The ED Report, January 2021

Dear friends and colleagues,

Welcome to 2021! I hope you are feeling refreshed and optimistic, although if you’re in the same frame of mind as I am, it’s hard to muster enthusiasm for the beginning of a new year that feels a lot like the last one.

What’s keeping me sane these days is my passion for the “everyday creativity” research project that we began in the fall with Carolyne Clare (PhD and Postdoctoral Fellow at the School for the Contemporary Arts, SFU). We’ve had some illuminating conversations with colleagues, both here and in the UK, about the relevance of art, culture and creativity during the pandemic and we’re about to launch a general population survey with Nanos Research in BC to find out how and why people engage in creative activities, both pre-COVID and now. We’re also talking to provincial and federal politicians about the research we’re doing in the hope that they will help us scale the project nationally.

We’re doing all this to broaden people’s views about arts and culture, to help them understand how vital creativity is to our well-being. Ultimately, it’s about ensuring that government funding for the arts is no longer on the chopping block when the economy tanks.

When I first started doing advocacy work at the BC Alliance over four years ago, the first thing I discovered when talking to decision makers, and anyone who would listen, was that the arts are considered ‘a special interest group’, which is a polite way of saying ‘the arts are elitist’ and accessible to only a few.

Having worked in Canadian theatre since 1977, I was disheartened and delighted to finally get to the truth, and understand why so many theatre artists live at or below the poverty line in Canada. Simply put, I learned that the arts are not valued nor considered ‘essential’ by politicians or public.

I also learned that the significant economic impact of the arts only started to be measured by Statistics Canada in 2010 and was only acknowledged five years ago by government for its mighty contribution to the GDP. If you’re wondering about measuring the social impact of the arts — which is considerably more onerous but yields impressive results – you should know that it’s not happening in any tangible way in Canada. And it certainly hasn’t influenced arts policies. At least not yet.

That’s the work that gets me up in the morning. I want to see arts, culture and everyday creativity at the heart of a strategy for our recovery from COVID and #BuildingBackBetter. I want to see artists working in hospitals and hospices, tending to mental and physical health issues in seniors’ homes, working with unhoused people and those afflicted with addiction, serving youth at risk and people incarcerated in prison — and yes, I also want to ensure that our inspirational arts and culture institutions continue to thrive.

Who would have thought all those years ago that my love of live theatre would instil in me a passion to fight for the rights of artists and the role that art, culture and creativity play in our lives? In part, I guess I can thank the pandemic for that.

Take good care of yourselves and the ones you love, and be kind to all.

Brenda Leadlay
Executive Director
BC Alliance for Arts + Culture