructure left from the Olympics. Lots.
Why is this? Should we blame the Gvt? I think the folks paying the shot, not the Arts community, have decided where reality is. Part of the problem is that Artists tend to go onto their next project and let the past stuff fade away. The real world put up the infrastructure and has maintained it.

The "Frauds" Being ??

Would "Alive" care to enlarge on who he/she thinks were the "frauds" at the Opening Ceremonies? k.d. lang? W.O. Mitchell? Alberta Ballet? The First Nations elders and dancers? Maybe the designers who created the sound and light and holographic effects? Let's get specific here so we know who to boo!

Otherwise your critique is, well, a fraud!

Is a lot of "special effects" art?

Now a days you can get almost anything spectacular by special effects provided you are going to throw a lot of money at it. A spectacle that cost a few million doesn't seem like art to me. Art stands the test of time. An opening of the games extravaganza is just so much wasted resources. Maybe it is a sign of the decadence of the age we live in. If an individual spent his money this way we would say, he has more money than brains. If we do it collectively then it is important to get the herd to follow. Otherwise we might just throw the bums out.

You know, as one of those

You know, as one of those technicians that are supposed to be hurting. I don't understand this. I'm booked till at least September with tech work between film, theatre, festivals and Olympics work. There is demand for qualified techs in this city and we don't have enough.

The Opening Ceremonies

To my eye--nothing more than an array of "special defects" and an outstanding demonstration of professional lip-synching. Ho hum, yawned all night until a true hero appeared, Romeo Daillaire. Great column, a good read.

Arts cuts and the casinos

Perhaps it's worth remembering that casino revenue was meant to fund arts, culture and sport. In the old days, organizations would sign up for a date, work behind the scenes, and receive a cut of the day's proceeds.

With the proliferation of casinos in the province, the government received larger takes -- but there was still an implicit promise of stable funding to arts/culture/sport. Some communities voted to allow casinos only because of the "worthy cause" idea. What happened to it?

Government has come to look at casino funds as general revenue -- and that's just not right. Fund the arts/culture/sports or close the casinos. It's that simple.

90 percent?

I would like to see the source that proves that 90% of arts funding is being slashed. I can't find one.

That "90 percent"

W Laurier, allow me to refer you to the advocacy toolkit at www.creativitycounts.ca where, under "presentation" you will find the numbers and their sources. Full disclosure: I'm a co-author of this document.

Opening Ceremonies

General Dailliare and k.d. lang are two Canadians we can be proud of, obviously, for completely different reasons.

General Daillaire is such a hero in my eyes that there should be some kind of special medal struck just for him!

k.d. lang is pure and absolute talent with the courage to march to her own drummer.

As for Gordon Campbell, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" seems more than appropriate in this case.

Sorry to General Daillaire and k.d. for even mentioning Gordo in the same post. The man is dreadful, to put it politely.

Arts Funding

I wholeheartedly agree with this article. It's not ALL arts that is important any more than it's ALL infrastructure that's important. But BOTH have a place in our government's list of responsibilities... and a 90% cut of either of them is inexcusable.

if the opening ceremonies are an example of art...

This is no surprise at all. What do you expect when Campbell and VANOC go to Australia for the producer of these games? Was there a single venue that was built using Canadian contractors? The new line from the airport is German. Was there any merchandise that was made in Canada and not China? This whole olympics demonstrates zero respect for anything that we may have been able to do in this country. The spirit bears are a perfect example of this, yet VANOC paid a California company to come up with mascots. Aboriginal art is another, with VANOC flogging made in China as 'authentic aboriginal'. There is all this demand for us to be patriotic, yet the only thing that is truly and wholly Canadian, is the debt that will have to be paid back over the next 40 years.

Infrastructure? Legacy?

Let's stop using infrastructure as an alibi for Olympic spending. Roads, facility upgrades, public transit, and even ice skating rinks are public infrastructure that is needed regardless of the Olympics. Don't let them use these things as an excuse for this madness.

Let's be clear that the Olympics should be measured strictly on the basis of the ENTIRE cost of hosting the games and the associated events, not on every much needed investment that Campbell tries to hold up as a "legacy" of these games.

Let's also remember that most of the top jobs within the Olympics (at least at BC Place) are held down by American and other foreign companies and individuals. Canadians get the stuff at the bottom of the food chain, with lower wages, and layoff notices coming up in a very few weeks.

edit

err... DAE based in Australia, is the producer for the opening and closing ceremonies.

amen

Thanks for this, Mark. My partner and I had exactly this kind of conversation about the irony of Campbell (& Harper) watching this spectacle while slashing arts funding. Living in the north interior, though, we're a little less keen on the extravagant shindig taking place at the coast.

btw those big pole thingees reminded us of Mr PG at the junction of Hwys 97 & 16!

It's not just Arts. A more

It's not just Arts. A more general Campbell strategy is to cut funding for many community-level activities which lever some official money to mobilise large volunteer efforts. And to replace them (where they are replaced) with corporate organisation,with volunteer minions. VANOC is a model: run by a tight group of overpaid executives (at least, they may be overpaid, their pay and bonuses are hidden from the public), it depends on work by innumerable volunteers, many of them "volunteered" by their employers who seek kudos with the govt. Or again, the centralisation of contracts into bigger firms in the health care field (Crisis lines, home care, etc). One major (obviously intendeded) effect is to disempower the population.

