Taking a Look at the Big Economic Picture:
a response from Bill Horne, President,
CARFAC - B.C.
Canadian Artists' Representation/le front des artistes canadiens or
CARFAC objectives include promotion of the visual arts in Canada by improving
the professional and financial status of visual artists through research
and public education. CARFAC has regional and affiliated offices in Ottawa,
Toronto, Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Vancouver.
Below is the Art Biz Bit which prompted Bill Horne of CARFAC, B.C.,
to respond. Mr. Horne's e-mail follows. Art Biz Bits is a service provided
free by ABM.
To: artbus@connect.reach.net (Art Business Magazine)
From: Bill Horne
Subject: Re: ART BIZ BITS
Cc: CARO@interlog.com
At 18:50 17/03/97 GMT, you wrote:
>ART BIZ BITS: BIT #56
>Monday, March 17, 1997
>Is your subsidy eroding? Are the big guys taking your volunteers?
Forget your woes and come shake your booties at the Alberta Arts Council!
>Between the wearing headlines on subsidy erosion and the incessant
pleas for financial assistance, it takes little effort to realise that
not all arts institutions/organisations are going to make it. In response
to financial challenges, some large institutions like the Art Gallery of
Ontario in Toronto, are becoming more and more like commercial businesses
with large advertising and marketing budgets (the coloured banners for
the Munch show along University Ave. are impressive). Still, the AGO continues
to rely on and canvas for government aid as well as our personal time and
money; volunteers work their expanding gift shop. A vestige of a passing
era? The transition from the protected grace of noble mandate to survival
by those regrettably necessary hoary business practices, is an awkward
place for such institutions.
>But what are the choices? Government is a fickle partner. Corporations
need only so much good will, and the weary public interrupted by a solicitation
every evening at six is starting to get indigestion (consider as well the
competition from universities, hospitals and disease charities).
>Calgary's Alberta Craft Council has come up with an interesting
survival strategy that gives meaning to financial responsibility in the
arts. Without waiting for the inevitable, a damaging reduction of government
subsidy (which has fallen steadily since 1990) Susan Abell, Executive Director
of the non-profit service organisation, began to plan for their new business
programs in 1992. Confirming her direction was a media photo of Alberta
Premier Ralph Klein holding a sign which said "Think differently!"
This photo, commented Ms. Abell, "crystallised" her thoughts:
the best way to strength crafts in Alberta and the ACC is to make them
increasingly self-sufficient.
>After analysing its market (Alberta's craft artists), its members
and their potential to make money, the ACC borrowed about $723,000., interest
free, from the federal government to create a number of business programs.
These include: courses to train craft artists in all areas of business;
a quality approval program in which an ACC jury will give craft artists
a special logo to put on their products; and an artist's representative
program -- for a 17 percent fee, the ACC makes sales and distributes crafts
to wholesalers.
>Significantly, the ACC has broadened its definition of quality
craft -- a new criterion is saleability, a change which has upset some
members who perceive an erosion of craft aesthetics. Doug Haslam, a Calgary
furniture maker and ACC jury member, complained in the Globe and Mail (Feb.
25/97) that the Council is more interested in "craft in terms of people
at homeknitting booties." Mr. Haslam commented that the ACC is helping
home-based, part-time craft-makers ahead of the "full-time professionals,
especially those working to a higher standard of arts-based work."
>But as the ACC adjusts to the rules of the marketplace, such criticisms
are inevitable: when fully subsidised, the Council did not need to think
about the buying habits of the general public. Now, as the ACC adheres
to economic principles, the sales of "higher standard", labor-intensive
and therefore more costly crafts are lower than those of knit booties --
surprise! one market is smaller. While no one ever went broke underestimating
the public, hasty critics are in for some interesting times from the ACC.
***************
Dear Ms. Fraser:
I've been enjoying the Art Biz Bits and want to thank you for organizing
this service. I recommend it to artists who have an Internet connection.
This week I would like to respond to some of the recent articles.
I don't oppose galleries or artists becoming leaner or more creative
in their quest to be financially independent. But whenever I read about
eroding subsidies to the arts, the marketplace and the need to downsize
to eliminate the deficit, I have to ask, what about the big picture? After
all, we are living at a time of *enormous* wealth creation and productivity.
I think the problem is more one of distribution of wealth than of scarcity.
The debate has largely been framed around one corner of a large economic
canvas and few journalists are looking at the "painting" in its
entirety. If they were, they'd be questioning the tax expenditures and
loopholes that make the largest corporations (many of them foreign-owned)
the most highly-subsidized enterprises in the land. It's just easier to
pick on the subsidies given to the arts or the CBC or NFB, because they
are named as such and right there for all to see. Much higher subsidies
to corporations exist, but they're called something else.
This information is readily available to those with five minutes on
the Internet or in a library to seek it out. Every artist or arts administrator
in Canada should be familiar with Linda McQuaig's "Behind Closed Doors
- How the Rich Took Control of Canada's Tax System" and "Shooting
the Hippo" before devising a business plan, applying for funding,
lobbying, or going into an election awarely. We can't afford NOT to know
this information.
I hear a lot about the need to improve artists' business practices
so they can market their work and become independent. Many artists want
to do this and the trend is a good one. However, let's not fall prey to
illusions such as our Free-Trading governments have promoted.
"Retraining" will not *create* jobs. In the same way that
a newly computer-literate ex-fisher in outport Newfoundland might have
a hard time finding a job that doesn't (yet) exist in their community,
the most sales-savvy artist is still going to run up against the brick
wall of our colonized culture. Every artist knows it's hard to compete
for Canadian leisure sales dollars eaten up by Hollywood videos and the
rest of the flood of commodity culture that pours into our country from
the south. Surely it's as important to deal with the issue of our cultural
sovereignty as it is to improve our marketing skills. --And why Canadians
largely continue to accept this situation.
Why aren't we in the streets burning copies of Sports Illustrated and
taking out subscriptions to your magazine or Canadian Forum in its place?
(Remember the thousands of Indians who burned their British-made clothes
and replaced them with home-spun cotton garments, as part of the Gandhian
campaign for independence?)
My wife and I are fortunate enough to have our own studio-gallery through
which tourists stream in the summer. We've seen the faces of people who
can't even *consider* buying a print or pot or painting, because they've
lost their jobs through restructuring, etc. Who's going to buy all the
art we produce and promote effectively? Individual solutions are obviously
not enough. These topics ought to be on the agenda with the other good
ideas.
Sincerely,
Bill Horne
President
CARFAC-BC (Canadian Artists' Representation/le front des artistes canadiens)
Art Business Magazine http://www.culturenet.ca/artbusiness