The best and most entertaining piece written so far on the topic of the recent devastating cuts to arts funding in my province of British Columbia is by Vancouver artist and writer Kate Armstrong. It was published a few months ago in Granville Magazine. I’m reprinting it here today as a counterpoint to the fantastically expensive Olympics currently taking place in Vancouver, which may or not be very closely related to our government’s recent demolition of the arts. For my own post on the Olympics and the recent troubles of the arts in BC, click here.

Got culture? Um, actually, no.
By Kate Armstrong

It’s been an interesting time for artists in British Columbia. The Campbell government announced a cut to funding for arts and cultural organizations by 50 percent this fiscal year [2009], and by 92 percent for 2010–2011. The budget will go from $47.8 million (2008) down to $3.75 million (2010–2011).

Some people falsely believe that this funding has been restored. Though a portion of one program’s funding has been restored, the overall budgets are still reduced by almost 100 percent in the next two years.

There are several reasons why it makes no economic sense to cut the budget for arts and culture. Primary among them is that BC’s arts and culture sector employs more than 78,000 people and contributes more than $5 billion each year to the provincial economy.

Sometimes people say to me, “if an artist is good, people will buy their paintings and they won’t need government handouts.” But it’s not about individual artists and their paintings. We can learn from the numbers: In 2008, the provincial government spent $47.8 million and gained $5 billion. That’s not a handout; it’s a gift. A gift from art to our shared economy.

And you’re part of it even if you “don’t go to these things.”

Art and culture are public amenities and need public investment. We aren’t talking about a painting that you might or might not like, and if you like it you buy it. We are talking about an investment in our shared culture, in public spaces, in cultural production of all kinds—some of it immaterial, all of it supporting larger ecosystems that create and inform things like our shared identity, the nature of our dialogues, our approaches to life and experience.

These are larger and more complex fields of activity than a one-to-one relationship between an object and a purchaser.

10 points to address common misconceptions about the cultural industries:

1. Artists are not spending their time at champagne soirées at the taxpayer’s expense. Artists are among the most underpaid professionals in our society.

2. Culture is an industry, not something that just “happens.” You’re thinking of people who make pictures of owls using bottle caps.

3. Art is not about artists—it is about communities and culture. This discussion is not only art, it is music, dance, film, heritage, publishing, video, media, sound, design, theatre, creative youth programs, social outreach, community festivals, animation, fashion.

4. Culture is not a hobby. Running the Children’s Festival or arranging an international visual art exhibition is not something we can do in our spare time.

5. Just because you usually experience the effects of our work in your spare time doesn’t mean we produce it in our spare time.

6. Artists are not “fancy.” Art is a hugely important part of our shared culture. Were the cave paintings fancy? Do you like written language? Have you ever seen a movie or worn a nice shirt or walked through a public space?

7. Even if you don’t like the art, understand what the art is, or know what is involved in making it, that doesn’t mean it has no value, or that it isn’t part of an economy, or that the person who produces the art should do it for free. Most people’s jobs are a mystery to people outside their industry, and no one questions the validity of those jobs or suggests that their children could do them better. Do we raise those questions about people who work in helium detection, vine training, or indoor advertising management?

8. The provincial grants we’re discussing do not entirely pay for the operations of these cultural associations, so extract the word “parasite” from your economic counter-argument. These grants represent a small but crucially important portion of total support and income for a range of organizations. The amount of money being cut from the provincial budget that will be so crippling to the arts community represents only 1/20th of 1 percent of the total provincial budget. To put it in perspective, the contingency fund for the 2010 Olympics is more than twice this amount.

9. People in these industries work hard, hold jobs and have families. Artists support themselves through their art and their work.

10. Was there a reason you chose to live in a city and not in a closet? Do you want to be from somewhere?

Links to further information: www.stopbcartscuts.ca

Snowdrops, but no snow on the mountains around Vancouver in the warmest January on record. The organizers are busily trying to manufacture snow for the winter Olympics which start in 2 weeks, but the mountains still look extremely green. This should be interesting.

Vancouverism is, as Wikipedia defines it, an urban planning and architectural technique named (obviously) after the city that pioneered it. It is “characterized by mixed-use developments, typically with a medium-height, commercial base and narrow, high-rise residential towers to accommodate high populations and to preserve view corridors.” An exhibition by the same name opens tomorrow at a university space in Woodward’s, one of Vancouver’s newest mixed-use building projects. Created by architecture critic Trevor Boddy, Vancouverism has travelled to Paris and London and is now back in Vancouver for the Olympics. If you’re going to be in Vancouver, it’s worth taking a look, or you can visit the websites. View of a component of the exhibition at Canada House in London below:

More from Wikipedia:

