How Ottawa Is Losing In The Arts-Funding Game
Mike Levin who writes the UnFolding Magazine blog takes a look at the ‘Arts and the Capital City’ summary report released by the Council for the Arts in Ottawa:
The news isn’t unique: local arts institutions and festivals are barely hanging on because they don’t have political champions, like in other capital cities in the Western world, who are willing to fight for arts’ larger role in society. But there’s a fascinating backstory in the report, one that identifies specific weaknesses in the local sector, and it adds context to this tale of woe.
Of the $118.8 million doled out between 2001 and 2008 by the Canadian Arts and Heritage Sustainability Program for stabilization (to establish non-profits), capacity building (to strengthen finances) and endowment (to attract private money), local Ottawa groups got $795,115.
That’s 0.65 percent….for Canada’s fourth largest city. Winnipeg received 12 times as much. What in Heaven’s name is that about?
It’s about a lot of things, obviously, but mostly about Ottawa’s arts sector not having anyone who knows how this game is played, or perhaps not having the resources to play it. The irony is that arts people seem caught in the same Catch 22 as those in economics, education and community (to just start a very long list): things can’t be fixed without the right resources and we can’t get the resources until things are fixed.
Read Mike’s full post: How Ottawa Is Losing In The Arts-Funding Game
At the Fringe, Context Is King
Unfolding Magazine, June 2010
I’ve never heard such an un-manufactured buzz surrounding one arts event in Ottawa as the communion coalescing around the Ottawa Fringe Festival in just its second day. One reason must be a huge uptake of social media, especially Twitter and Facebook. But these un-contextualized conversations are a bit overwhelming, like offering 80 brands of bottled to water to someone who’s just spent two months in the desert. There’s something else going on.
The momentum’s cause, while not new to Fringe festivals, is unique to Ottawa’s, and it’s streaming out of a Website called Fully Fringed. The spawn of Evan Thornton’s Tron-like brain, co-hosted by Apartment 613, the site is posting reviews of every Fringe show – 19 of the 60, at this writing – and I’ve already heard from a dozen people not in the Twitter/Facebook universe that it has grabbed their attention enough to plan a visit.
Read more: At the Fringe, Context Is King
