Vancouver civic all-candidates meeting focuses on promoting arts and 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 Saturday, Oct. 20, 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 forprofit 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 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.