News: Arts Groups Demand Cultural Plan

At a press conference in Toronto this morning, National Ballet artistic director Karen Kain, Sara Diamond of the Ontario College of Arts and Design, filmmaker Atom Egoyan, Joe Halstead of Caribana, film director Paul Gross and Jim Fleck of Business for the Arts each issued appeals for Canadians to care about the arts in this election:

Since VoCA was unable to attend, you can read the report on the press conference HERE.

5 comments ↓

#1 Dave Hickey on 09.18.08 at 3:16 am

Parental oversite retards change by mitigating risk. if the parental government is paying for your art, (the) risk is considerably reduced… What was wrong with NEA arts grants? It placed one generation of artists in control of (the younger) generation, which was supposed to render the previous generation obsolete… That retards change. It is a form of positive censorship.

#2 Robert Chaplin on 09.18.08 at 4:39 am

Funny that people are often naive enough to believe that culture can be affected by something as temporary as a government. Let’s say that all Government funding for arts was cut, completely.
would there still be art? yes.
Art is an expression of the human soul, it will exist there, whether or not the state chooses to sponsor it.
Politics breeds mediocrity.
;^)
R

#3 J@simpleposie on 09.18.08 at 2:16 pm

The question, Robert Chaplin, is not whether or not art will exist as a result of cuts to public funding. It’s a question of the honour of a government, that withdraws it’s legislated business support for the arts, for the national cultural sector without consulting parliamentary standing committees, much less stakeholders in the programs themselves.

#4 J@simpleposie on 09.18.08 at 2:17 pm

And yes that kind of politics does breed mediocrity.

#5 Andrea on 09.18.08 at 2:33 pm

Thanks for your comment, Dave Hickey! Happy to see you’re reading VoCA!

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