Alberta: business and culture, two preoccupations of the Redford conservative government

by Tom McFall, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Alberta Craft Coun­cil and CCA Board member

The week­end of Feb­ru­ary 26 may prove to be a turn­ing point for Alberta’s cul­ture sec­tor. That week­end Alberta’s new Pre­mier Ali­son Red­ford and Cul­ture and Com­mu­nity Ser­vices Min­is­ter Heather Klim­chuk hosted almost 400 of Alberta’s cul­ture and busi­ness lead­ers at Red Deer Col­lege for an impor­tant dis­cus­sion about the future of cul­ture in Alberta.

Cul­ture Forum 2012 gath­ered a cross-section of cul­ture work­ers, com­mu­nity lead­ers, vol­un­teers, civil ser­vants, politi­cians, fun­ders, vol­un­teers, cor­po­rate sup­port­ers and oth­ers. They were invited for their exper­tise in the arts, her­itage and muse­ums, mul­ti­cul­tural activ­i­ties, cre­ative indus­tries, gov­ern­ment and phil­an­thropy. The Forum was billed as “the first-ever, cross-disciplinary gath­er­ing of its kind.” We were asked to “help chart a course for our provin­cial cul­tural future”.

The Fri­day evening open­ing was an intrigu­ing hybrid of polit­i­cal speeches, pecha kucha and per­for­mances. Videos of the entire event are avail­able online. The high­light of the evening was a 10-minute speech by Pre­mier Red­ford set­ting the tone and agenda for the week­end. I have never heard a more culture-friendly speech by an Alberta pre­mier! Indeed, I don’t recall any speech by any pre­vi­ous Alberta pre­mier ded­i­cated entirely to cul­ture. She talked about “cul­ture as an expres­sion of who we are”… and “intrin­sic to every­thing we do”. She declared cul­ture was “crit­i­cal to Alberta’s future growth and pros­per­ity”… and explained her belief that “a strong and vibrant cul­ture con­tributes to the suc­cess of other indus­tries”… and “a healthy diver­si­fied econ­omy”. The Pre­mier pre­dicted that another 1 mil­lion peo­ple will move to Alberta in the next 10 years. She spec­u­lated that it will be jobs that attract peo­ple here, but qual­ity of life and cul­tural assets that will keep them here.

For the full day of the Cul­ture Forum, the crowd of 400 was split into think-tank ses­sions of about 20 to 25 indi­vid­u­als. We were delib­er­ately blended to include per­spec­tives from the entire breadth of “cul­ture”, each group man­dated to dis­cuss var­i­ous issues related to the future of “cul­ture”, and to make and pri­or­i­tize rec­om­men­da­tions to the provin­cial gov­ern­ment. Two of the rec­om­men­da­tions of my group echoed themes touched upon by CCA National Direc­tor dur­ing his recent tour of the coun­try, namely:

• the Alberta cul­ture sec­tor needs to invent a super-group that will advo­cate for the entire sector;
• we need to develop a uni­fied and vocal mes­sage to gen­er­ate more pos­i­tive pub­lic opin­ion, under­stand­ing and sup­port of the broad intrin­sic, social and eco­nomic ben­e­fits of culture.

But, much of the crowd avoided the ele­phant in the room – the dete­ri­o­rat­ing provin­cial sup­port for the cul­ture sec­tor and the increas­ing polit­i­cal and media antag­o­nism toward the cul­ture sec­tor. More par­tic­u­larly, there was no offi­cial or orga­nized con­ver­sa­tion about the strug­gling arts econ­omy or the role of provin­cial invest­ment of lot­tery prof­its into the cul­ture sec­tor. While the Pre­mier stated her gov­ern­ment was “proud to main­tain cur­rent lev­els of fund­ing for cul­ture”. I don’t know why she or her speech writer would think this com­fort­ing for us because the 2009 cuts of 16% to the Alberta Foun­da­tion for the Arts (and sim­i­lar cuts to other cul­ture foun­da­tions) have not been restored. Nei­ther Pre­mier Red­ford nor Min­ster Klim­chuk com­mit­ted to a $5 or $6 mil­lion restora­tion of arts fund­ing (or fund­ing to muse­ums, multi-cultural groups, libraries, and oth­ers) or to more invest­ment of lot­tery prof­its into the cul­ture sector.

I’ve attended many government-sponsored events that were intended to “con­sult” on arts and cul­ture. A few have been pro­duc­tive. Some were shal­low and some were plat­i­tudi­nous. This Forum seemed dif­fer­ent — some­what more pos­i­tive, per­haps. Con­ver­sa­tions with col­leagues at and after the Forum or since sug­gest that many of us came away from the event with vaguely hope­ful thoughts that the Red­ford gov­ern­ment might be inter­ested in our sec­tor. Nat­u­rally this led to spec­u­la­tion amongst the Forum atten­dees about the up-coming provin­cial elec­tion, and whether the cul­ture sec­tor, restored fund­ing or new invest­ment, might become real elec­tion issues. Who knows?