Art in boom time is art in crisis

Alberta artists struggle to survive in midst of funding cuts censorship and corporatization

The text that follows is based on the short lecture I presented as part of Calgary’s Art Matters forum with Jean-Daniel Lafond and Governor General Michaëlle Jean. Art Matters is an initiative of the Governor General’s office that has been held in more than 20 cities to discuss current issues in the arts. Visit www.citizenvoices.gg.ca for more info.

Five years ago I started working as the director of Stride Gallery an established local artist-run centre one block south of city hall. I lived on the margins of downtown just a 15-minute stroll from the gallery. On my way to work every day I would walk past little buildings and apartments where other artists lived and past other artist-run centres.

Stride’s gallery space housed in the storefront of a turn-of-the-century apartment block was literally crumbling — and like many artist-run centres around the country we desperately needed a solution. On my walks to work I would allow myself to fantasize about a new building for the gallery. I was constantly sizing up the buildings that I saw imagining if they would make a good gallery space how to raise funds for renovations to make a gallery and about creating live-work spaces for artists above the gallery. I never imagined anything too grand — just a stable affordable space in which to hold exhibitions and provide support for artists.

Today when I walk downtown every apartment that my colleagues and I have lived in every space that I dreamed about turning into a gallery all the small and medium-sized buildings between my apartment and the cultural district are gone. Calgary’s oldest artist-run centre The New Gallery was even forced to relocate as its building like so many of these others was torn down to make way for bigger developments. I know 40 cultural workers who over the last five years have moved away: artists writers curators critics historians — many of them who are queer — aboriginal people and people of colour. They’ve taken their ideas projects and collaborative energy with them too.

Has culture in Alberta survived in spite of our surroundings? In the last decade artists have fought funding cuts censorship of our works homophobia and racism in some of our biggest institutions and attempted to resist corporatization of our arts spaces. Now gentrification is creating a very precarious existence for artists and arts organizations in particular. Our strength as a community comes from the ability to critique ourselves and our surroundings. Now we need to turn our attention here.

I want to be a bit rude and bring up the topic of money. How much money do we as Alberta artists make in a year? Hill Strategies research on the Canadian Census suggests that of the 5000 artists living in Calgary we have the highest annual earnings of any city on the Prairies and this figure is only $21000. This income bracket means that artists are especially susceptible to the economic circumstances of the boom.

Still artists have a very fluid class status: one might suggest that it is our involvement in culture that makes us rich. It’s with this lack of criticality around culture and class that we do ourselves a great disservice. The interest with which our community has embraced American economist Richard Florida’s ideas about “the creative class” for example is a slap in the face because his measurements of artistic populations and their impact on economic growth directly contradict the real-life experiences of most cultural workers. While his book The Rise of the Creative Class is now widely read by administrators the business sector and by decision makers it just doesn’t measure up based on my experience of Alberta’s boom. Toronto curator and critic Rosemary Donegan captures this best when she says “Florida’s diversity index carries little credence as an indicator of economic growth for working artists and in reality is more likely to be an indicator of poverty line existence.”

We can chart the negative effects of gentrification on artistic communities in so many other cities — they’re the “creative” cities that we also fetishize and gravitate towards — Toronto Montreal New York or London. Our colleagues across the country have created critical dialogue and above all very practical solutions to alleviate the precarious situation that artists and organizations are facing in the midst of gentrification. Artists might lack resources but they never lack ideas: we need to look at their work and draw from the solutions that they’ve proposed.

These recommendations are based on conversations with colleagues policy consultations FUSE magazine’s consistent dialogues on precariousness and gentrification PUBLIC magazine as well as the Report on the Socio-Economic Status of the Artist in Ontario in the 21st Century produced by the Ontario Minister’s Advisory Council for Arts and Culture and they bear repeating:

• Increase funding. At the same time diversify funding programs to include travel and networking with national and international arts communities and funding for aboriginal artists living and working in Alberta.

• Allow freelance artists to receive employment insurance benefits similar to those for regular employees (i.e. parental leave workers’ compensation).

• Average an artist’s income over several years for tax purposes.

• Offer subsidies to landlords and arts groups that provide live-work spaces.

• Support the cultural activism that the Canadian Artists’ Representation/Le Front des Artistes Canadiens (CARFAC) funding agencies and other advocacy organizations are doing on artists’ behalf and become part of this work.

• Lead the way for cultural change with exhibition programming outreach and printed matter that are integral to artists’ organizational mandates.

• Partner with other marginalized communities that feel the affects of gentrification and “boom time” in similar ways.

Artist-run centres co-operatives and artist-led advocacy have irrevocably changed the landscape of culture in our country and we cannot forget that we have the ability to cause major cultural shifts in today’s cultural milieu. These are just a few important points of action. This is a decisive moment and we need to think and act critically.