The ED Report, May 2020

Dear friends and colleagues,

These times are strange indeed. Like many of you, I am in a state of constant uncertainty about the future, especially when it comes to envisioning what it holds for our sector. I vacillate between anxiety and hope, searching for solutions in a soup of unanswered questions. I also know that many of you are struggling with the unknown, wondering when people will feel comfortable coming back together again; how you can program your next season when there are so many unknowns; whether you should take the work online but worried that there are too many things online already; and asking how long you can survive without tangible employment? There are so many questions it’s overwhelming.

On Thursday, Premier Horgan announced that gatherings of more than 50 people will be banned in British Columbia until a vaccine is found. As much as that hurts, at least we finally have the answer to one of our biggest questions.

People are asking a lot of artists and arts organizations today. We need to remain operational, but we also need to be conceptual and visionary. We’re working harder than ever to remain connected to our communities and at the same time, we’re recognizing that we don’t want things to return to “normal”. We want to make things better than before. We want society to understand the important role that the arts play in our lives, to understand that creative expression is central to our well-being and our evolution. Now is the time to find a way to ensure that the arts are seen as an essential service. Now is the time to rebuild our world into what it could be.

Artists are some of the most resilient and imaginative people on Earth and others are looking to them to help build the kind of future we want. So that’s where I’m focusing my energy these days – but it’s not a comfortable place to live. I keep telling myself that creating solutions takes time, in the same way that creating art takes time. But my brain is working overtime and I find myself inspired one minute and despairing the next.

What I am certain of is if the arts are going to survive this pandemic and the climate disasters waiting to happen, that we need to be united across disciplines and sectors. The silos that artists have inhabited for over seven decades have not served us. They have kept us isolated in our disciplines, and competing for government grants that have always been scarce.

These silos have not helped our public image either – an image tarnished with perceptions of elitism and entitlement, and compartmentalized as professional versus amateur. We need to start working collaboratively, strategizing together so we can be in relationship to each other and relevant to society. Many of you are already doing that by sharing information and resources, but we still haven’t figured out how to be inclusive of marginalized and Indigenous artists.

I, for one, don’t want to go back to the way things were before. I want to use this time to dream and to envision a society where artists are respected and admired because they are the thought leaders – inventors and explorers searching for new ideas and ways of being.

For the past seven weeks, the BC Alliance has been hosting meetings with most of the arts service organizations in BC. We are working together like never before to share what we know and be clear about what we don’t know. It’s challenging, but we are trying to get comfortable with not knowing and understand that some things are within our control and some aren’t.

No one is going to solve this crisis alone. We need to ensure that we have a seat at the table with other decision makers when charting a new course. We can all play leading roles and win the loyalty and the understanding of the public if we work together. So yes, think about how we’re going to survive financially, but let’s not forget to look up and imagine a better future. We can build it together.

Brenda Leadlay
Executive Director
BC Alliance for Arts + Culture