The ED Report, October 2020

It’s election time in BC and now, more than ever, we need your vote for arts and culture. #NowIsTheTimeBC

Just before the election, Premier Horgan announced a one-time investment of $21M in the arts as part of the BC Recovery Plan. Those funds will be critical to ensure that: Indigenous, racialized and marginalized artists have access to grants; new resources are available for digital transformation; and the art, cultural and heritage spaces across the province will be preserved and sustained into the future. The details of that investment have been delayed due to the election, but we need to ensure that the new government honours this commitment. You can help by getting out the vote in your community — ensuring your staff, your patrons and your sponsors vote on October 24, or in advance by mail. 

Today, we launched the updated ArtsVote BC website — www.artsvotebc.ca — where you can learn how to vote by mail, find town hall meetings in your region (we’ve also got questions you can ask), find the platforms of each political party as they are made public, and get the resources you’ll need to make the case for arts and culture.

In collaboration with BC’s arts service organizations, we have sent letters to the Greens, the Liberals and the NDP to ask them what their support will look like for arts and culture if they are elected. We believe that an investment in our sector acknowledges that the value of the creative sector to our economic recovery, health and well-being is also a commitment to a sustainable future.

In other news, we have wrapped our second instalment of the Digital Ladders program under the leadership of Sue Biely and Robert Ouimet, and we are hosting our final event for the Artist Brigade for Climate Action on October 16. Both projects were important steps forward for the BC Alliance to prepare for whatever the future will bring.

And finally, we are so excited to have begun work on a research project, supported by Mitacs, the Vancouver Foundation, Global Public Affairs and the BC Arts Council, that will examine the connections between arts, creativity and well-being, both pre-COVID and during the pandemic. The project is being led by Carolyne Clare, PhD and Postdoctoral Fellow at the School for the Contemporary Arts, Simon Fraser University. Our hope is that measuring the value of creativity will encourage more research on the social impact of the arts, which we all know far exceeds the significant financial benefits.

Thank you for your support of the BC Alliance, and for your help in building a strong and resilient creative community in BC.

Take care,

Brenda Leadlay
Executive Director
BC Alliance for Arts + Culture