This week, I have been blessed to be a volunteer at the Prince George Dance Festival.
I wish I could have done more than the few hours that I could fit in with work. I marvel at the dedication of the team of volunteers who give countless hours to bring the Festival to life.
I think I have it right when I say that the festival is in its 41st year in the community. I know that for as long as I have been in Prince George (since 1996), this festival has been part of a yearly ritual that sees young, dedicated dancers bring their talents into competition. What is more special than the prizes and the trophies is the camaraderie and genuine support you see among dancers, parents and teachers who lovingly prepare skillful and artistically beautiful pieces of art.
Now you may wonder why I raise this point in a column on politics. Well, during the week, while I was watching the joyful dancers whisk through the halls at Vanier, I opened my news apps to discover that President Trump's proposed budget will gut the National Endowment for the Arts and public broadcasting. Now there is no doubt that I have a bias towards the arts. I have written in this column many times about my participation in the artistic community and I am pretty sure that I have told my story about going to theatre school in England after high school. And, while I did not end up following a career in the arts, my every day is informed by my training and by the skills I gained in the arts classroom and on the stage.
Still, I suppose, a good and enriching experience in the arts does not necessarily lead to an argument that the state should fund and support artistic, creative endeavours. Or does it?
In 2002, Richard Florida, an urban studies theorist, posited the idea that the "creative class" adds the spark to society... that leads to the ideas... that leads to the designs... that leads to the products... that have shaped the "competitive edge" of American ingenuity. But, he said: "The United States of America - for generations known around the world as the land of opportunity and innovations - is on the verge of losing its competitive edge... the great majority of U.S. business and political leaders, academics and economic analysts fail to grasp the true reason behind American success in innovation, economic growth and prosperity. It is not the country's generous endowment of natural resources, the size of its market, or some indigenous Yankee ingenuity that has powered its global competitiveness for more than a century. American's growth miracle turns on one key factor: its openness to new ideas, which has allowed it to mobilize and harness the creative energies of its people."
Florida goes on to propose that the creative class is enriched by the mobility of human beings and thus by immigration and the flow of ideas that comes through cultural exchange, research and invention. The 2004 article that I am citing points to fears that the U.S. is "allowing its creativity infrastructure to decay..." thus failing to support the creative class while other countries, including Canada, are overtaking the U.S. by supporting talent.
In a prophetic statement, Florida writes: "The United States may well have been the Goliath of the 20th century global economy, but it will take just half a dozen 21st-century Davids to begin to wear it down."
Last Wednesday, the New York Times wrote: "(The) proposed scrapping of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a key revenue source for PBS and National Public Radio stations, as well as the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars... was the first time a president has called for ending the endowments. They were created in 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed legislation declaring that any 'advanced civilization' must fully value the arts, the humanities, and cultural activity."
I would just add that if you don't think that dance is full of creative ideas, I challenge you to put eight people in a room, to put on a piece of music and get them to bring to life a story of love, heartache, loss, generosity, anger, hurt, frustration, joy, etc. by simply harnessing the movement of the body: the hand, the leg, the foot and the head through the love in the heart.
