The Halifax Forum

December 1, 2008


Well, Air Canada cannot blame the weather for this one, but thanks to their usual service standards, I made it to Halifax four hours late, thankfully, just in time for the meeting which was taking place at the Dalhousie University Arts Centre. Nice attendance: forty people, covering most disciplines and with representatives from the federal, provincial and municipal governments. I am told by those in the know that I could not have hoped for a more representative group!

I can believe it. The exchanges are lively, the perspectives diverse, but the general views on issues fairly consensual. One participant deplores the fact that, judging from my blogs, it’s pretty much “same old, same old”: the arts community has been making the same evaluation and pushing the same ideas for many years without much progress accomplished to address the challenges facing it.

I must confess I am still relative new to this environment and may have the wrong take on things, but it seems to me that our evaluation of the current situation should be more positive. During these forums across the country, I have sensed a strong conviction that we must overcome the fragmentation and the purely self-interested perspective and create consensus and common action around a small number of common objectives. Surely, if there is such a will, we should be able to find a way, no?

On another front, some people express serious concerns about devolution by Ottawa of cultural responsibility to the provinces. Could the federal government take pretext of the role played by the arts in the recent election and of the demands of the Quebec government, to disengage as much as possible from spending in arts and culture and devolving this responsibility as much as possible to the provinces? After all, except for copyright and broadcasting, which are of exclusive federal jurisdiction, the Constitution is silent on who is responsible for arts and culture!

As in other cities, participants here strongly stress the importance of using an inclusive definition of arts and culture and of establishing strong relationships with other sectors in society which have a stake in arts. Including arts training and appreciation into school curriculums, from primary through to high school, is deemed particularly important if we ever want to change the perception that culture is a luxury in our lives, reserved for the elite. Arts and culture permeates our lives in ways we are often not aware of and any positioning of this sector in our society must start there.