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SPEECH BY SIMON BRAULT, VICE-CHAIR, CANADA COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS
PUBLIC FORUM ON INTER-ARTS ORGANIZED BY
THE QUÉBEC INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTS NETWORK
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2006
THÉÂTRE LA CHAPELLE, MONTREAL

Rethinking arts funding outside disciplinary boundaries

INTRODUCTION:

Good afternoon,

When Michel Desjardins sent me an e-mail inviting me to speak at this forum on interdisciplinary arts as part of the Vasistas Festival, he suggested that I address the following question, and I quote:

Viewed from the angle of a new perspective of arts funding and the decompartmentalization of practices, what is the role of the artist in the context of a transdisciplinary approach in contemporary creation?

Naturally, the question editorializes somewhat – you might even call it a leading question – but I would expect nothing less of Michel.

Here then, in no particular order, are a few thoughts that might help shape a relevant response to this question, which concerns all of you and should concern more and more people within and around the Canada Council and other arts funders in the country.

First off, we must continue to insist that the artist should never be condemned or constrained to create for the sole purpose of complying with a commission or – even less – an instrumental diktat.

Without turning a blind eye to the reality of the economy or the need for each of us to earn a living, and without rejecting for a minute the principle that artistic work should be remunerated adequately, as should any productive, intellectual endeavour, I believe that we must more than ever argue for artistic creation to be free and voluntary, responding to impulses and needs that transcend anything that the market and all granting programs might decree.

You certainly don’t need me to tell you that art is not created or developed or controlled or contained within the narrow perspective, most of the time insufficient and imperfect, of available public funding.

However, the work of creation and the irrepressible need of artists to communicate can and must influence the way that public funding of the arts is shaped.

Arts funding must include all practices, even those for which it was not originally conceived. It needs to be reconfigured, beyond the borders of specific disciplines. This is not necessarily easy, since every system tends to ensure its own stability and survival.

Yet if there is any system that should include within its genetic code the ability to question itself and the obligation to transform itself, it is the system of arts funding.

So, while we certainly have cause to celebrate the achievements of almost five decades of existence and positive activism at the Canada Council for the Arts in terms of public funding, there is also cause, at a moment when we are hoping for a significant injection of new government funding, to justify our fundamental trajectory while at the same time adjusting to the emergence of new ways of making art.

I’m talking about continuity, and about deliberate change for a newer, richer continuity.

For this, we will have to justify and explain, always more loudly and more clearly, our existence, our social relevance, our choices and orientations.

We must constantly look for ways of nourishing cultural development and supporting creators to levels that are adequate, while making art accessible to all.

There is no one simple solution, but it depends largely on an open-minded idea of arts funding and on our social and collective will to invest in culture and the arts. The core of our mandate and the work we do includes contradicting the idea that the market determines cultural development - we have to fight against the trends of frantic consumerism and the tendency to an excessive and ultimately detrimental commercialization of creativity.

The very notion of the Canada Council is a voluntary one, based on the assumption that ideas, choices, visions and judgments can and must shape our culture, that they can and must change the world and our lives.

The Council’s mandate to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts has a breadth that is far more vast and complex than ever before.

To fulfill its mandate, the Council operates in an interactive mode and with transparent administrative processes that have stood the test of time, but need to be constantly explained to politicians each time the reins of power change hands.

The assessment of grant applications by juries of independent peers from the arts community guarantees not only an impartial decision-making process, but also that any decision made on the administration of funds is made by professionals who are cognizant of current practices and trends in the arts.

At each competition, the program officers who sit in on jury meetings benefit from their expertise. Because juries are composed differently each time, the combinations of skills and knowledge provide new reflections and different perspectives, and the Council is constantly nourished by fresh input from the arts community. 

It couldn’t work any other way. The Council knows that it cannot evolve in a vacuum and is not the sole administrator of a static system – it is first and foremost responsible for recognizing, anticipating and encouraging the evolution of an endlessly evolving ecosystem.

This principle of attentive, enlightened listening to what the arts community has to say prevails in the other activities of the Council as well.

In a recent retreat held for the Council’s program officers, artists and other stakeholders were invited to participate and comment on the issues brought to the table. Outside advisory committees meet regularly to study matters that concern the Council’s operations. The opinions of the arts community fuel the Council and help ensure that it does not become a funding machine out of touch with the latest developments and needs of the community it serves.

THE FUTURE:

As I mentioned at the start, the Canada Council for the Arts will be fifty years old in 2007.

The perspective of this significant anniversary is what has driven us to bring the attention of the arts community and politicians to the urgency, inspiring symbolism and long-term transformative and constructive power of doubling the Council’s budget for support to the arts in celebration of this anniversary.

The perspective of turning fifty has also led us to reflect on our future.

When I am asked the classic question about the future of an institution – and I get asked often these days, since the National Theatre School I lead has just celebrated 45 years, and I have the privilege of being closely involved with the Council at the dawn of its 50th birthday – I usually begin by talking about what the institution should not become – probably a hangover from my instinctive distrust of institutions…

Fifty years on, the Canada Council must not have become a sophisticated ATM available to a limited number of artists and organizations who are the ‘old boys’ of a system that is increasingly disconnected from society. Nor should it have become an organization that is marginalized because it has been reduced to an insignificant budget item in comparison with total government spending, including in the cultural sector.

We must hope that in 50 years, the arm’s-length principle will have prevailed and politicians will still have no say in the form, content or uses of artistic production. Most of all, in 50 years the Council must not have become an empty shell that does not protect artistic freedom, while the market and the economic clout of corporations and the wealthy decide on every detail of our cultural environment and choices.

