Unlike many provinces, states, countries, even cities, British Columbia's government has no standard policy for the arts.
For decades, successive provincial parliaments of varying political stripes have been lobbied to implement one, but none have.
Encouraged by current Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development Coralee Oakes, with funds for a consultation campaign, that may be about to change.
One of B.C.'s umbrella arts organizations, the BC Alliance For Arts+Culture (BCAAC), is on a 19-meeting tour of the province to gather input from artists, agencies and individuals as to what a cultural policy should look like. Prince George was on that list last week. BCAAC communications staff Amanda Peters and Kevin Dale McKeown facilitated the local input session.
One of the first questions Peters and McKeown contended with in Prince George was why not simply scan other jurisdictions' existing policies for best practices. New Brunswick's in particular, McKeown said, was a beacon of a quality writing, but the British Columbia context was so different than theirs and - perhaps a chief reason B.C. hasn't produced such a guiding statement in the past - significantly different than anywhere else they could find.
"We have more artists per capita than any other jurisdiction in Canada, and we are the only province where more than one per cent of the workforce is made up of artists," said Peters.
"We are a distinctly diverse and diversely distinct population, in British Columbia. We are completely unique in our cultural composition," McKeown added.
It would have made their jobs a whole lot easier to just overlay the work of others, they said, but this framework had to be custom built for B.C.'s rare cultural conditions. We are far ahead of most jurisdictions, McKeown said, for fusing the incoming cultures of the world together so effectively that it has surpassed multiculturalism and has become intraculturalism - meaning the use of and acceptance of other cultural influences has now become our ingrained mentality, while at the same time we hold a special place reserved for the breadth of our province's abiding aboriginal cultures. The fact B.C. has refrained from ceding most aboriginal territories, keeping those nationalities somewhat intact, has been an imperfect and sometimes painful exercise but is globally unique and as reconciliation accelerates and merges into the mosaic of other B.C. subcultures, forms a strong cultural identity no one else in Canada can replicate.
It is the job of artists, they explained to a crowd of mostly artists and arts agencies, to explain to the world and our own residents, just who we are. That gets done through everything from Emily Carr paintings to Hedley tunes, from basement potters and bashful poets to the professional architects and engineers inventing the buildings we live in and the tools we use at work.
Through the ensuing discussion it became clear that local creative minds understood the gravity of the situation. A policy had to be designed that addressed the pervasive nature of arts and culture in our everyday lives - and particularly British Columbia's lives.
If you're sitting on a chair, multiple people of arts background created it for you. If you picked up a fork and ate a meal today, a number of artists were involved in the making of the fork, the making of the pots and stoves, and perhaps even the preparing of the food itself.
The overarching discussion brought up that "the arts" includes but goes beyond the actors on the TV shows you like or the musicians playing the music you prefer on the radio - the arts enable your clothing, your vehicle, your streets and highways, your phones and computers, your house, your children's toys, your grandparents' hip replacement, everything. To say nothing of the lateral thinking, creative inspiration, innovation, renovation, and mental health the arts stimulate in individuals and societies. It is your community's history, reality and future.
On an everyday level, the group discussion said, the arts address lifestyle and recreation needs for any community. The Elder Citizens Recreation Association's drama productions, the sellout audiences for Theatre North West, the ticket-buyers in the seats and the constantly rehearsing musicians on the stage at the Prince George Symphony Orchestra, the massive participation numbers for the dance and music and speech arts festivals, the hungry shopping crowds at Studio Fair all prove that the arts are a binding agent for any community.
The challenges faced for the users and creators alike in B.C. - especially northern and rural B.C. - include geographic distances, weather conditions, thinly spread but equally deserving populations, and a lack of targeted funding for social and physical infrastructure. All these things, the group expressed, needed to be infused into a provincial arts policy.
Another challenge identified by the group was to wake up the minds of those below that surface that the arts are intrinsic to their lives, too, whether they think so or not. Were it not for engineers and architects and designers and drafts people and crafts people, no one would work in a sawmill or dig for ore because the mills and trains and trucks and ships and hand tools wouldn't exist. So they need to invest themselves in the perpetual cultural conversation as well. The stronger the B.C. policy on arts and culture, the stronger the chances that those engineers, architects, designers, draftspeople and craftspeople might be based in B.C., boosting our economy for the makers, users and communities alike.
"We in the arts represent long-term, sustainable economic viability for the whole province," said Community Arts Council executive director Wendy Young during the roundtable conversation. "We should get as much ministerial attention and government resourcing as the forest industry and mining industry does. And we are a renewable resource, by the way, accessible to any age, location, or cultural background."
"This discussion reminds me of a quote by famous football player and coach Bobby Charlton," said Two Rivers Gallery managing director Peter Thompson. "He said, and I'm paraphrasing him, 'The arts aren't a matter of life and death. They are more important than that.' Our arts and culture engines are being starved of the fuel they need to run, and when you starve your artists, you are starving your children and grandchildren. It is the only meaningful legacy that gets passed down to our next generations."
"I am thrilled to see the turnout, and I loved the Prince George region's voice this discussion gave (the BCAAC)," said Cindy Marcotte, a local music artist and the northern B.C. representative on the BC Arts Council. "Building a provincial policy is an important step for B.C. I'm glad they are including the whole province in the framework discussion."
"This is not a one-time visit, either," said McKeown. "We are building a stronger network out of this roundtable process and we will be following up as we move this issue forward."
For more information, Peters and McKeown directed those interested to the BCAAC website and click on the BC Creative Convergence link.
