Why has the furor over arts funding fizzled?
It's been about a week since Budget ’09, and all is quiet on the Culture front. At least… it’s been quiet online.
There’s a smattering of righteous anger about the $25M set aside for Luminato’s Canada Prizes for the Arts and Creativity over at Praxis. But, mind you, at the time of this writing, only 9 comments have been posted. And The Art of the Business’s round-up of the budget’s art funding hasn’t generated a lot of discussion either.
In fact, comments have been down across the board. In the G&M’s story about arts funding, only 49 people have voiced their opinions. Which could be construed as a good number, but it’s nothing compared to the hundreds of comments the G&M was generating when the Liberal/NDP coalition was a near reality.
Blogs that I expected to hear from – Department of Culture, One Big Umbrella, The Wrecking Ball – have been mum on the Budget. And yes, I realize that I’m a big ol’ Mr. Pot pointing fingers at a bunch of Mr. Kettles: the first time this blog actually started to get some attention was when I was all about political activism.
So, what gives? What happened to our united front? Why are have we retreated into the dark corner like a pimply tween that snuck into a high school dance?
Did we get what we wanted after all?
Update: Oops, didn't mean to leave you out Starving Artist. Nice read and responses.
Posts
6 comments:
I think you will see more soon. This whole thing has caught folks by surprise. People who don't get angry are often up to the other thing.
Thanks!
And I hope we do see more soon...I'm definitely on the lookout for it...
Hi Aaron,
I'd like to clear up a few things regarding The Canada Prizes for The Arts and Creativity, AKA The Canada Prizes.
It's important to note that The Canada Prizes are in no way affiliated with Luminato.
Luminato did not receive any money from this year's federal budget, directly or indirectly.
In fact, The Canada Prizes is an individual, not-for-profit organization. While its founders Tony Gagliano and David Pecaut founded Luminato as well, the two organizations operate completely independent of one another.
The Canada Prizes will have its own board members, its own staff, its own operating budget and its own mandate, independent of Luminato.
At this time, there is no guarantee or formal agreement in place that participants in The Canada Prizes would be invited to perform at Luminato.
For further information on The Canada Prizes, I urge you to read Martin Knelman's articles from this week's Toronto Star, to which I have linked below.
http://www.thestar.com/comment/columnists/article/580087
http://www.thestar.com/Entertainment/article/581921
Thanks,
Daniel Davidzon
Publicity Coordinator
Luminato
www.Luminato.com
A-ha.
Thanks for the clarification, Daniel.
Cheers.
For those of you who don't like cutting and pasting, I've linked to Star articles that Daniel is referring to here and here.
And some of us are trying to come up with an approach that isn't parroting what has already been said. :)
Seriously, James Bradshaw's pre-budget article (Jan 21st) indicated that there was going to be no touring money. James Moore has been consistently saying all the way along that he wasn't going to replace Trade Routes or PromArt. He met with the large arts organizations, some of which must have indicated the need for export. And yet that wasn't there.
So what can we do now? I'm not really sure what the next step is. We've laid out the business case and he's still not biting? I'm at a loss.
Post a Comment