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Graphic design isn’t usually my focus, but when you’re interested in design and are living amidst the deluge of an impending Olympics in your hometown, the tide of graphics is impossible to ignore. Here’s a small sample of political cartoons and posters that incorporate the various Olympic logos – the standard logo with the five rings, as well as the Vancouver 2010 “Inukshuk” logo. (For controversy about the Inukshuk logo see here.) Above is Corey Rollins’ poster about Vancouver’s famous drug and prostitution problem (at left), which is based on the official Vancouver 2010 logo (at right). Rollins also did the healthcare poster below, and the taser shirt too, I think, but I’m having trouble verifying that. I’ll add more graphics to this post as I collect them, just in order to keep them all in once place, so check back if you’re interested. The issues being addressed in these graphics, as you can see, are homelessness and eviction, Vancouver’s infamous drug problem (which is sort of headquartered a few blocks from the stadiums and Olympic village, not to mention my studio), appropriation of First Nations’ imagery and land, environmental destruction, corporate/real estate development, debt, police action, suppression of free speech (Google “Free Speech Zones”), corporate perq’s and all of the other problems that generally accompany an Olympic Games. Being saddled with an Olympics during an economic downturn is no doubt increasing Vancouver’s level of unrest even further. Before you imagine that these are all overreactions, consider this: there is BC legislation waiting to be passed that could mean a 10,000 fine and/or jail time for anyone putting up an anti-Olympics sign in the window of his/her own house, under which law police will have the right to enter your home and remove it. I’ve even had elderly women tell me they’re so incensed that they’re planning to put a sign up too. In a surprising and much-appreciated move, though, the Vancouver police (who are really in need of good PR) held a press conference two days ago announcing that they will not enter any house to remove a sign nor will they lay charges. This will win them a lot of fans. Almost all of these graphics were found here. For a post on the official 2010 graphics on this blog, see here. NOTE: I’m not sure why people conclude that political cartoons equal violent protest. They don’t, and it seems to go without saying that trying to repress them stands a much better chance of causing violence than allowing them.

The flag above was produced by artist Kathryn Walter back when Toronto was bidding (unsuccessfully) for a summer Olympics. The artist recently donated the flag to one of the non-profit art centres in Vancouver that has had its funding abruptly cut by the provincial government, just prior to the Olympics. The government has claimed that the Olympic debt has nothing to do with the recent radical cuts to cultural funding in BC but there are doubts. Projected economic benefits of the Games have this year been downgraded from approx 10 billion to just under 4 billion [update - 1 billion], while the cost of the Olympics leapt from 3 or 4 billion to 7 or more billion. For a small province of only 4 million people, that’s a big debt to be carrying, especially on top of the recession-related deficit of billions we were already burdened with.

Above are the 3 Olympic mascots: Sumi, Quaatchi and Miga. Below is a graphic from the Poverty Olympics, “Give 2010 the finger.”

The four political cartoons immdiately below are from the No2010 site – not sure who the artist is. The 5 interconnected handcuffs motif has actually appeared at prior Olympics as well, including Torino and the Chicago bid.

Above, image by Gord Hill, Kwakwaka’wakw & Riel Manywounds, TsuuT’ina/Nak’azdli, June 2007. Below, Wolves by Ange Sterrit, Gitxsan.

Ignoring the problems of hosting the Olympics, which are serious and many (and as a Vancouverite I’m speaking from experience), let’s just compare the graphic design from two different Canadian Olympics. The Montreal graphics were uniformly brilliant. It’s considered bad form to criticize the Vancouver 2010 graphics because of the tragic death of the head designer at a young age, but I don’t know, this is not a 2010 Olympics-promotion blog. Pax all those people who like the Vancouver 2010 Olympics graphic identity – and the corresponding new 2010-related City of Vancouver signage – but to me they all look very strongly like the unfortunate love-child of feminine hygiene packaging and corporate clip art designed by committee. Messy, busy, commercial, and they look like the bad Illustrator photo-traced layers they are. Vancouver, how many more design failures will you tolerate? Of course, a city that will build a dried-blood-coloured main library in the shape of the gladiatorial coliseum in Rome (and I can hardly believe I’m describing reality in that sentence: a library in the form of a blood-sport arena!) is capable of large-scale mistakes. See a longer post on the beautiful Montreal Olympics graphics on this blog, and more Vancouver 2010 Olympics graphics on the CDR. For the politically-incorrect 2010 Olympic logo debacle, see the CBC. [Update Feb 13: Douglas Coupland had this to say in conversation with the New York Times:

NYT: I see there is controversy over the design of the official Olympics logo, which is based on the Inuit stone marker known as an Inukshuk.
DC: Inuit culture is north of here, in the Canadian Arctic, and it has nothing to do with the lives of anyone in British Columbia. If you want to use the First Nations motifs for your logography, use the ones that are actually from here. A lot of people are kind of cheesed off.

