“How could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?”—Gabrielle Roy
It’s always instructive editing features in this magazine to see where writers take a story assigned to them. The scribblers go out into the wide world and come back to report, and more often than not, their reports intersect on a point never intended. You think you’re editing an issue about the arts, and suddenly it becomes clear that bar none, the arts’ greatest hang-up is money.
What’s in your wallet? The most common banknote in Canada, and the main one dispensed by Canadian ABMs, is the $20 bill. The bill displays the Centre Block of Parliament, and its reverse side displays two sculptures by Bill Reid and the above quote, by one of the most prominent French-Canadian writers (thanks to Varsity writer May Jeong for pointing this out). This relationship between money, art, and government sheds a different light on the recent $45-million “trimming” of arts funding.
As one disgruntled user posted into the Internet ether known as Facebook, “Apparently, someone in Canadian government, at some point, thought the arts were important.” Can you taste the sense of futility?
Apologies if this sounds like shutting the barn door after the horse has been stolen. Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore recently promised that cultural funding in next week’s budget will emphasize grassroots initiatives and youth involvement in the arts, and will protect established cultural organizations such as symphonies and theatre companies. We’ll wait and see.
Note that in its very name, the ministry responsible for the arts implies that good Canadian art is something that happened in the past—a part of our anointed if antiquated heritage, preserved in the same way we would Fort York—and has nothing to do with how we relate to ourselves right now.
We need to re-imagine how we think about the arts. In fact, arts could be the responsibility of the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, or the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, or the Minister for Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism. Not to mention the file closest to the sentiment expressed on the $20 bill: the Minister of State for Democratic Reform.
Jack Dylan’s illustration for the Varsity Rock Show (see back cover of this issue) is a portrait of Stephen Harper, ear lopped off and bandaged a la Van Gogh. If only. It is actually reassuring that the prime minister plays piano. But he seems awfully conflicted when he publicly defines artists as a niche group distinguished from “ordinary Canadians” and then uses his keyboard skills to score political points.
The question about arts funding isn’t protecting jobs, or saving us from the big bad (though alarmingly alluring) United States, or whether Harper is a barbarian. As U of T music student Patrick Power comments in Daniel Bader’s article, “People are going to do what we do regardless.”
We need to continue talking about the arts because the debate prior to the last federal election was framed in terms of whether artists are, at best, to be tolerated. Yet as a matter of public policy, it’s easy to agree that we want more than that. Healthy societies are those where individual expression is valued and encouraged.
To crib the name of one of the compositions this magazine commissioned to respond to the arts cuts, it’s time to start writing elegies—not for elitist artistes, but for ordinary humanity. If we were to value the arts in terms of Gross National Happiness instead of Gross Domestic Product, this wouldn’t be an issue—there would be no cuts.
The Toronto music scene is definitely a part of our heritage, as Arts Editor Rob Duffy so adroitly tracks its development since the 1950s. If there’s a message to Rob’s piece, it’s that the city’s musical landscape was not a passive development. It was nurtured over lifetimes. You might like Foxfire, who we profile in this issue. Or you might think disco revival is for hipster douchebags. We couldn’t have this discussion were it not for Avrom Isaacs, Richard Flohil, Gary Topp, and many others who laid the groundwork for the counterculture we now enjoy. The greatest disrespect to this heritage is to denigrate—as Parliament so insistently did with its flogging of Holy Fuck—that scene’s current produce.
People have enough to deal with trying to break into the artistic big leagues. For evidence, check out the U of T up-and-comers as they pose the questions they’ve always wanted to ask their heroes.
On the other side of the coin are artistic renegades like Reg Hartt, who operate far outside the boundaries of popular culture, but enrich our experience nonetheless.
With our INDEPENDENT ARTS issue, our goal was to present the most compelling of arts stories both on campus and in Toronto. In one sense, the people we profile are very dependent—on us for our time, our money, and our interest. But in another sense they lead the way—away from authority and obligation. Independent arts don’t ask us for their validity. We ask them for ours.
Jade Colbert, Magazine Editor
Rob Duffy, Arts Editor