We're members of the Station

We're members of the Station House Gallery Society of Williams Lake, a non profit, artist run organization, and have had 2 one man shows and one with my wife, Marta, in 2004. Our shows and the pictures we have donated, have been good money makers for the gallery.

Now the government funding has been cut back drastically and the gallery has tough times to survive.

My graphite work has been called "world class" by critics and several of my drawings and one painting of the remains of the Quesnel Forks gold mining town, which I have donated to the Williams Lake Gallery are on permanent exhibit.

We're now in our 80s and it is too late to plan for another show for next year, but we hope to get one together by 2012.

We have already offered all the pictures from that future show as donations to the Museum and for sale by the gallery.

Ed Deak. Big Lake.

Correction: My Quesnel

Correction: My Quesnel Forks pictures have been donated to the Williams Lake Museum, not the gallery, and are on permanent exhibit there.

Have to read my postings before pushing the "send" button.

Ed Deak.

Blinded by the light

The Olympic games used to be a venue where the best athletes from the whole world performed for the love of the sport and the pride of their country.First they removed the amateur part and then they sold out to the corporations and it became a source of advertising,merchandising and funding of infrastructure and venues and greed that blinds us from what used to be an athletic event.Who can have the biggest and the best and each one must out do the other.The money spent on these games will be included in every Canadians and especially every British Colombians taxes for decades.What was the one promise made that was not kept?The promise of social housing and that the games would not negatively affect housing in the DTES.That says everything that needs to be said about the greedfest that is the Olympic games.That the billion dollars spent on harassing locals who dared question what was happening and the secrecy imposed by a VANOC that had promised to be open and honest about where all our tax dollars were going.The way the so called green games destroyed a treasure by refusing to listen to the people.I don't know how it's done in other parts of the world but it looks like VANOC used it's tax payer funded trip to China to gather information on how it's done.No wonder so many people question how the games were done here.We have been kept in the dark and fed shit.Now we can sit back and wait for the bill.I have a feeling that it will be years before the true cost of these games is known.

It was not only the trip to

It was not only the trip to China that was funded , but the monies for of all the paraphernalia, the clothing, the Canadian flags that people are waving in their outbursts of patriotism.

What exactly was "Made in Canada"?

How much was made in various Asian child labour sweatshops? How about the Nike slashes people are proudly wearing?

Ed Deak.

What the International media are saying

Re: The Opening Ceremonies.

Apart from the fake snow and the painfully obvious lip sync fakeness of it all....

"... the Games began with an overlong, flatfooted ceremony made memorable only by its climactic technical glitch. Almost anything would have paled next to the stunning beauty of China’s wildly extravagant pageant, but even on more modest terms, Vancouver’s effort was a banal misfire, straining to convey national identity through bland pop tunes and bad poetry." -- USA Today

And this:

"...the Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Vancouver, where four giant penises rose slowly from the floor to stand proudly erect in the arena, presumably intended as symbols of a thrusting young nation? All right, they were meant to be totem poles, but ... Three hours of native dances, computer-generated prairies, guys in canoes hanging from the ceiling, and performances from more or less every famous Canadian was plenty for me, although I did find myself saying: "Wot, no Shania Twain?" Perhaps I nodded off and missed her.... Sadly I was awake for the musical centrepiece of the evening, Canadian hit-makers Bryan Adams and Nelly Furtado performing Bang the Drum, one of those anthemic dirges that have become obligatory at sports events... --Guardian

I just get fatigued wading

I just get fatigued wading through and picking apart the stupidity and heartache that we have to continuously live through because the electorate in this province is so stunningly inept, incompetent lazy politically illiterate, AWOL and just downright stupid.
Any one should be able to quickly gauge Gordon Campbell and his sleazy band of so called "Liberals" for what they are; unprincipled minions of the corporate agenda.... they make no bones about it.
Conservative politics are rotten, corrupt, lazy, shortsighted and ill suited for complex social problems. But like McDonalds they cater to the weakest aspects of human nature; greed and fear arrogance and ignorance, and laziness mostly.
And we lap it up time after time after time.
Below my rant I have added an interesting article exploring why people tend to vote contrary to their interests and then do little more than complain and whine about it before they yet again make asses of themselves at the next election by consistently electing shit eating vermin like Gordon Campbell and what is laughingly referred to as the B.C. Liberals, who quite frankly don't care or respect them in the least; and why should they?
As we all know, you earn respect, and we as a populace are not worthy of it and so we do not get it.
I guess I can understand why the corporate elite who own us and consider us nothing more than livestock have absolutely zero regard or respect for our interests or intelligence generally. Why in the hell should they? They at least, (for the most part) in sharp contrast to most so called ordinary people are not stupid.
So this is what we get. The conservative agenda is not interested in the Arts or the Humanities their focus is strictly greed and power, The End.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8474611.stm

read before you comment

Let me repeat my statement: "The simple fact is that anyone can call themselves an artist, and if obscure enough, nobody dares to challenge a fraud."

sorry if anyone thinks I said that every artist is a fraud.

It was a general statement and meant to point out that we are supporting practically anyone who thinks they have a talent.

I am sure there are committees that have to evaluate the merits, and as I said, who dares to tell a person they have no talent?

Besides just like any govenrment grant, the main challenge is to distribute the money, so they can qualify for more money next year.

This is an endless merry-go-round of spending, did we pay over 10 million on the downhill racers?

Who exactly pays? just asking.

Everybody pays, because

Everybody pays, because those who pay, or who the so called "economists" claim are the "users", have to get their monies from somewhere else and so the liabilities trickle down to the homeless, but the benefits are not.

When I, and millions of others, have been in business, it was my customers who paid all the the bills and whatever KI took home and paid in taxes, and the same thing applies all the way.

People are bitching over taxes, but ignore profits, which are also a form of taxation. Both profits and taxes come out of the public's pockets and therefore the collectors of both should be accountable to the public.

E.g. Like many others, the Fraser Institute is claimed to be a non profitable charitable organization, gloating on tax deductible donations, which means that we all pay for them, the same way as we pay the multimillion salaries of executives, while their part timer employees are forced to line up at the food banks.

Investors do not bring anything, except small loans the public has to pay back endless times over.

Look at the fancy maple leaf mittens and jacket on Campbell, "Made in China". We all pay very high for those "low costs" in the forms of lost jobs, homelessness, crimes, gangs, family breakdowns etc, etc.

Because "Costs can not be cut only transferred on others", and in this case on the impoverished Canadians who pay with their lives for the tens of thousands of industries destroyed by "free trade" and imports.

Ed Deak.

New BC Place Roof

Here is where your arts funding is going. So that they can play bloody boring soccer.

The B.C. government has signed off on a plan to build a new $458-million retractable roof for BC Place stadium after the close of the 2010 Winter Games.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/10/23/bc-place-retractable-roof.html

There is a DIRECT correlation between BC economic growth and art

Right now the Liberals are selling our province's future. I'm furious for the kids sake- I don't want them to feel they have to make widgets for a living instead of creating a product that will not only pay a return every time someone buys/listens to/watches/attends, but that contributes to the communities we live in.

I have nothing against making widgets, or lattes, but artists produce ideas and concepts which are turned into profit, into tangible assets and which employ people. Artists and artistic ventures are a significant part of the public labour force.

In fact, I think most independent artists know a heck of a lot more about balancing a budget than Campbell's government does- they have far less to work with right off the bat, and have to use their creativity to plan, considering the future as well as short term results of their work and making a little go a long way (something the BC Liberals clearly do not know how to do- their specialty seems to be making a lot vanish).

The trouble with the arts

The trouble with the arts for Gordo, Harpo and the rest of the power parasites is they can't easily commodify the arts and sell them off to their friends and insiders at public expense. They can't scrape them out of the ground for pennies, truck them thousands of miles, sell them to the Americans for a few pennies more, then buy them back at hugely inflated priices.

Art does not easily fit into the predictive behavior model of consumers. Art does not fit easily onto wal-mart's shelves.

The arts

When I visit another country, The first thing I look for are their, arts and culture. Arts are the pride of most country's. Before, I leave that country, I bring interesting arts and crafts home for myself and friends. I watch the citizens dance their country's dance. I, can't think of one country, that doesn't have their arts and culture. I had better quit now, I have no understanding, as to why, Campbell would destroy, BC's Arts and Cultures.

Oh dear oh dear.

Alive, let me fill you in on how arts funding works.

1) The artist applies for a grant. For a Canada Council grant, this involves filling in a ton of paperwork, and doing so four months to a year in advance of when you will require the money.
2) Assuming their paperwork is in order, the artist must demonstrate their cultural value to a panel nominated by the funding organization.
3) Assuming that the artist can demonstrate their cultural value, they must then demonstrate that their project is more deserving of funding than the other projects in that funding round.

The process generally takes at least two months from start to finish, and that doesn't include actual deliberations--and, remember, it'll still take 4-12 months for the money to start flowing, even after the decisions are made.

Moreover, most agencies specifically exclude amateurs from applying (to quality for an "Emerging Artist" grant from the Canada Council, you have to show that you've been actively involved in your art form for at least two years excluding time spent at college/university or in another form of training), and government funding for the arts doesn't go to commercial ventures in the first place.

In other words, government funding for the arts doesn't pay for incompetent scribblers to hang out in shacks and paint pictures nobody buys. Government funding for the arts supports experienced, established artists who have clear visions for what they hope to accomplish and a demonstrable need for money in the front end of their projects. (Think about it: if you're putting on a play, you have to pay all your staff for several months before opening night. Even if you produce the greatest play ever, if you don't get a huge injection of cash on the front end, you'll never see an audience.)

It's a tool used to support artists who can show that there is commercial or social value in their work. It's not welfare for anyone who declares themselves an "artist".