The Visual Arts Summit: Advancing the Visual Arts
I became an arts advocate at a young age. While at college, I suddenly saw success as merely the capacity to memorize. I realized I could do anything – law, medicine, higher education – if I used my head. But in my heart, I wanted to be an artist. And whereas I could learn anything I chose to learn, I could not learn to be talented.
Talent, I decided, was something we are all born with, to some degree, and whatever we have can be developed. But the unique vision of the world that makes one artist, and not all artists, a creative innovator cannot be learned. And with this realization, to the disappointment of some, I abandoned academics once I had my degree in order to become professionally involved with the arts.
A reverence for creative/artistic genius became a driving force in me. An arts advocate was born in the process of this change in my life's direction. Inasmuch as artists play a critical role in a nation's cultural identity, I fought for greater government support of the arts and for the prioritization of the arts in the school curriculum.
I did a lot and always in concert with other arts advocates, even getting elected to the executive of the Canadian Conference of the Arts for many years and working with other national arts service organizations. I wanted changes in arts policies that never really happened. Whenever we were successful, and there were successes, outcomes were always less than what we had expected. Worse – way worse to me – was a government practice of making infrequent cash infusions into the arts to retire the debts of major performing and visual arts organizations.
The practice of retiring arts debt killed the advocate in me. I saw the debt retirement practice as rewarding failure while, at the same time punishment (at least a bad message) for the unrewarded organizations that operated responsibly and avoided debt. I lost confidence in the government and the arts service organizations with whom I was working that did not want to question the policy for fear of alienating their membership.
By mid-life, I was both impressed and frustrated by the dominance of representatives from the performing arts in arts advocacy organizations. Their creative process and products involve collaboration and they are highly organized artists; the producers negotiate collectively with the professional associations of performing arts through their own professional associations. The performing arts negotiate and lobby as a collective – a powerful collective in terms of the Canadian cultural community.
Visual artists, on the other hand, are usually unorganized except that the non-profit galleries are professionally affiliated, as are artist-run centres. Visual artists are not professionally assembled in a trade organization – the only artists in Canada that cannot define exactly what it is to be professional in their field. Without that, governments cannot qualify artists for employment insurance, pension benefits and/or the right to collective negotiations for wages or fees supported by legislation.
I have not researched and developed a thesis as to what visual artists "should" do to further the status of the visual artists and the visual arts in Canada. Were I about to do a PhD thesis, I would investigate what it would mean for the individual artist if a professional national service organization were formed for Canadian visual artists. My education and experience says brave steps are rewarded. I have long felt that if we could create an inclusive definition of what it is to be a professional visual artist in Canada, rewards would follow to the benefit of individual visual artists.
A think tank of esteemed professionals met in November 2007 to consider how best to advance the visual arts in Canada. Their goals include: "A more secure financial footing for Canadian visual artists; new partnerships among key players in the visual arts scene; more consumption of Canadian art; a more robust visual arts market; more donations to Canadian institutions; pride, appreciation, and support for visual art and artists; [and] recognition for Canada's visual art and artists both at home and abroad." You can read more about the "Visual Arts Summit" by visiting the website of the organizational partners at www.visualartssummit.ca
Theirs are lofty, admirable goals. If you visit their website and read about who the organizational partners are, and if you view the list of speakers, you cannot help but be impressed. But can they achieve their goals without what politicians like best – grass roots support or, put another way, large numbers of voting constituents?
Were a similar powerhouse of arts professionals assembled for a "Performing Arts Summit," the organizational partners would have a strategy that would involve the mobilization of the membership of the many labour associations and organizations that are part of their community. The performing arts can lobby knowing that they have a large constituency of voters to involve in their advocacy campaigns; the visual arts do not have this base of support so visual arts advocates have limited strength and reason for hope. That is why I feel the fist step for change, the essential step for visual arts advocates is to unify Canadian visual artists in a national professional association. Until that happens, I have little hope for advocacy initiatives with goals as grand as those of the Visual Arts Summit partners.
Many of the fraternity of partners at the Summit – the dealers, galleries, publishers, teachers, etc. – earn their income from the visual arts. They are part of the visual arts sector of our nation’Äôs economy. They are the top of the pyramid that has at its base the visual artists of our country – you and me. They live off the work of independent, unorganized creative talent that has no professional association. It is my view that without a service organization that advances, supports and protects the individual artist, the advancement of the visual arts in Canada has a limited prospect for success.
Now, moving out of middle age, I see the greatest hope for change in the social advancement of the arts in our teachers, not our politicians. When our educational curricula recognize and respect the value of creativity for self-expression and that creative innovation drives industry and commerce, the visual arts will advance politically, socially and economically.
(The Summit invites artists to sign their petition at www.petitiononline.com/visarts/petition.html)
ctyrell@shaw.ca
Opus Customer Service: