by H.A. Fraser
"Little rigorous research on arts practice has been done in Ontario. Reliable and updated statistics on artists, arts activity and arts audiences are few and far between. Consequently, systematic analysis of the arts sector is in its infancy.
Neither the arts nor the province as a whole are well served by this vacuum. Claims for or against specific policies become the focus of heated debate, and in the absence of measureable fact, little progress is achieved."
"The OAC came to this laudable conclusion after being in business since
1963, a full twenty-five years of working in the dark!" exlaims George
in his 1992 report. (p.7)
But, how could the OAC not know what it is doing? The staff are well paid
to know what they are doing. I believe that an average salary of OAC management
in 1995 was about $50,000. plus benefits. Besides, George is a crank: letters
from OAC lawyers to George have attempted to chill his annoying and aggressive
inquiries.
However, a recent article by Robert Fulford in the ubiquitous Globe and
Mail, entitled "Debt and the collective looniness of artists"
(Oct. 16/96) reveals a "grim truth" about government arts policies.
Fulford admits that he sat on an OAC panel: "There was a poetry magazine
from a small Ontario town that contained...not a single poem of any merit.
Yet several members of the panel argued that a grant should be made, because
these people deserved encouragement for making an effort." At the end
of his article, Fulford says that as we watched government debts grow during
the 1970's and 1980s, "citizens took for granted that governments knew
what they were doing. They didn't."
And no one ever questioned it. Although Fulford never questions the OAC
itself, he does question our current arts policies. Do we know what we are
doing?
And a few more people, most of them outside the arts loop, are beginning
to wade through the twaddle of our arts bureaucracies, to ask all kinds
of sharp questions [although, if you have ever tried to get answers from
an "artocrat", as George has coined them, you know the uncomfortable
heat of self-righteousness]. Even Mike Harris, Ontario's Conservative Premier,
has commented in the media on the weighty bureaucracy at the OAC.
OAC funding has been cut. And the organisation is changing, although how
we don't really know yet. One thing we can be sure of though, George will
be right there listening and watching. As George promises in his report,
"I am not going away. Others will be coming."
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