The original manifesto was posted online in April 2023 and can be viewed here.
There’s an election.
It’s a big one.
We (SGS, Owais and David Maggs) have made a thing.
It’s a start.
Let’s think out loud.
Let’s supercharge Canada.
www.createcanada.ca
Pro tip: Start by reading the statement here, and the latest post here.
Dear Owais,
We first published the Manifesto for Now in April of 2023.
And today I learned about the Stockdale Paradox.
James Stockdale was an American POW during Vietnam, and when asked how he made it through 8 years of captivity he said: “I never lost faith in the end of the story… I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”
Admiral Stockdale lost a lot.
He also said “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
Philosophically, existentialism (or insert most eastern influenced thinking here) is – in part – a recognition of our incarcerated selves. Sartre famously said: “man is condemned to be free.” Different stages of my life bring this sharp insight into HDTV clarity; ugly, flat, precise.
Like now.
The world has changed. We are living in a new geo-political reality. With that has come a renewed fervour for a TOTAL Canada. This is both weird and wonderful. Both powerful and oppressive. Regardless it is current. It is clear. And I have changed too. I have a clearer concept of my edges. I have become less of an optimist and more of a realist.
Returning to Sartre for a minute, he called “bad faith” an avoidance of our responsibility to acknowledge our freedom and our entrapment. His famous example was of an excellent waiter who forgot that they had other identities. That through this abnegation of responsibility, this waiter was living/acting in bad faith.
How are we in the arts and culture sector acting in bad faith? How am I? What have I chosen not to see?
Stockdale said that during his time as a POW, the optimists didn’t make it. They kept hoping that they would be released tomorrow, and in the end, the continuous disappointment broke their hearts.
I want us to make it. Point 9 in Manifesto for Now was to be our culmination.
When we started it felt urgent. We were captivated by how Canada had the whole world living in it. And we were frustrated that we – in the cultural sphere – were unable to harness this incredible opportunity. And now, suddenly, it feels like the world that Canada houses is precipitously close to being toppled. If this is true, then developing a new definition for a culture plan might have been more prescient than we thought and even more important than we had imagined. Why? Because tonight we find ourselves in the dark. We need to light a fire and create a map. And we need a plan. And unlike its 1951 predecessor, this culture plan needs to reflect the totality and complexity of the land and people north of the 53rd parallel. We need to see ourselves now and work fast to tell each other all the ways we are who we are. We have much. We need to understand both how to share our bounty and to help one another feel better because of it.
For me it started with writing this letter to you. To remind myself of all that I value and how our connection has helped untangle some of the knots.
It has felt like a worthwhile quest. And to quote – very loosely – from my new friend: “I never lost faith in the end of the story.”
And with eyes wide open I think we will get there, but for that we need more minds and hearts to join us.
SGS
Dear SGS,
I recently asked some friends at dinner, what will you do if we are actually invaded by the US? A third refused the premise as too outlandish to entertain. A third enthusiastically promised to die for Canada. A third remained silent. As I sat there, thinking about my unborn child due in a few weeks, I was afraid to answer my own question.
Black swans. Nassim Taleb coined this phrase to explain random outlier events with catastrophic consequences, that have the particular characteristic of humans always feeling the need to try and explain them retroactively. It feels like the rate of black swan sightings in our world is increasing. Is that true? Or is it just the vibe? Has the randomness increased? Or catastrophic-ness? Or has our baseline just changed of how much predictability we expect, nay, we demand, of our universe?
Through this writing, and our asking each other so many questions that have stumped each of us, I think we have come closer to what we want for culture. We had proclaimed wanting a “new definition for culture plan” – one that had much broader visions of what culture was, who it was for, where it lived. I think I have learned that I need to add to that hope a new want: I want a cultural plan that helps heal our culture. Not in a sideways accidental incidental way. I want it to directly tackle our wounds. There’s been something growing, that I can only call “the vibes” that feel like something has been going off. Everyone I know, everywhere, in every station, is feeling various degrees of bad. Everyone seems anxious or stressed or exhausted or lost. Yet, the progress train is travelling at hyperspeeds. My AI assistants are already more productive than me. We got Ozempic. And Succession. So why are we so gloomy? So gloomy that some of us decided to willingly, voluntarily give the steering wheel of the world’s most powerful country to a reality tv show host.
Some other wants: I want a culture plan that makes it easier for us to come together and break bread. That makes it more likely that I meet people who are different from me and that we share ideas in real time and space. I want to laugh loudly and with other people. I want to take my 8 month old niece and 4 year old nephew to magical places that inspire them and fill them with awe and wonder. I want my aging parents to feel like they belong. I want my neighbours to love each other.
I don’t know how long the trade war will last. I don’t know if actual physical war is in our cards. There are too many possibilities that have gone from black swans to gray swans, and we can’t pretend they don’t exist. But I do know that we are in a full blown culture war. We are fighting, above all, for values, for mythologies, for grand narratives. I want a culture plan that recognizes that’s what we are fighting for, and arms us accordingly.
As we come to an end of this thinking-out-loud experiment that is Manifesto for Now, I want to challenge our sector to not give into the despair and the doom scrolling. It’s gonna be rough. It’s gonna be scary. But I think we will emerge stronger on the other side. I think our job now, us who call ourselves artsworkers, is to support the troops. The troops in this case being the ordinary Canadians who are going to struggle with the Herculean task of keeping our hearts soft and open in the face of hate and fear. I think of the Holland Festival in Amsterdam, a major international cultural festival that was created as a response to WW2, because the leaders of that time didn’t want their people to become afraid of outsiders after the war. I think of how proudly Canadians sponsored Syrian refugees. I think of how people came together to help each other during the pandemic. We can do this, but we will need to constantly be offered reminders of our shared humanity.
I leave you with one of my favourite quotes: “The bad news is that we are falling without a parachute. the good news is there is no ground”. Chogyam Trungpa.
Owais
“Don’t go to an ATM if you’re hoping to get a muffin, because no matter how much you argue with the ATM, it is not going to give you a muffin because it’s an ATM.” – Seth Godin
We’ve been thinking a lot about institutions, the good, the bad and the ugly. There are the government institutions, funding institutions, educational institutions, civic institutions, big institutions, small institutions, community institutions, undocumented institutions, to name a few. We are both grappling with our own roles as authors of this manifesto whilst working inside institutions with a capital I, and we have some questions with a capital Q.
Our first: is for you, dear reader.
What do you think we need from our institutions? By “our institutions” we mean the cultural entities that act as operatives in our sector and with/within/despite whom we do our work. Think big, medium, small, think bricks and mortar, think groups of people doing things, think brands and logos, think not for profits; with this we hope several examples come to mind. Institutions have a way of inserting themselves -well – truly – just about anywhere.
But what are they, really?
Dictionary.com defines them as something familiar, something established, a kind of organization with a specific purpose. It’s really more of a verb than a noun. We are constantly making things familiar, organizing them, structuring them so we can repeat them, constantly instituting. It feels like a superpower when considered in this way. All kinds of amazing things have been made possible because of our instituting powers as humans. We went to the moon, cured a million diseases, can watch a South Korean cat in South Korea be a cat in real time from anywhere in the world.
But you can’t do any of these things, the moon, the cure, the #realtimekoreancat, without the institution!
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
So with this, comes our challenge. If it ain’t exactly broke but it ain’t exactly working… what to do? When 13% of music venues have shuttered in Toronto since the pandemic and the unemployment rate is on a consistent climb, artists are being priced out of rents in urban centres and government funding for the arts is being clawed back at a breathtaking rate…how can we, in good conscience, not look at our institutions and ask what’s not working?
It’s a tough question for institutions. What’s not working?
We are so good at instituting, that the struggle to change anything is real. How do we know that a millimetre move to the right will improve things when it might not? The certainty of the creaking floor feels better than risking the investigation of what makes it creak; with that, how does institute move to de-institute or perhaps re-institute. Institutions go to great lengths to build defenses against outside threats. Institutional immune systems attack anything new and different (like a virus or a new idea) to protect the mainframe. Institutions like grooves, ruts, marks, their familiarity is comforting and comfort very quickly becomes a lens to our world view. This makes sense. But common sense is also an institution. And can delimit something brilliant that lives on the other side of common sense. Institutions are like a trap. They can kill the predator without recognizing that feeding it might have transformed prey into a pet. In both instances the institution holds the keys and there will always be outsiders and insiders alike looking for food. We all need to eat. Institutions are – therefore – here to stay.
In the US, with the imminent instatement of a rerun President, we are watching with a sense of dread… while a sense of comfort and familiarity is being withdrawn. The media that we read intends to crush the virus or the new ideas that the rerun president is employing. Most of Trump’s nominees are drunks or cheats or racists or sex offenders; all of them are WRONG. But the media that we don’t tend to read has the exact opposite response to Trump’s nominees. And as of right now, that story, the story of change, has a lot more battering power than the walls built by boomers who placed flowers in the barrels of guns. That protest and the walls built by it are almost sixty years old. It’s over. Do we wish it to be over? Well, yes, sure, of course we do. Vietnam was so last century. But…do we wish it to be over in the ways it looks like it is ending? No. We don’t. But it is ending in the way that it is. This is what is happening.
So…to survive…to possibly, eventually, to thrive…
We need re-instituting, de-instituting, and new instituting. We’ll wager a bet that the bigger and older the institution the harder all of this feels and the bigger the need to figure it out.
But reinstituting means accepting the reality. The reality is that for now, things are changing. Promises that we lived by, housing, healthcare, compassion, have been slipping away.
But what about ART?
No! Not the right question. (we asked it, don’t worry!)
Okay,
“But what about respite?”
“better…”
“Relief and repair?”
“Better…”
“What about our spirits?”
“Best yet!”
“What about getting a break from the storm, so that we can live to fight another day? What about that?
“Yes!”
What about that question?
There is a famous study about drowning rats and the pop culture conclusion drawn from it was the human need for hope. We wonder if it might also be possible to conclude that the experiment suggests that what humans need is a break. Like “gimme a break”. That without this taken literally, humans, and therefore institutions not only can’t catch up, they can’t thrive.
Is it possible for institutions in this moment of significant global change to do things differently? Can institutions become spaces that look at respite, relief and repair, that care for our spirits, so that we can live to fight another day? Is this possible? And if not, why not?
“So, yeah: I’m worried about our institutions. I’m angry at our institutions. I don’t want to defend them. I want them to work.” Ezra Klein November 22, 2024
What does a “working institution” mean in the cultural sphere?
This seems to us to be the fundamental question.
Because, our institutions have an important role. They are our memory. Our yesterday is informing our present and they – government institutions, funding institutions, educational institutions, civic institutions, big institutions, small institutions, community institutions, undocumented institutions – will be the things we look to when the dust settles. But there is a seduction in hindsight – it’s 20/20 (though we’d argue it’s also rose-tinted) and the future… well, let’s just say it is full of unknowns and many wrong turns lie ahead. Institutions can insulate but they have to be very smart. And they will likely have to change and accept change in order to survive and in order that they can be of service.
The tectonic shifts continue. Recently it was announced that Berlin, the triple platinum standard in culture, is facing a major funding cut – 13% of its almost €1 billion cultural budget (Fun fact: Toronto’s culture budget is about $100 mil CAD, much less than the ENTIRETY of the “drastic and brutal” cuts Berlin is facing). And this was done with less than 2 months notice.
Annica is the Buddhist term for impermanence, it shows in many religions and philosophies; this too shall pass.
Accepting reality doesn’t mean laying down and giving up. It means quite the opposite. It means being honest about whether we’re making muffins or giving out cash.
What it doesn’t mean is defending our institutions dogmatically or tearing them down recklessly. It’s complicated, we know.
Institutions gave us yesterday, and we will need that yesterday tomorrow but for today, don’t waste this moment by using the same recipe when all the ingredients are changing. You might make muffins again. And people may want them when you do. But for now, how can institutions truly help?
Like we said; we have questions with a capital Q. What about you?
Oscar Wilde famously quipped “Art is useless”. Like all quotes, it’s been taken out of context. Later in the same letter he explains his point more fully, “A work of art is useless as a flower is useless. A flower blossoms for its own joy. We gain a moment of joy by looking at it. That is all that is to be said about our relations to flowers. Of course man may sell the flower, and so make it useful to him, but this has nothing to do with the flower. It is not part of its essence. It is accidental. It is a misuse.”
If you want to make money, make money. If you want to make art, make art. This idea is widely held and yet the rage that underpins the lack of reward for art making marches in lockstep. Is an art practice and an expectation of security – as a direct result of this practice – at divisive odds with itself?
Anyone who has been with someone they love for the long term, can attest that not being able to tolerate any change in your partner, is a recipe for diminishing returns on your investment. It will lead to a market crash, and charges of controlling and restrictive behaviour. You can love your craft and choose to continue to stick with how you love it… while the world around you and, possibly, inside you, has changed. You lean in harder with unchanged love and your resentments build. Your vocation may start loving you back in different ways than when you first flirted, then courted, and ultimately committed. In other words…”Your partner” may be doing something wonderful that an unchanged “you” needs changed eyes to recognize.
If the spiritual belief holds that we are all one, then how is it even conceivable that we are not permeable or impermanent in our selfhood? How is it permissible to believe that while art is filled with chaos, revolution and joy, that institutions that support it are not spaces that must contend with chaos, revolution and joy in their practices?
So let’s do it. Let’s invite in some chaos, revolution and joy.
Let’s begin with the sacred fence that exists between being a Professional and NOT. “That’s not Art, it’s just Entertainment”. “Their work is so Commercial”. “She is a REAL Artist”. We say these things and hear them being said, but what do we really mean by them? It feels like a hierarchy between something desirable or NOT, and some calcified ideas about what makes an artist an artist. The first commandment is that the real artist must be free of any corrupting forces. The second commandment is that artists must be paid. The third is that artists must be protected.The fourth is that artists must be revolutionary. The fifth commandment is that artists must be poor. The sixth is that artists must be bad with money. The seventh is that artists must look a certain way. The eighth is that artists must be values driven. Ninth is that artists are non-violent. What is your 10th?
After a very successful theatrical investigation, a good friend of ours quickly states: “I feel bad about the artists not being paid”. And we say: “but you paid them, you fed them, and everyone had a great time.” They say: “I know, but I feel bad”. And we say: “is it because you are not paying equity rates?” And even if they didn’t cop to it… which occasionally they will, we will always believe it is that. It is not that the artists are not being paid, it is that they are not being paid by the rules set up inside the fencing for “professional”.
And those lucky few who do make the “professional” rates? After the dues, the agents, the precarity and the childcare – they are still ultimately donating “to the cause”. At this point someone will proclaim that equity minimums were hard fought for! We don’t refute the blood, sweat and tears that were spilled in the quest to make the professional artist’s life a viable one. It was a noble pursuit, and yet, here we are. Very very very few can survive on just their art, and for the rest, it is not their fault.
It’s not our fault.
We need to understand what we gain by building fences.
What is the purpose of a fence? It is to keep some things out and some things in. It is to demarcate who is “us” and who is “them”. Who is a real artist and who is a community member? We need categories, of course. The human psyche can’t cope without them – probably.
Some fences we are interested in thinking about:
What are these fences serving right now? What are they keeping out and what are they keeping in?
The fences of “professional” and “commercial” are keeping something locked away, otherwise why would we need them? Some of that is a scarcity of resources – for sure, but some of it is status, identity, change. Instead of fixating on how we protect “us” from diminishing portions of pie, what might a fixation on growing the pie yield? The “art is labour” rhetoric threatens to withhold some value from the public in exchange for greater wages and security. But when the public is not asking for more of what we are providing, when our problem is apathy not exploitation, who do we demand more from and in exchange for what?
Is it possible that – by untethering professional and commercial fences from the joys of experiencing art – abundance lies on the other side? If we are to take our unchanged love and change it… what hidden beauty and possibilities might begin to emerge? What if, by focusing our dwindling energy and power on sharing our love further and wider, we actually find more love in return? If our demands are not being heard, maybe an invitation will.
The removal of fences is not easy. The first stage that follows is chaos, because we collapsed the categories and nothing makes sense anymore. This is painful and scary, we need to be compassionate to ourselves about how painful and scary it is. But it’s likely that some elements of chaos are required to offer new paradigms, new possibilities. There will be a cost associated with this changed love. It may be as minimal as discomfort, it may be as high as loss. But we are already at a loss.
We believe in beauty, joy, wonder, spiritual uplift and all those good things. And we are not opposed to the market, the sale, the transaction and an exchange of value. Many in the arts are opposed to the coarseness of money, the evils it can bring, and yet believe in the second and third commandments (see above). It’s thorny.
Don Druick, a Canadian Playwright, wrote a play called Tulip. It is about the great “Tulip Mania” in the Dutch Republic in the 17th century, documenting the speculative bubble and crash in the price of tulips that has since become a metaphor for any major deviation in prices from intrinsic value. The tulip itself didn’t change, but the world around it did. The price of something is not its value, and conversely the value of something cannot (and should not) be determined solely by its financial utility.
You can pay a gardener to garden, but you can’t pay a flower to bloom. Maybe our insistence that the flower blooms on command and is sold and consumed in a free market for maximizing returns to the gardener doesn’t make the flowers smell any better.
“A work of art is useless as a flower is useless”.
This is a tough essay to write because we are now almost a full year into our Manifesto for Now and “Now” is a very different place than it was then. Yet, we are hearing, and have been for years, that the problem is the money. We propose that the money is a red herring, a distraction. We write this essay to advocate that what “Now” needs is imagination, from there the money might follow, which is a hell of a lot more interesting than the other way around.
What does it mean to imagine? The root of the word comes from the Latin “imago”, meaning image. It is to create a picture, one that exists only in the mind, and potentially shared amongst many minds. This is a superpower for us. We are the experts in it. Our audiences, our communities, our institutions, the two of us writing this – we are all seeking inspiration. We are all in need of better, brighter future possibilities. And whether or not we feel like those futures are possible, it is our imperative to try to imagine them. To insist on imagining better. Again and again and again.
You approach an entryway. You know where to go, because there are people with pink shoes standing on either side of the opening saying:
“Welcome”.
You were told someone would be there, and there is. You are comforted by this. The person on your side of the entryway smiles at you. Another person, approaching from the other direction, must have just received a smile of welcome from their greeter too, because you note a complete change in the shape of their face and the weight in their shoulders. A bluebird flies out into the street, cutting between them and you. You laugh. You don’t know why. The greeters offer an open arm gesture to beckon you in.
You have no ticket. There were no tickets to get, instead you received a personal invite, in the mail, with a date, time, location, the first page of a short story that immediately captivated you, and it was attributed to a friend of a friend of yours. Cool! You keep walking, and as you do, they say “Enjoy the show, Vee”. You love that they know your name, how did they make that leap?
Many of our marketing materials tell our audiences and our funders that we are meeting the moment. But what is our evidence of that? In critical moments when our medium is given the opportunity to engage, we retrench. We are responding as politicians, not artists. We have to stop this.
In another dimension you are back staring at a set of orange doors, talking to a friendly person in pink shoes:
You say: “I am really looking forward to this.” And you are.
You have heard many accounts of this experience. You have been reading about Sofar events, and Fever Candlelight concerts, and interactive water lantern festivals; you have been made curious by EXPERIENCE. When people told you about this one, none of them talked about the show, just the experience of arrival.
You turn to find the person that arrived at the same time as you, but you are alone. “Mama said there’ll be days like this” wafts from an invisible speaker. You love your mom. The orange doors beckon. Through the glass windows in the top half of each door, you see a forest of green with darts of bright yellow and red. It’s enchanting. As you push through the doors you find a very long dinner table. Some people are seated, others are milling about, and you sense what can only be described as an abundance of oxygen. Before you can form any anxious thoughts, you spot the person who arrived at the same time as you, they nod and smile, you breathe in the oxygen, then a friendly-seeming person passes by you, but on their way, pauses to say:
“There is a place card with your name on it and if you feel like a drink, we have a series of bars down each of those three forest paths”, they say pointing, “don’t worry” they say, “you won’t get lost, and if you do get anxious, look for the people with the pink sneakers, there are six of us and only 200 of you. It will be easy to spot us. And if seeing is not your thing you will hear us, those of us here to help, by our hopscotch step.”
They laugh, and say:
“At least that’s what we call it. Close your eyes and listen.”
You hear hop hop land, hop hop land. And you are transported to a sidewalk you played on as a kid.
This feels like an idea of performance heaven.
The promise of heaven is not sustainable. This is our unending challenge with innovation and imagination. Ideas are just like us, they have a shelf life, and like us they too shall pass. There is a lifecycle to any idea: there’s the status quo, there’s the potential for a radical new way, it either resonates or fails, if it works it gets co-opted by the mainstream. Formation, discovery, comfort. Start again.
That will happen in this heavenly place too. This idea will tire. It will start to cost more money to sustain it. As the idea ages, its status will grow but its vitality will diminish. This wellspring of imagination will begin to dry up as institutions step in to shore it back up. But that is not yet. That is not now.
Right now, the light is dappled, the sounds melodious, you can’t find where the sunlight is coming from but you are warmed. A pink shoed person approaches you on the path and says, as they extend a drink towards you:
“Here you go! I chose the lemon one for you but if you change your mind the lime one is waiting for you on the counter. I really hope you enjoy the show”, they say, as they skirt past you with a hop hop land. You like the lemon soda. A lot. How did they get this just right? Please – you might think – don’t ever let me figure out the trick.
In a world of what “ifs” we wonder what might happen if we put all of our accumulated skills together and built catered experiences for our audiences for “while they are there” – NOT to get them there. NOT to get them back. But to offer them a singular experience of care, thoughtfulness and nurturing while they are there. The money has already been spent on all of the marketing staff, offices, and software. In the world of “what ifs” what might it look like to centralize the marketing findings into the spinal fluid of the experience for the show?
“Great, another neolib/neocon idea that valorizes data over artistry”, we hear you thinking… But what if data is now – in 2024 – one of our strongest design and collaborative partners? We live in changed times. We keep saying this.
You are sitting down at the table that you are known to enjoy, you look to the person next to you, read their name card, and as they smile at you, you say, “Hi Kay, have you done one of these before?” And Kay responds, “No Vee, I haven’t, but I’m excited. I feel like a kid. I can’t remember the last time I felt this kind of giddy. It feels like anything is possible”. Now you are smiling too.
Indeed, it is. For a while. Until we begin again. Let’s.
Again and again and again.
Following a recipe is a great way to recreate something exactly. 2 tablespoons not teaspoons. Make sure to rinse the starch off first. Thoroughly dry before mixing. The recipe tells us where we are headed, and how to get there. Then the phone dings. Your honoured guest forgot to mention that they are deathly allergic to most foods that begin with the letter “A”. It’s so ridiculous that you laugh. It can’t be. You send back a funny emoji. And you keep following the recipe. Your phone dings. “Sorry, not joking. Not all “A” foods but most.” WTF? Do you cancel, do you insist on the arugula salad or debase your culinary skills by offering bread and olives? Tough choices! Is there an app (or best practice) for this? What recipe do you use now? With the ding of a text, the problem and the context have completely shifted.
In Ralph Douglas Stacey’s Stacey Matrix, complexity is neatly explained as the distance from agreement and certainty. The more agreement and certainty, the simpler the solutions – just do the right thing that everyone agrees is right. The less agreement and certainty, the more complex the problem, the further the distance – and there may be no solution at all. Now what?
At least since the 1950s – in the wake of the post-World War Two nation-state building frenzy – our not-for-profit arts sector seems to have been designed for agreement. Whether by consent or coercion, there appears to have been a shared POV that the past was nowhere near as good as the future. Yet, like most agreements, a shared belief on this point dissipated even as the ink was drying. “Before the Canada Council was founded, there were clearer ways to get funding!” some cried, “In the 1970s you could just roll over and there would be money for your show!” grunge artists of the 90s lamented, “There used to be only one (fill in the blank) company, now there are hundreds!” exhausted creators of the 2000s said. And “the world is ending, what are we doing?”, pretty much everyone in the middle of a 2023 night. Yet, the sector still seems to be operating with infrastructure, with a kind of best practice that supports a strange agreement that the future will be brighter. If you just keep going the allergy to A foods will soften. I think food manufacturers believed the same thing about that strange gluten intolerance movement… And yet.
Change has been happening. In fact, it can’t be stopped. How we respond to it is what fascinates. “Excellence” has been removed from general criteria used to describe artistic creation and the artists who make it in the not-for-profit sector. Its removal came about as a response to the barriers, hidden and not, stopping people from contributing to the performing arts world. The word was deemed exclusionary. And it is. On the surface, this was an excellent move. It felt like a good ingredient-rebalancing…
The word has been excised from polite progressive discourse, but the world keeps showing us that it is still valued and valorized. And like most awards for “the best”, excellence rarely has much to do with skill and more to do with the ability to be in fashion (artistic or otherwise). And yet, there have been, throughout our history breakthrough performances that have completely changed the game. But – of course – “breakthrough” has the barrier built right in. We still want what we want. The shiny thing that outshines all others. A rose, as it goes-
Since we can’t employ the word “excellent”, we look for other ways to access it (excellence). Best practices seem tied to this… The perfect meal. The blockbuster season. The subscription series. The board of directors. Endowments. Strategic plans. Best practices are linked to a belief that there is a traceable set of ingredients. The cultural sector appears to analyze these practices in order to emulate not inquire. Answers are needed. Best practices provide them.
There are too many restaurants that appear to enter a decline when they publish their recipe books. It’s as though the mystery as to how they made those delectable choices was lost once the archive, the best practice, came to be. Best practices are about past practice. Not best. The past, like our youth, is a country we cannot travel to.
Quiz: Is the following statement true?
A recipe for a consequential Canadian city is an opera, a symphony, a ballet, and a regional theatre.
If so, why? And if not, why not?
When was this tacit agreement about cultural consequences made? Is a plan, that was rolled out in 1951, still meritorious of our unexamined regard? When you look around your city, who among you truthfully thinks: what this city needs is a ballet and thank god we have one? Is the recipe for culture creation in Canada still serving Canadians? Does this best practice set us up for a better future or has it become a mediocre emblem of “that’s just the way we have always done it”? This is not an assault on those forms. Those forms are great! But a case for their vitality and relevance in every city is one that truly must be made. In 2023. Humans have short memories and develop habits quite quickly. Together we are likely to maintain ossifying approaches because we believe them to be fixed. They are not. And most especially so when the context has changed. As it demonstrably has now.
Our contention is that best practice is based on addition and innovation is based on subtraction. In this moment, we believe that innovation is key. But the way forward is unknown. We can’t bank on it, precisely because it is not like it was. We can’t pull out the Joy of Cooking to guide us. But we can still find joy in making a meal. Bread and olives sound pretty good and arugula wilts fast and tends towards bitter. And we say this as two people who love arugula.
Quiz: Is the following statement true?
Operating funding is the most sacred pillar of our public funding system.
If so, why? And if not, why not?
For most companies, it can’t provide a living wage to any of its key employees and it limits access to some of the other quicker possibilities for funding. In some ways, it is not unlike subscription models. They too are no longer able to float a company. Both operating funding and subscriptions offer some ‘cash-in-the-bank-certainty” but they also impose huge parameters on an arts organization’s ability to grow in different directions, to respond to the unforeseen, to improvise. What if operating funding and subscriptions, a former undisputed set of best practices, are now truly mediocre at best and damaging at worst?
Let’s be clear. We would love unlimited supplies of guaranteed money. But that’s not what we have now. From the Fringe to the National Ballet to ImagiNative – no one has enough operating funding to actually survive on it alone. And strangely we don’t question this. Why? Just because there doesn’t appear to be enough money doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t question how funds are disbursed. Why shouldn’t a preeminent organization be able to work and thrive solely on operating funds? The question seems ludicrous. “Everyone knows the answer!”, we exclaim. But do we? The history of public funding for the arts was based on the premise that arts organizations would receive 85% from the government and take care of the other 15% through their own resources (Dolgoy, 2007). With a few exceptions, most operating funding is now the inverse or worse. At what point is it no longer meaningful to call it “operating” or “core”?
Right now, just to survive, everyone needs to raise a lot more money, and sell a lot more tickets, just to prove that they are a viable company to receive operating funding. Countless hours spent upholding a building and bureaucratic structures designed around a mythical model of stability that we simply don’t have today, and are very unlikely to get any time soon. It smacks of a shell game. There is not enough, there won’t be enough, so let’s move some stuff around, and keep the game going. It’s like a gumbo on the stovetop, you have to keep it on simmer until, well until, shrimp season opens and because of – “oh shit, it’s evaporated, desiccated and the pot is ruined”
We believe that we are more likely to let the dish burn than improvise or change the recipe. Why? Loss aversion. In the linked study, it appears clear that we are far more reticent to lose stuff than we are desirous of gaining stuff. This is a huge problem for the performing arts. There is a lot of stuff that needs to go for a lot of great new stuff to come up. The meal we were going to make before learning about the honoured guest’s allergies was actually nowhere near as tasty as the bread, olives, beer and brownies that the new meal became. The first meal plan was perfect for last week’s honoured guest but not tonight’s. And while we are already excited to serve this again next week, we have just learned that the incoming honouree can’t handle anything starting with A or B.
