Pubdate: Wed, 20 Feb 2008
Source: Vancouver Courier (CN BC)
Copyright: 2008 Vancouver Courier
Contact:  http://www.vancourier.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/474
Author: Geoff Olson
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada)

BUREAUCRATS FORGET WEED'S INFLUENCE ON ART WORLD

Creative City Report Decidedly Uncreative

The Creative City Task Force released its Culture Plan for Vancouver 
2008-2018 last month, entitled Creative City. If the document is 
adopted by council, the plan will dictate the breadth and depth of 
cultural investment by the civic government over the next 10 years, 
and as a result, the quality of cultural life in the city for a long time.

For a report that uses the word "creative" 120 times in just 26 
pages, there isn't much creativity in it. It is, to be fair, a 
literary product of government bureaucracy, and so the report's 
introduction by the Culture Department predictably brims with 
literary gems like: "Staff will then use the consolidated 
Implementation Plan to identify operational actions for the City to 
be incorporated into annual workplans over the coming years."

Artists they are not.

Given the overblown statements in the report's introduction and 
conclusion, what lies between is strictly processed meat. "Vancouver 
is poised to establish itself as a city on the cutting edge of art, 
culture, education, entertainment, and support of the creative 
industries," the executive summary exclaims. Its hyperventilating 
conclusion announces: "The arts and cultural sector has the potential 
to create and capture a new energy which will come from within, form 
new collaborations and relationships across the sector from the 
local, national and international focus arising from a number of 
extraordinary opportunities over the next six to 10 years."

Inside these statements, however, there is nothing more than plans to 
build on this, expand on that, restore funding here, streamline 
funding processes there. As for creativity in the Creative City 
report, there is none. Nothing new is proposed. Vancouver's new 
cultural plan, one meant to take the city over the cutting edge of 
art and culture by exploiting extraordinary opportunities, is the old 
plan all over again. Help the neighbourhoods do festivals a bit more, 
reduce policing costs for events, streamline grant applications, get 
the libraries and schools more involved, and so on.

The task force is right to sense the time is ripe for something 
extraordinary in Vancouver. This has only a little to do with the 
Olympics and much more to do with Vancouver's history. We tend to 
forget, for example, this arts and culture hotbed is a direct result 
of a relatively relaxed attitude toward marijuana consumption. If pot 
wasn't readily available and smokeable out the back door, it's 
doubtful there would be any musicians to play any neighbourhood venue 
in the city.

The task force might have considered the historic and cross-cultural 
link between toleration for marijuana consumption and the flourishing 
of the arts, and made recommendations to the Vancouver Police Board 
to instruct police to take an even more blind eye approach than they 
already do. And it might have suggested instead of the usual pleas 
for federal funding, another recommendation to press the feds to 
decriminalize the clearly harmless substance.

The task force has also overlooked the obvious connection between 
arts, culture and political activism. Yes, children cutting out paper 
masks of mangled Olympic mascots looks like art, but nearly all adult 
art has an overt political message fuelling it. Most artists I know 
are politically active and make art as an integral part of their 
political activism.

The task force has noticed that Vancouver has the highest per capita 
population of artists in the country. But it doesn't stop to wonder 
why. It certainly isn't for the glorious living standards available 
to artists here. And most artists I know get over the mountains and 
seascape pretty fast. That holds the attention of the hallmark card 
painters and writers, but what attracts real artists to Vancouver is 
the established history here of broad and popular political protest. 
For the artist, it sometimes can feel like people in the audience are 
listening and getting it.

But there is nothing in the report about that either. The words 
"political" and all its variations, as well as "marijuana" and all 
its aliases, fail to merit mention even once. The art and culture 
envisioned by the Creative City report shall have no inspiration and 
no purposeful expression. That is, it won't be art and culture at all 
and Vancouver's moment will be missed.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom