Arts 308: Meet With Your MP!

Last week, the Alliance's executive director Rob Gloor and Surrey Children's Festival artistic director Marnie Perrin met with MP Nina Grewal (Fleetwood--Port Kells) to discuss #Arts308 and the importance of arts funding. Have you scheduled a meeting with your MP yet? 

The Alliance strongly encourages all arts advocates to meet with or tweet to their MPs to share the value and significance of arts and culture in Canada. 

#Arts308 is advocating the three recommendations made by the Canadian Arts Coalition in their pre-budget submission:

Recommendation One: Stimulate job creation and local economic development by increasing the annual Parliamentary allocation to the Canada Council for the Arts by a minimum of 10% in 2014-15.

Recommendation Two: We recommend that the government renew investments in the Canada Funds first announced in 2009, including the Arts Training Fund, the Arts Presentation Fund, the Cultural Spaces Fund and the Cultural Investment Fund. We further recommend that the impact of these programs be sustained by indexing the investment to the annual cost of living.

Recommendation Three: Align Canada’s cultural diplomacy strategy with Canada’s Global Commerce Strategy, and capitalize on opportunities to promote Canadian values as well as business and cultural interests in key markets by investing $5 million per year over 5 years in support of artistic and cultural market development initiatives in Canada and abroad.

You can get involved in several ways:

• Meet with your MP
• Send your MP a message using social media

Visit this link to find your MP, and access training information and meeting documents to help you in meetings with your MP in the Arts 308 toolkit.

To help you get your message out via social media, the Alliance has created a list of Twitter handles, including those of the two BC members of the federal Finance Committee, the two BC Cabinet Ministers, and all of the BC MPs with Twitter accounts.

The Canadian Arts Coalition has created a list of sample tweets to send to your MP and to share with your friends and networks. Use the hashtag #Arts308 when sharing your message!

Would you like to take part in this campaign in BC? We can help. Let us know!

(Photo: Matthew Larson)