Uh Oh.
There is not a lot we can count on. Embracing this true complexity, this reflection of the uncertainty of the world we are in today might begin to open up our imagination for what we’re in for. We have to abandon the nostalgic calls that constantly compare everything to “2019 numbers” and start to ask ourselves what we want 2029 to look like. We realize the contradiction here. On the one hand, we’re arguing that we don’t know what the future holds and we need to be much more honest about that. On the other, we’re asking ourselves to really use our imaginations. We need to make some bets, even in vain. But the best chance we have of seeing the opportunities with clarity is starting by letting go of the assumptions we are holding onto.
When the problem and context are familiar and understood, please for the love of all that is good, use a best practice. We would. But that’s not the moment we are in.
“Run from what’s comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now on I’ll be mad.”
― Rumi
Here’s the thing: we agree. It is unwieldy, very stressful and feels dangerous. How can it not be? We agree! And yet… multiple studies tell us the exact opposite. There is a 72-80% reduction in crashes that cause harm and 35-47% decrease to ALL crashes after the change is made. Who wouldn’t want this? Apparently most North Americans.
We are talking about roundabouts. We are talking about the inevitability of change. And yes, we are actually talking about the profound discomfort of AI. Amid hardships facing arts workers, the unhoused, the uncared for, the planet, another revolutionising change is upon us. We love humanity. So let’s figure out how to love our humaness in the age of AI.
In a recent study carried out at UBC a very powerful finding was made. When subjects were told that one piece of art was created by a human and the other by AI, the majority of respondents favoured the work created by a human. The study then showed that even if the work was created by AI, but the respondents were told it was created by a human, that the AI piece was chosen. What this study indicates is that when it comes down to it, humans will choose humans. We, us humans, are attached, we believe in our preeminence. We believe that our creativity is sacrosanct and that it separates humans from everything else. But what happens when we can’t tell the difference?
We are afraid. It’s okay to be frightened. It’s scary. In a recent Harvard Business Review podcast we learned that a leading digital artist has moved away from defining himself as an artist. He makes all his money helping others navigate the change and showing how AI has completely changed his workflow. According to this “former artist”, charging by time to create is no longer a viable way to express value. AI can do what took him two weeks in one hour. He can still create work, but the work, unless provenance is more important to the buyer than the result, cannot support him as it once did. We can market attempts to chronicle our process to prove we created something and not AI, but this is only interesting to an investor cleaving to notions of authenticity. Strange how Walter Benjamin predicted this moment over 100 years ago. The printing press, digital printer, the 3D printer, these were the proverbial canaries. And we have come – as artists – to love those canaries. A lot. We adapted to all of those canaries. We worked with them. We grew. (“we” in this instance refers to artists)
Based on other non-human centred work, the notion that humans are the owners of creativity has also been shown to be incorrect. In this article the anthropocentric view of art is challenged by the findings of animals creating art that coheres to a human definition of what art is, of what art does. Somehow this doesn’t feel as threatening. It doesn’t overwhelm. There have been aeons-worth of opportunities for animal art to surpass ours. It has never happened. Speed, it seems, is a value worth noting in our discomfort regarding AI. From fire to AI, the journey of technology is about humans wanting to do things faster. We can’t slow it down. The “it” of AI is too tentacled, too imprecise. It has been working in the background for much longer than ChatGPT. Our cars have been driving us – or at least reporting on us – for a number of years now. So if slowing “it” down is not an option, then what is? Perhaps it is to acknowledge our slowness. Remember that amazing book about running – Born to Run? Of the many mystic and wonderful things relayed in this story, first among them is how humans can outrun all manner of fast cats and predators, not because we are fast, but more because we are persistent. We have endurance. What values can humans – as slow machines – bring to the decidedly NOT human speed of AI? What might a new dance look like? Perhaps there are some beautiful things to be found, moves to discover? Hard, for example, not to be in awe of a stroke victim re-gaining the ability to communicate with the world after 10 plus years of incarceration inside a functioning, feeling, living human. Let’s dance! We love humanity. How can we keep this in view as we explore the prevalence, the speed, the unforeseeable potentials and dangers of AI?
Is humanity a heritage culture to preserve? Or are we innovators, here to infiltrate and collaborate with the technology as it evolves? And in so doing continue to evolve ourselves? Technology will require direction. “Slow” generally correlates with wisdom. Slow means slow. Fast means fast. Tortoise and Hare. They both get there but they need each other to do it. Fast enables a number of things like feeding the world. But the wisdom of slow offers us ways to understand what it means to be hungry. Are we able to develop empathy for AI? If we as humans are so solipsistic as to only relate to things scaled to us, then it makes sense that the climate is in the crisis that it is. Can AI offer us a much needed crisis point/inflection point to lean harder into the question of empathy? Now that we fear for our existence perhaps we are finally better situated to care more broadly about the ecosystem of our planet. AI might be able to help!
We have learned through emergent histories, taught to us by first peoples, that land was never intended to be owned. Property, and by extension ownership, was an invention. Perhaps, it was believed that ownership would be civilizing, that it would take the violence of the battlefield away. A daily scan of any news suggests this was not successful. So, what about intellectual property? No one person “owns” origin myths. The courts struggle to settle on whose idea is the first/real idea. Canadian composer, Hagood Hardy was credited with composing “The Homecoming” in 1975, but there are many people who swear they heard a pianist, Ivan Gondos, in the Muskokas play it first, and believe the pianist was the REAL composer! Once we leave the borders of Canada, there are several “original compositions” of a similar tune. So, really, who the heck composed it? And why, in all approaches to fairness should only one man be able to claim ownership of it? Is there a dance that offers the possibility of everyone having access to a profit share in AI generative technologies? What might it look like to pay human dividends for the knowledges that have already been scraped? What might it feel like for humanity to be working together towards great unknowns? Could this pursuit help define a new culture? What does a regenerative and active playground where the high-speed machine learners, the mid-speed humans and the slooooow speed earth engage? There is no way for AI to latch onto the sentimentality, the feel, of the paintbrush. The song of the coalmines is relegated to a time we aim to leave behind, but we still love the songs. And isn’t that something that humans can find joy in? We know what a paintbrush feels like. We can share this. We remember why the coal miners were as foundational to Canada as any other trade. We – as humans – because of this connection, because of our capacity for nuance, romance and ambivalence, can reflect on this, we can sing of this, can share this. And yes AI can learn this from us, and it still remains possible that because of this we will go deeper, love better. It is possible.
76% of Canada’s national wealth is held in real estate. If “land back” actually happened everything would change. Many would argue that this is a good thing. Particularly those without property. So why not the same with intellectual property? In Canada, as of 2008, innovative (i.e. intellectual) property amounted to over 31% of all intangible wealth in Canada (Baldwin, Gu and MacDonald, 2012). Woah. What if all the IP was redistributed? Everything really would change. Many would argue that this is a terrible thing. But what if it’s not? A thought experiment, only. But… in general terms would first peoples, the world over, who felt their knowledges were co-opted by settlers think it so? What might it mean for knowledge+creation to be truly open source? What inventions might come then? What stories? What beauty? And what might happen if this open source knowledge+creation formula transformed into the biggest joint ownership proposition that (and this is for economists to figure out) could pay unprecedented dividends for all who partake? Maybe the dream of guaranteed income, housing for all, and food for every mouth might actually be realized. If we take seriously the unlikely but possible risks that have been identified around AI, shouldn’t we also take seriously the unlikely but possible gains?
Fire can’t be undiscovered.
No matter how much – after a summer like this past one – we wish it could.
Artificial Intelligence, for the arts. It’s a bit like fire. You can’t leave it untended, and the more you look away, the more it does stuff that you might prefer it didn’t.
Like replace us.
So, why not look?
We live on Turtle Island. Maybe AI will offer us ways to be more like the turtle.
Money is the problem. We say later that it’s not. But here we are saying it is. Throughout the ages, and certainly in Christian traditions, money is seen as dirty; a corrupter of all that is good in us. This belief is a problem. Because in order to make things happen, right now, in this world, we need money. It is one type of power. Money keeps the lights on. Marching in the streets costs money. If it didn’t, marches would last longer. Money is a storehouse for value and is as important to getting where we need to get, as all the other values we hold dear. Values like equity, kindness, intelligence, diversity, beauty, brilliance, and justice. All of these values are necessary. At first glance it appears that money doesn’t need the other values to function, it looks like a one-way relationship. It’s not.
What if money does need art? What if the values powered by money are directly linked to the mystical market valuations of money? In what ways are market assessments tied to a population’s sense of contentment and well-being? It has been widely said that our two greatest human inventions are words and money. Both are symbols that make it possible for us to communicate and exchange. Without words money, as it has been symbolized and re-symbolized for thousands of years, could not have happened. Maybe money really does need us (and by “us” we mean those who make meaning) because without us there are no symbols. Without us, the North Star is simply “a thing up there” not a guiding light. If this is true, then “our ask” for financial support might be better imagined as “our gift” for offering tools to thrive.
There are lists like this one that are making waves in certain waters. We don’t contest the importance of values like paying people better and making our work more accessible. WE REALLY REALLY WANT THIS TOO.
However, it is telling that only one of the 45 points in this list are about increasing revenues to pay for all of these values. If you want to add more value to your work, and all the values fundamentally require resources, then 45 individual additional resource requests equals 45 additional resource needs. We believe that 45 additional resources are out there and can be had (or maybe 40, or 30, definitely 20) but we would need to offer 45 (Or maybe 40, or 30, definitely 20) additional gifts in exchange for the additional resources. If we simply list our needs like a set of demands, there is no room for collaboration, no grounds for a consensual relationship. What about a little romance? What if, instead of demands, we created a list of ingredients that are necessary to bake banana bread? The picture on the recipe blog is of mouth-watering banana bread, not the eggs and flour and definitely not the blackened mushy bananas. Ew.
The Canadian Arts Coalition just released the Pre Budget 2024 Submission to the Standing Committee on Finance. In it, there is an ask to round up the annual budget of the Canada Council from $360 million to $500 million. Why? So that Council can “increase funding equity, transparency and innovation”. That’s all it says. No really, go read it. But what is the Canada Council offering the Canadian Government (aka the Canadian people) in return for the 140 big ones? What is the imagined nature of their romance with the people of Canada? Is there one? Or are we, the arts sector, casting and re-casting ourselves as the poor spurned lover that doesn’t understand why we aren’t attractive to our object of desire?
It’s easy to get taken up with the real and present issues facing producing arts companies. There’s a long list of things that need addressing and rarely enough staff, time, and space with which to take these issues on. It’s our contention that in the face of these challenges, the essential connection gets lost. The reason for being there in the first place – making art for people – gets lost. The lights keep flickering but there is not enough power to keep them on, and not enough energy left to see that there might be no one there.
Strategic planning sessions are generally centred on how to get more support for what not-for-profit arts companies are doing. How to tell the story better about what’s being done. If the walls could talk here’s likely what they’ve heard: “We need more support from the funders. Funders don’t get what we are trying to do. We are necessary. Everybody knows this. We are trying to change the world and they just don’t get that.”
If the walls could talk here’s likely what they don’t hear a lot of: “What have we really changed? Whose world? And what do you mean by that? Why are we doing this at all? What is it giving you? How are you being moved? How do your parents feel about what you are doing? Your children? Your neighbours? What are we offering that’s wanted? And what can we change?” Before the walls crumble it would be good to know why we don’t hear these questions. What might answers to these questions reveal?
If we are not asking these questions then institutions are performing service and justice – not practicing it. The tether to the very nature of our gift, our offering has been severed. And without this connection, all our shared or divergent concerns about the climate, equity and justice are left sitting unsupported on the pavement. The performing arts sector has become a bit like someone whose house has burnt down paying an electricity bill so they can keep the lights on.
Here is what we (Owais and SGS) have come to understand. There is a common belief, or is it a belief held in common? Or is it a belief said aloud? The belief that: “Capitalism is bad and neo-liberalism is what particularly made it bad, and now everything is forever locked into the hands of a few”. And because of these (rarely defined) concepts the world will end, and there is nothing to be done besides making work for next to free, and using up our youth, in lockstep with these unsolvable sets of circumstances. “At least our intentions are good.” We say. We know. We feel.
But. Do we? How? Like how do we know this?
Or is believing this simply the path of least resistance? If we keep it there, like if we keep the problem THERE, in a place that is so unreachable that even Pikkety can’t unlock it, then maybe this belief can anesthetize our concerns about the general lack of access to support.
Or is it possible that we are mistaken? Have we internalized a narrative about the lack of access to the point where we have stopped asking? We mean, really asking. If the arts are valued and we all agree, then not asking is bad business and bad relations. If the arts aren’t valued, then we need to find those who do believe in the value of the arts and ask them. To not do this is also bad business but it’s even worse relational work.
But here’s the rub, it is true, we don’t have access. And by “we”, Owais and SGS mean the performing arts sector. Generally speaking “we” don’t. Fundraising is already tilted in the direction of those who have access. A silver spoon was only ever placed in a handful of kings’ mouths. And since the pandemic, there are even fewer kings than before, and inequality has increased at a crisis-inducing rate. (Even though statistically it has recently decreased. It still feels like it hasn’t, and feelings drive us.) And while class has always been a primary organizing force in this country’s history, it does appear that the level of class segregation is at a high. Yet chips on our shoulders, only weigh down our shoulders, and it only hurts “us”. And they can hurt “us” a lot.
We propose, whether you feel powerless or powerful, whether you are someone with few resources feeling small, or someone with a lot of resources feeling the burden of privilege – we propose to all of you that you have more power than you realize (or are willing to take on). There is power in being small, in the freedom that comes with not having anything to lose, with the gift of nimbleness and infinite potential. There is also power in having resources of course, but that power is not just limited to the resources themselves. There is symbolic power, the power to draw attention, the power to multiply power simply by validating with a stamp of institutional approval. But power only turns the lights on. What do we need the lights for?
We talk about values. Their importance. Their necessity, and at the same time we discount the very thing that is also indisputably a value – money. Why don’t we value that universally understood measurement of value as much as we value our noble goals of justice?
Money is the problem.
It is also part of the solution.
A shoe shiner sits poised at their corner, made tense by the hot pavement, next to a busy street, desperately calling out to the passing cars with offers for their shoe shining services. No one in the cars can hear their calls. Windows are up, people are talking hands-free, air con is on. Those who do walk by are looking down at their phones and besides no one is looking to get their crocs shined. Those who are out in the heat are probably looking to make their own bit of dough or find a place to sleep. It’s been a while since the shoe shiner has had any customers. They can’t help but remember when they were little. When they would proudly watch their ancestors smiling up at all the people who were lined up around this same street corner, waiting for a shine. What happened?
We are not as important as we think we are.
Once we released the manifesto, we realized that we had not defined our “we”. In meta terms, “we” = “humans”. In macro terms, “we” = “western hemispheric concepts of humans”. In micro terms, “we” = “performing arts in Canada”. We – in micro terms – are in the midst of the painful realization that we are not as important as we think we are and certainly not as powerful. This is equally true at the crossroads of the current challenges with AI as it is with the environment that gives us life. For billions of people, this has never NOT been true. But we – through the pervasiveness of Judeo-Christian doctrine – were led to believe that we were put here to propagate, so as to better secure our dominion over all things. This idea has made a mess of all the things. Even the name, the Dominion of Canada, was changed in 1982 to better reflect advancing ideas of egalitarian and democratic values.
We need to shift what we value and who.
Snapped out of their wistful reverie by a 7-11 big gulp cup tossed from a truck and landing on their head, the shoe shiner spots a distinguished-looking older gentleman wearing a three-piece suit on the other side of the street. The shoe shiner notices that the gentleman is wearing a great-looking pair of leather shoes. After jumping up and down, doing a couple of arresting dance moves, and singing ‘do the locomotion’ at the top of their lungs, the shoe shiner finally gets the gentleman’s attention. Not surprisingly, distinguished though he is, the gentleman has failing eyesight, is hard of hearing, and often feels isolated by these facts. The gentleman is delighted to be beckoned over. It is so rare that people notice him in this bustling world! Of course, he would like his shoes shined! A big smile. The shoe shiner smiles too! Connection! And just as the shoeshiner is about to set to work, the man clutches at his chest, his eyes roll back in his head and he falls to the ground. Dead.
The micro “we” are struggling and our biggest fans are dying.
For centuries, Indigenous and Eastern ways of knowing have been offering wisdom for how humans fit within the world. The Western hemisphere – the macro world – is still struggling to accept this wisdom. Recent heat waves, fires and floods are helping to speed up a shared understanding of the need. “We”, defined now as westernised “human-shaped domination machines”, have throughout history done two things well – ignore data and risen above others. Not all boats have risen alongside us domination machines. Cultures have been crushed, animals have gone extinct, icebergs have melted and forests are burning. This sounds catastrophic. It is. We are in a crisis. It is not just a crisis in the performing arts. It is a human crisis, a crisis of human supremacy. Yet, “the performing arts”, as defined by us here, are a Western idea built to celebrate humanity and to profit (financially or otherwise) from that celebration. That’s a tough sell right now.
Sitting beside the corpse of the distinguished gentleman, the shoe shiner’s mood turns sombre and reflective. “Poor me,” they think, “there was a time when what I did meant something, when all the world wanted a shine!” They feel bad for feeling this way, a man is dead after all, “but godammit, it’s not fair!” Each year they have given more, more, more. They have worked HARD. They studied the ancients on the classical methods and they experimented with avant-garde approaches. They read all the shoe-shining books and religiously attended ShineCon even though the registration fees had gone through the roof. They have the latest assortment of brushes and polishes for every type and colour of leather and they even studied the art of buffing Nikes. A passerby trips on the dead man’s arm and swears at the shoe shiner, telling them to move their business out of the way. The shoe shiner knows that no matter how loudly they shout, no one is going to help.
We are not as important as we think we are. If this is true, then what is important?
Healthcare? Education? Roads? Democracy? It’s impossible to speak about the waning importance of the arts as separate from the apparent waning import of human life. It is perhaps why so much writing feels ineffectual. Human supremacy is on the wane. How do we, purveyors of human stories, respond to this? The 20th-century notion of democratization of culture is – just that – a 20th-century idea. There were a number of flaws with the idea to begin with. Here are some: One size does not fit all. The “culture” that is being democratized is likely not the culture wanted and/or needed, the costs of offering this “culture” to all people is beyond the capacities of any money-printing outfit, and the promise of democracy has floundered in the post 9/11 and Covid moments.
Change means change. We are not as important as we think we are.
Back in the day, the shoe shiner used to believe in their contributions, after all, what kind of civilized society would want unpolished shoes? But today, sitting beside a corpse in a three-piece suit, the shoe shiner isn’t so sure. An idea arises. Previously, the shoe shiner believed that their job was to offer the customer a reflection of themselves in the shine of their shoes. But what if it wasn’t the reflection, at all, but the smiles of joy that the shoe shiner was meant to offer? In a moment, they understood that their calling was actually to make people feel valued. The shoe shiner rummages through their stuff and finds a large piece of cardboard and starts scribbling on it.
We need to do less. And we (Owais and SGS) call ourselves out on this because we realize we are hypocrites. Self-importance leading to overproduction. We are doing too many things in too many places, trying to fill our insatiable excitement and passion for doing more good in the world. But being guilty ourselves doesn’t mean we are unfit to make the diagnosis. We all believe that doing less means doing better. It also means potentially doing differently. “We”, in the performing arts, do not have the job of nation-building. We do not have the job of improving the lot of others, we do not have the job of educating, we do not have the job of preaching. All of those professions are already floundering; we do not need to add our weight to their demise.
The shoe shiner finishes making their new sign and puts it next to their older sign “shoes shined, satisfaction guaranteed!”. The new sign reads: “Help me find a resting place for this man and I will help you find respite for your tired feet!” A passerby deeply engaged in a true crime podcast glances at the sign as they walk past. She does a double-take and stops. “What happened to this man?” she says too loudly over the podcast’s terrifying score. “He had a heart attack a few minutes ago and sadly he has passed,” the shoe shiner says. “Oh my god. Poor man. Poor you! I was stopped by your sign. It’s good,” she says. “Thank you!” the shoe shiner says, “It’s new! I didn’t know what else to do.” The woman checks the corpse’s vitals, confirming he has passed. “I have no money,” she says, “but I will help you find a resting place for this man in exchange for a foot rub.” The shoe shiner smiles ruefully. These are not the best of times but they are suddenly better than before. “Thank you,” they say. The passerby takes out her earbuds and slips off her Birkenstocks.
After the massage, they each lean in to pick up the distinguished man’s body. She looks at the shoe shiner and says: “Thank you, my arches were killing me. You have a gift”. They hoist the body and begin to walk. “My pleasure,” the shoe shiner says, “and don’t forget, I also do shoes!”
If it is true that we are not as important as we think we are, then we have a new job. And it is an exciting and very necessary one. We have the job of providing succour, sustenance, possibility and hope. We do have something profound to offer. And while we referred to it as a job, we need to consider it more like a vocation. A calling. What’s calling you?
This essay is for artists and all the people who work with artists. We begin by asking if there is anything that artists could possibly need more than an audience? If the answer is no, as we believe it to be, then why don’t we trust what audiences are telling us?
An anecdote from an exchange between an engineer and an artist. “You say you have all kinds of power to transform things. But as a brown body trying to make my way home from my office in downtown Ottawa during the Freedom Convoy, I have to ask: where were the artists? You weren’t even part of the conversation? And certainly not part of any transformation. Where were you?”
How has it come to pass that “the arts” and “artists” are not a central part of every financial, political, and social conversation?
The cultural contract in Canada is broken. As part of an imaginary future world, envisioned in the 1950s, a culture contract was forged between artists and audiences to build a new and mighty nation-state called Canada. This institutionalized culture was supposed to create a unified identity distinct from that of our big sister south of the border and the one with the Queen across the pond. Well, the Queen is dead, her grandson makes podcasts in LA and our sister to the south is falling apart. Our distinctive “Canadian” identity has been remixed through reconciliation and immigration. And neither of these was part of the contract in 1951. Everything has changed.
Yet-
Our pervasive idea in the nonprofit arts sector is that we are filling a hole in the lives of Canadians. But what is the hole exactly? How was that hole filled for Canadians during the pandemic? During the Freedom Convoys?
If we are first and foremost hole fillers, why then does the ideology in the nonprofit arts sector appear to centre the artists and arts organizations instead of the holes? Open up any funder’s strategic plan, to verify this assertion. This tendency to centre artists in everything was strong enough in the before-times, yet, now, in post-pandemic times its necessity appears as fact. We should be clear: our goal here is not to diminish artists themselves. To deny that artists’ livelihoods were imperilled during the pandemic before the pandemic and post-pandemic is foolish. We are painfully aware that artists have lost much. Artists are the mirror and the audiences are caught in its reflection. We need both. We espouse interdependence.
But that interdependence hinges on realigning our north star. Instead of continuing to insist that artists are at the centre, we propose the uncomfortable idea that audiences are at the center. Audiences vote. Audiences spend money. Audiences, let’s call them people, have the power. Why, then, is it so disturbing to contemplate putting their needs ahead of the needs of artists and arts workers? Before you throw your phone/tablet/computer against the wall, we hope you will hear us out. At root, we have come to believe that everything hinges on a deep lack of trust. Only 33% of Canadians believe that we can trust each other. Trust in institutions, in government, and even in charities, is dropping. We are not exempt from these undercurrents. And so, we are asking you to entertain the possibility that our motives are trustworthy.
To be clear, we are not disputing that more money for culture, and the people who make it, is a good thing. More money for the arts sector is a very good thing. But when we call this work “charitable” and demand it is publicly funded, we need to question who exactly is the beneficiary of the “charitable arts”? The answer, legally and practically, cannot be the artists themselves, it has to be the general public. Is this public money reaching a meaningfully representative segment of the general public? Is the public engaged with something that they consider a sacred part of their lives akin to healthcare, parks, or religion?
In response to point one of this manifesto, we have been charged with populism. But what does populism mean, exactly? Without prejudice, it is defined as a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups. According to this definition, we might be guilty as charged but let’s unpack this.
First, is it possible that the arts sector has been ingesting their own populist narratives? The ways in which we repeatedly broadcast to one another that in the face of all evidence to the contrary, what the public really needs is more arts funding for more artists to continue doing more of the same. And the only reason we haven’t yet achieved funding nirvana is because of some elite political leadership that “doesn’t get it”.
This narrative lays the blame squarely on the politicians and lets us off the hook. The much scarier proposition is that those politicians are just reflecting the will of their constituents. If the constituents are apathetic, where does that leave us?
Second, we recognize that there is a certain terrifying brand of populism in the larger milieu that offers a quick fix by taking away all power from the places the elitism lives: the institutions. We know that this kind of burn-it-all-down populism only serves to empower a new, more tyrannical group of power-wielders. We are not advocating this.
But, we are sympathetic to the apathetic response of the ordinary person who has turned away after repeatedly being ignored. We posit that there is a reflection worth catching in the mirror. Let’s call this reflection peoplism. We believe appealing to the “ordinary person” and their needs without losing experimentation and new creation is possible. To do this we must begin with generosity. We start by accepting where our audience is, and not judge them as being uncultured or ignorant. We start by accepting the premise that we may have to do more than just convince people that they really do want what we have unsuccessfully been selling. We have to accept the possibility that we will need to meaningfully change what we do, and how we do it, if we are to rebuild the trust that has been lost.
Make no mistake, the arts are in full-blown crisis. We launch this first essay the week after the closure of yet another signature festival of new work, The Under The Radar Festival in NYC – and, in Toronto The Art of Time Ensemble announced it was closing up shop and the Toronto Fringe is looking at halving its future productions. Post-pandemic audience numbers are down between 25-50% across the country. But this crisis far predates the pandemic. We should have noticed the writing on the wall when arts sector advocacy arguments first started shifting from the social good to the economic benefits. And now in our endgame, we can neither truthfully claim to be social nor economic powerhouses.
The arts are no longer working with audiences to build a unified nation. So we can blame a broken mirror for all the cracks it’s showing us or, we can thank it for reflecting back the truth. “The arts” as a generalized, nationalist ideal, might just be an idea that needs to go. And audiences, let’s call them people, might be trying to help us see this.
The sector seems set on fixing the problem of audience engagement with data. But are we asking the right questions? Are we asking the mirror on the wall who is the fairest of them all? Instead of asking who is missing in the reflection? Are we relying on datasets plagued with confirmation bias about the importance of the arts? The truism that culture is good for everyone, and we just need to figure out how to explain and package it better, might be utterly false. Especially, if we cleave to a definition of arts or culture that is actually not relevant to most. Our approach to research to better the sector cannot be to validate our biases. Our approach to research, evaluation, and impact, all have to be in search of what the public needs and how the arts might serve those needs authentically and meaningfully. Artists need people. We need to learn how to trust one another.
How might we actually do that? For starters, what if we were to ask fundamentally different questions of our audiences? Instead of asking them why they didn’t see the play with the $80 ticket on Thursday night at 8pm, what if we asked them:
What do you actually need right now?
Do you feel like your life is out of control? If so, what do you do to help mitigate this?
Do you feel endangered? What helps make you feel cared about?
Do you feel valued? What helps you feel valued?
Do you have beauty in your life? Where or what is it?
Do you have rhythm in your life? Where do you find it?
Do you have community? Where is it?
Do you have power in your life? How do you deploy it?
How do you celebrate? How do you grieve?
Engaging with this investigation would require us to abandon a lot of our attachments to current forms, practices, and activities. It may mean rethinking seasons, or the relationship between professionals and nots, even the primacy of the show itself. We cannot create a new kind of value if we are not prepared to create a new kind of offer.
In the aftermath of the greatest disruption in our lives, people are still grappling with an overwhelming loss of control. We are witnessing the alarming growth of senseless acts of violence, in public and private spaces. We also know that people are feeling isolated and are craving social connection, it turns out spending all our time on screens is actually anti-social media. They are craving sold-out crowds as much as we are, magnets for communing, for feeling reconnected, feeling part of something. The big shows of today are hitting really big. Offering connection, comfort, union. And the destabilizing thing about this picture is that the big show, the Wembley stadium crowd, conjures the same image and likely similar feelings to a Trump Rally.
We need to see this. Not seeing this is a choice. And we need to take responsibility for our choices. We need to build trust. Let’s choose wisely, and with good questions in mind. Let’s try to see.
Let’s ask.
Is there anything that artists could possibly need more than an audience?
“Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push—in just the right place—it can be tipped.” — Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point