Making arts and cultural champions of all Canadians, not just the party brass

In this election, precise arts and culture pledges and promises are advanced in all the parties’ campaign platforms. This is a success, one worthy of being celebrated!

In the not so distant past, Canada’s arts and cultural sector was acknowledged more in platitudes and generalities, than measurable specific policies and initiatives to strengthen the sector. Hard work has changed this.

Now it's time to move on to capture the hearts and attention of Canadians generally.

The past few years have seen Canada’s diverse cultural sector secure the attention of the political parties and policy makers. The Canadian Arts Coalition, ACTRA, the CCA, CAMDO and others have worked hard to make sure that the needs and interests of the sector are understood by the parties, and those developing the platforms. Their success can be seen in the consistent and recurring refrain of Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore, who, for the past number of months at least, has stressed the connection between cultural policy and economic policy. In February, at the Canadian Media Production Association’s Prime Time Conference he said

… supporting Canadian culture means supporting the Canadian economy.

Arts and culture represents over 630,000 jobs in the Canadian economy.

Canada's cultural industries represent $46 billion in the Canadian economy.

A little further he said,

In our Economic Action Plan, we stood up for and stood with our cultural communities and increased our support to record levels.

We did so because we know how fragile arts organizations are. How quickly they can disappear if support isn't there.

And, also, we increased our support because we know how much Canadian artists do for Canada.

Canadians though, remain in the mushy middle when it comes to considering arts and cultural policy in making their voting decision: They don’t connect cultural policy to either the economy or their quality of life.

The recent Nanos poll commissioned by The Arts Advocate found that half of us aren’t really sure if cultural policy is important or not in determining our vote. Just one in ten of us said arts and cultural policy is an important factor in considering this question.

What this means is that, as Canadians, we have a hard time relating cultural policy to our daily experience -- we don’t connect the dots between the magazine or book we read, the show we watch, or the museum we visit to Canadian cultural policy or politics.

So what does it all mean?

Perhaps the information best gleaned from the polling data commissioned by The Arts Advocate is that Canadian artists and cultural organizations need to change the way we connect to Canadians.

The dialogue, perhaps, has to be about how artistic experience connects to the everyday lives of Canadians. It’s not about more funding for the CBC or Canada Council for the Arts, per se; rather, it’s about making sure that all Canadians have the experience of and access to high quality artistic opportunities.

How we tell this story is what needs to change.

No question, many people are putting their minds and attention to this, with Culture Days an obvious example.

Initiatives like this provide a jumpstart perhaps, but truly connecting Canadians to the richness of the arts and the importance of cultural policy is going to take the efforts of all of us, everyday, changing the way we communicate and interact with our neighbours and our friends. It’s not an ‘us and them’ conversation; it’s about ‘all of us together’.

Is this platitudes? Perhaps. At least I’ll start thinking about doing things differently though.