I voted against these Olympics and am extremely annoyed by their crippling social and financial costs, their corporate profiteering and their draconian trouncing of free speech, but if they’d had good graphic design, I could have put politics aside and given them credit for that at least. Instead, Vancouver has been handed what it perhaps deserves, weak design that wouldn’t even make the qualifying round for a design Olympics if there were such a thing.

Feminine hygiene packaging. That’s what this is.

As a kid I knew Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant off by heart, including the monologue (long story), but I never intended to actually end up living in a church myself. In 2002 I was looking for a cheap fixer-upper in Vancouver’s somewhat sketchy downtown eastside, back when prices were really low here, and suddenly a rundown little wooden church came on the market. On a lark I made an appointment to see it, and two days later I ended up owning it, something I’ve regretted more than once. Everyone who sees it tells me he/she has always wanted to live in a church, and while I obviously understand that fantasy, I must say that the job of making a church livable is not for everyone. Even without changing the basic structure, footprint, roofline or even any of the rooms/doors/walls, it’s more work than your average house renovation. For one thing, houses are built upwards for a reason – smaller foundation, smaller roof, and heat travels up. For another, they contain storage! Cupboards! A little church, on the other hand, has none of those things because it’s effectively a barn. The place is livable now, but the decor is entirely haphazard still –  you think decorating in a small space is hard? Try having all your stuff in one big room! It’s a bit premature to publicly post photos of the place, but I’m doing it anyway because I need to get a head start on renting the space out during the 3 weeks of Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Olympics, as a way of paying off some of the restoration. Apologies for using this blog as craigslist – there will be a better post later, when things are more complete. Above is the church when I moved in, when the star and cross were still on the roof, nailed straight into the shingles and creating serious leaks. Jesus may have been a carpenter, but the church volunteers sure weren’t.

I took the above photo during the realtor’s open house, the first day I saw the place, and this is pretty much how I inherited it, including pool table and some 1970s green pews. Notice the wainscotting the whole way down the room, and the jade trim.

Above is the same room in 2006, a few weeks after the floors were finished. In 2007 the altar area became a fireplace alcove with a super-efficient Danish wood stove, below:

The giant timber bamboo in the altar area, above, was brought inside as a party decoration when it was still green. A heavy snowfall had snapped the stems in the garden outside. After a month or two it turned this blond colour and somehow I never took it back outside, because without it the altar is too austere.

Photos above and below show the front area, inside what was the tiny original church. That church was perpendicular to the main part of the later church, and even though it’s now all one room, you can tell that they were once at right angles because the ceiling trusses and floorboards run in a different direction. You can see this in the photo below, the one with the ceiling fans. The older part of the church, above, houses the front entrance, office (you can see a temporary desk set up while a wall-mounted desk is being made), and to the right are the master bedroom and bathroom. Above, the front doors are obscured by a hanging room divider made from British army snow camouflage netting. This will be replaced by a tall white rolling wardrobe that will double as a privacy pony wall, an item that becomes necessary when your front doors are at street level. There’s more info on each photo in the Flickr page – click on image. Below, you can see one of the only two original pews remaining from the earliest days of the church – they’re made out of the same Douglas fir as the building and have crosses carved into the each side. There were other pews from the 60s but they were cheap and had no redeeming features, so l I broke them up so that the heavy, old-growth Douglas fir could be re-used, including for an indoor swing.

Above is a view into the bedroom. The bed is inside the church’s original altar, a 5-sided cupola. The bed platform is a reconstruction of the original altar stage, which had been removed by a previous owner, and conveniently it fits a king size bed. And no, it doesn’t feel funny to sleep in the altar. After wondering if the place had been deconsecrated, I did some research and found that there is, in fact, no such thing as deconsecration. Deconsecration would essentially be the removal of a blessing, and apparently the removal of a blessing is the rough equivalent of a curse. It is heartening that Christian churches don’t remove blessings, not because I believe in blessings, but because the idea of removing them seems fishy. When a church sells one of its churches and its altar paraphernalia has been removed, the building automatically becomes a civilian, non-religious structure. There’s actually a long tradition of ex-churches being used for other purposes going back many centuries. Neighbourhood kids always ask if the place is haunted, but if it is, I’ve never noticed it. If it’s haunted, it’s haunted by the ghosts of the many cats and birds and rodents who died in the crawlspace, and whose skeletal remains, uncounted numbers of them, I had to remove. And a raccoon. I have photos of all of this in a file called “church horrors” but I will spare you.

The worst of the projects are now completed, after the sanding of the ceiling, substitution of drywall for plaster, insulation of all walls, ceiling and roof, refinishing of floors, re-roofing, updating of the kitchen and general repair and maintenance. It just needs decor fine-tuning and more storage, which at this point almost amount to the same thing. For more photos of the process, see below or click on photos to go to the Flickr set.

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