Arts » Arts Notes

The province's arts activists are recruiting "Community Arts Activists" to work with MLAs in each B.C. riding.

The project is being backed by the Assembly of B.C. Arts Councils. the B.C. Touring Council, Vancouver's Alliance for Arts and Culture, and Victoria's ProArt Alliance.

The idea is to have delegations of people representing arts groups and their audiences, business partners, volunteers, and donors to stress to MLAs the benefits of a thriving cultural sector.

The initiative comes in response to B.C.'s consistent ranking among the bottom of all the provinces when it comes to per-capita arts funding. The B.C. Liberals have also made major cuts to gaming grants to arts groups and have cut core funding.

"Our Community Arts Champions will seek to develop meaningful relationships with all MLAs from both political parties, and to demonstrate that public investment in the arts is crucial to the health of our communities everywhere in British Columbia," Amir Alibhai, executive director of the Alliance, said in today's press announcement.

"Our creative sector, with the help of private and public investment, an independent jury process, as well as donor and volunteer commitment, has generated a cultural legacy that endures as a source of pride for all British Columbians. Now this is seriously at risk," the B.C. Touring Council's executive director, Joanna Maratta, added in the release.

In the recent past, arts activists have acknowledged that to change the view of arts funding at the provincial level, better dialogue has to happen between the government and the cultural sector. Tourism, Culture and the Arts Minister Kevin Krueger recently came under fire for accusing arts groups of "threatening" him in their attempts to get their message across—an accusation the groups adamantly denied.

The arts-champions initiative is being run through the Creativity Counts advocacy campaign, which is calling for the restoration of B.C. arts funding to 2008-09 levels; the increasing of arm's-length per-capita investment in the arts to the national average; and the development of a position paper on creating a sustainable arts-funding policy for B.C.

Meanwhile, anyone intersted in taking part in the arts-champions program can contact communications@allianceforarts.ca.