In short, 50 years from now the Council must not have become the antithesis of what had been envisaged by its founders in the mid-20th century and their descendents at the beginning of the 21st. It must not bury the ideal of art as the catalyst for individual and social freedom – it must be, still and always, the champion and nurturer of an artistic activity that raises us to new heights of humanity.

Naturally, from the vantage point of an effervescent inter-arts festival, you might think that I am needlessly concerned, and that the future looks bright. I know you are convinced that creativity is alive and well – as am I. But we have to ensure that it is allowed to continue to flourish, backed by solid prospects for development, and by a healthy Canada Council for the Arts.

I maintain that the arts community always has and probably always will need an institution that is protected and open, with a high level of expertise, discernment and understanding in each of the disciplines and their unpredictable interaction, in order to accomplish the complex, highly subjective and inevitably risky job of discovering, acknowledging, encouraging, supporting and questioning the artistic practices of time present and time future.

VISION STATEMENT:

The Council must be that place, for the very essence of our mandate is to work against market-driven cultural development and consumerism at all costs; we must challenge the excessive and debilitating commercialization of creativity.

The Council must be in step with the impetuous evolution of art practices and the diversity of cultural development in the communities across the country. And it must also, above all, be able to anticipate these developments, bring them into perspective and realign our goals if the occasion warrants.

We must listen with attention, respect and discernment to the artists, directors of cultural organizations, leaders of civil society and individual Canadians who take the time to comment on certain aspects of cultural development.

ACTIONS:

To plan for the future of the Council, we need to find our inspiration in the ideas that shape the modern cultural policies and regeneration of numerous cities and regions on the international scene, with the emphasis on encouraging creativity, valuing the arts, preserving intellectual, built and natural heritage, and promoting cultural diversity – all as a ways of stimulating sustainable, lasting, democratic and equitable development.

The challenge is to interest citizens not just in the work, but in the artists themselves, as human beings and members of society. However, this patient, never-ending work requires that the artist also agrees to be a citizen, speaking to other citizens, for we need to find a common ground for discussion.

Clearly, we must invest in communication, but we must do so by changing the current paradigms. We need to bring communications out of an isolated sector. Poets can no longer rise above the fray by themselves; artists of all stripes must take their place in the civic square. The Canada Council itself should speak out on this necessary encounter with art, and it should do so in tune with all the other forces concerned with life in society and the importance of the common good.

INTER-ARTS:

These bigger perspectives must not distract us from more immediate problems. On the contrary, while looking at the forest we can better see the trees, and in particular the young saplings that will be the forest of the future.
And so I would like to return to an aspect of the initial question Michel Desjardins asked in his e-mail, one concerning decompartmentalization with respect to interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity.
We see and hear at Council that a major segment of the arts community, in particular emerging artists and those working in non-Western disciplines, continue to show a strong interest in orientations that are not defined by the historical parameters of the arts disciplines.

These artists want the Council to be a mouthpiece that is as interdisciplinary as they are.

Concrete steps have been taken in this direction over the past ten years, but before I mention them and speculate on the future, I would like to say something about the position held by the artistic disciplines in the basic configuration of the Canada Council.

The concepts of disciplines and practices allow us to grasp, explain and support the evolution of culture and the arts. These concepts have made it possible to develop a useful vocabulary for indexing and assessing the cultural knowledge and skills transmitted to us and to discern advances in these areas. Like other similar organizations, the Council initially adopted a disciplinary structure that has become more flexible over time.

But in the early 1990s, in order to meet the challenges of new cultural trends, the Council gradually introduced a number of secretariats with a specific strategic focus. This included the Inter-Arts Office, created in 1999.

The Inter-Arts Office works within the Council as the catalyst for emerging trends and practices in the arts, and as a liaison and information agent between the existing disciplines.

The Office was created because interdisciplinarity, by definition, often explores new artistic territories and the Council wanted a structure flexible enough to be able to recognize and integrate these practices into its programs, and thus support interdisciplinary artists.

Ever since its creation, the Office has constantly evolved to respond to this spirit of openness and change.

In cooperation with all of the sections of the Council and its partners, the Inter-Arts Office continues to introduce policies and grant programs that respond to new forms of artistic expression. These new forms are varied, for they evolve at every crossroads of creation. And those crossroads and intersections are increasingly numerous in a world that is sated with information, yet hungry for meaning. I’ll mention a few of them by way of example: art and mental health, art and new technologies, art and ecology, art and social engagement, art and community.

Inter-arts practices highlight the extent of the risks that artists choose to take, and the research that underlies their creation. Their artistic interventions often occur in the heart of the city or in places and spaces of the psyche that have yet to be explored and explained. To guarantee freedom of expression, these risks and research must be accepted, understood and given credence by funding organizations like the Council, and we must find ways of providing adequate funding for them.

At a moment when we are hoping for new funding and on the eve of our fiftieth anniversary, this is one of our major challenges.

In closing, I would say that interdisciplinary artists, like all artists, must try to influence the vision of arts funding that drives the Council and justifies government investments for which we are the trustees. It is obvious that financing the arts in this country must also, in part, fall between the lines drawn by disciplinary boundaries, both for the future of the disciplines and for the future of interdisciplinarity.

This is one of the challenges that mobilizes us, and we are counting on all of you to make the Council ever more relevant and valuable to the advancement of the cause, for the benefit of all artists and citizens.

Thank you. It was an honour and a pleasure to be invited to your forum.