WestEnder
March 10, 2010
While his industry has been crippled by provincial-government cuts to arts funding, Keith Higgins isn’t short of work these days, even though he’s not getting paid for all the hours he does work. The Vancouver-based visual artist and activist, known for organizing his community to speak out against arts-funding cuts, was hired last month to resurrect the Helen Pitt Gallery from dire financial straits. That’s no easy feat, considering the 35-year-old artist-run gallery lost its Railtown space in October 2009 because staff could no longer afford the lease. The Helen Pitt was among a number of arts organizations to be notified in August 2009 that its gaming grants (diverted from provincial gambling revenues) were facing deep cuts.
“The largest budget item they had was the lease; space is expensive in Vancouver,” says Higgins. “We couldn’t get a lease, couldn’t pay salaries to staff. You need to take drastic steps to find money from somewhere else. What makes that more difficult is that everybody is doing the same thing.”
Members of the arts community hoped the new provincial budget, announced on March 2, would restore arts funding to 2008-2009 levels of $63 million. The $46.1 million that was allocated for 2010-2011 isn’t enough, they say. Despite this year’s addition of a new 2010 Sports and Arts Legacy, which gives $10 million to the arts each year for the next three years, as well as the Royal B.C. Museum, appearing as a never-before-seen $12 million item in the arts budget, critics, including Higgins, say the budget isn’t as generous as it seems.
“As I understand it, [the Sports and Arts Legacy] is going to be money for internships and so on for young and emerging artists. What they haven’t said is how they expect organizations to have the capacity to actually train these people if we’re closing our doors,” Higgins says. “We have, compared to 2008-2009, a 50-per-cent cut to the BC Arts Council. Compared to 2008-2009, [there is] about 40 per cent less going to the arts through gaming [provincial gambling revenues].”
While B.C. Finance Minister Colin Hansen emphasized in his March 2 budget speech that the 2010 Sports and Arts Legacy would “increase participation in the arts for all British Columbians,” the overall loss of funding will mean less opportunities for British Columbians to take part in the arts. Locally, for example, the Vancouver-based Carousel Theatre has cancelled its touring plans for 2010. “It’s really the only professional children’s theatre company in the province,” says Vancouver arts publicist Rebecca Coleman, a patron of Carousel Theatre. “My son was introduced to theatre for the first time by Carousel Theatre... It’s great if you’re living in Vancouver — they’re still producing a full season this year — but they’re not going on tour.”
Other theatre companies have been talking about scaling back to accommodate the funding losses, Coleman adds. “I’m hearing people say that instead of doing larger-scale productions, they’re looking for smaller productions that only have two or three actors in them,” she says. “For me, I really feel like for the government to invest in the arts, it’s that: an investment. When they invest money in the arts, it creates jobs.”
In Victoria, the independent Intrepid Theatre company is bracing for losses of at least $25,000 in operating funds from the BC Arts Council in its next round of grant applications. “This year, I can expect to lose $35,000 of [gaming grants] and $26,000 in [provincial] bingo-affiliation money,” says general manager Ian Case. “But the long-term damage is going to be very hard to tell.”
PHOTO: Vancouver visual artist Keith Higgins. By Doug Shanks.
