en

funding for the arts community is interest-

T HE SUDDEN, VIGOROUS debate about

ing. Instead of being an esoteric issue off
to the side of real affairs, art in Canada has become

political.

The Socreds, of course,
have been slashing with the
restraint blade at ‘the arts” in
school. The Vancouver Art
Gallery ended its first year in
its new building with a heavy
deficit. The CBC — the bread
and butter factory for a lot of
Canadian artists — has been
kneecapped.

A survey of 135 arts
organizations showed them to
be in worse financial shape
than at any time in’ their
history. The performing arts,
in particular, have been hit in
the solar plexus. As an exam-
ple, the Stratford Festival is
nearly three million bucks in
the red. The Toronto Syti-
phony Orchestra is looking at
a million-dollar deficit. The
Vancouver Sy:inphony owes
$819,000, last I heard.

It was for these reasons that
Ottawa and Victoria agreed
recently to set up a task force
on the economic impact of the
arts in Canada. All I can say
is, bloody well time!

While the meatheads mutter
that artists are pampered in
Canada, artists are starting to
counter-punch, saying, look,

the old image of an artist asa
drone, rather than a worker
bee, is 4 crock.

When some 1400 artists got
together in) the Queen
Elizabeth Theatre in January
to voice their demand that
governments grant ‘‘real
recognition of the value of the
arts and humanities to socie-
ty,’’ they were essentially flex-
ing their lobbying muscle.

1 don’t need to be convine-
ed how lean and hungry the
times are for artists. | know
dozens of writers and pro-
ducers and pretty mean men
with a pen looking for work as
ditch diggers.

As in so many fields, there
are a few who do really well,
a fair number doing oaky, and
a lot out there starving, guys
with families whose specialty
happens to be, uh, art.

h’s a common complaint
that Canadian artists have it
too easy, that there are too
many bad Canadian poets
sucking at the Canada Coun-
cil teat, too many unreadable
Canadian novelists who know
somebody in Toronto, too
many doodlers who are

cone |]

NORBURN LIGHTING CENTRE w.

Arts battle back

geniuses at writing out grant
applications, and far too
many producers cluttering up
a smalt market. Where's the
beef?

Part of the antipathy to the
arts stems from the percep-
tion, articulated recently by
none other than Tom Wolfe,

See page 9

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