All-candidates meeting rare chance to put focus on arts, culture
Arts and culture struggle for respect and attention in B.C., according to the executive director of B.C.’s biggest arts lobbying group.
But Brenda Leadlay said the civic election is a great opportunity to hold an all-candidates meeting and focus the attention of politicians on a sector that accounts for an estimated 98,200 jobs in B.C.
“If we don’t do that, you often don’t hear about the arts in an election campaign,” Leadlay said.
“Our sector is huge, much bigger than other sectors yet we struggle to get the same kind of respect, shall I say.”
Leadlay is from the B.C. Alliance for Arts + Culture, a provincial arts and culture umbrella group with more than 450 organizational and individual members. The alliance’s all-candidates meeting is today at the Museum of Vancouver from 5 to 7 p.m.
To raise the profile of arts and culture during the provincewide municipal elections this Saturday, the alliance has created a website called ArtsVoteBC.ca. The website hopes to convince municipal governments throughout the province to increase the amounts it spends on cultural grant programs and cultural infrastructure.
Leadlay has all the numbers to show the importance of arts and culture to the B.C. economy.
Data compiled by the alliance indicates the non-profit and for-profit cultural sectors contribute $7.2 billion annually to the provincial economy — seven times that of sports. B.C. has more artists per capita than any other province and the cultural sector pays five times more in taxes than it receives in public funding.
So why is the sector not recognized for its economic impact?
Leadlay thinks it’s because people tend to think of arts and culture as only restricted to high-level professionals who, for example, might dance for Ballet B.C., create art for the Vancouver Art Gallery, or sing for Vancouver Opera.
But she’s talking about much more than that. Music, film, media, and literature are also part of what she describes as the creative industries.
“We’ve been separated into those who are for profit and those who aren’t for profit,” she said. “People don’t fully understand that when we talk about arts and culture, we’re taking about a huge demographic of practitioners and consumers.”
As an organization, the alliance focuses its attention on lobbying and advocating for the not-for-profit sector. Leadlay describes not-forprofit arts and cultural groups as essentially small businesses who know how to turn “$1 into $10.” A small theatre company, for instance, has no choice but to be creative because the cost of a ticket to a performance likely covers only 15 to 70 per cent of the cost of a production. The rest comes from fundraising from the private and public sectors.