CONSIDERING THE WAY the election turned out -- so surprisingly, and the "Team of Rivals" approach that won the day, the question at the end of this post is even more trenchant.
At some point, there's going to be an election in Canada again. There doesn't seem to be any big game changer. The Liberals have depended on the Arts community for support without truly giving anything back for far too long.
What now? And what have we learned about Cameron & his Tories' view of "the arts" since?
BIT OF AN eyeopener today in the National Post, which neatly contrasts (without saying so) the attitude of the U.K.'s Conservative Party towards Arts Funding, with our own Paleo-Reform Party Tories. The article liberally quotes Ed Vaizey, the Shadow Culture Minister for the Conservative Party.
Vaizey's immediate superior in theConservativeOpposition's shadow cabinet is Jeremy Hunt, the shadow culture secretary (the Westminster counterpart, in other words, to Liberal heritage critic Denis Coderre). Hunt told a gathering of British arts leaders in June that his party "absolutely supports a mixed economy for the arts, in which funding continues to come from government, the lottery and private donations.What are we to surmise from this?
"When art and politics clash, art wins. Politicians beware," Hunt also said in a speech in which he name-dropped British artist Tracey Emin, who once displayed her messy bed strewn with used condoms as an installation (and today belongs to the elite Royal Academy of Arts).
One, that David Cameron's Conservative Party is confident and thinking it's going to win the next election. The article freely goes on to admit that the Tories know that most artists don't support them. Yet they still support arts funding.
Well, why? Whatever for?
Lo and Behold, they even make economic arguments:
Part of the Conservatives' argument is that the culture sector spends money wisely. As Hunt said in his June speech, "every organization we visit seems to be effective, imaginative and passionate, more than justifying the public investment they receive. The arts in Britain are a huge success. I have only one task -- to help you make them even better."Parochialism or 21st Century, Enlightened Branding and Discourse?
Vaizey says his party wants to encourage more private support of the arts, noting that philanthropy in the United Kingdom is not as developed as in the United States. However, he says, public funding will always be part of the picture in the culture sector.
"Government money is pump-priming money," he says. "Success breeds success. The irony is, if you double the grant to an arts body, you probably end up doubling the amount of private giving to it as well, because people say, 'I want to invest in something that has the backing of government.' "
It does beg the question -- what are the Canadian Conservatives so deathly afraid of?
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