Culture as Capital Part 1
Monday April 8 2024, Original Kitchener, Greater Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
April already! And this is the first Evening Muse offering I’ve been able to put together since we rang in the new year. Things have been busy, even exciting at times. For instance, my picture was in the paper on the second day of 2024:
“Housing crisis, overdose deaths, police budget squeeze out sector,” the subheading reads. Yes, but there’s much more to the story than a municipal budget line item. The arts don’t belong on that list of intractable problems our elected representatives have to deal with as we near the end of the first quarter of the 21st century. Arts, culture and heritage are part of the solution.
“De Groot calls for new festival,” is one of the headlines in the online version of the article. Yes, but what I’ve been imagining is not what usually comes to mind when someone says “festival.”
I’m not thinking about some star-studded extravaganza that draws in visitors from near and far, but about conceiving, planning and organizing a season of happenings that will serve as a joyful demonstration of how arts, culture and heritage are an ordinary, everyday part of being fully alive.
I’m thinking more about the art we learn and make, whether it is singing, dancing, sketching, painting, filming, telling, writing, showing or playing, than about off-the-shelf products made for us to consume passively.
I’m also thinking about the arts as fundamental human work. This is what human beings do, and have always done, for ourselves and for one another, when there’s enough food to eat, shelter from the elements, and no enemy at the gates.
This line of thinking is stems from my experience working on two “Cultural Capital of Canada” bids for Greater Waterloo, without success, back when I was with the Arts Council. This federal funding program was canceled long ago, but lately I’ve been thinking about turning the idea of a capital of culture on its head, and showing the world who and what we are by working together as the five cities and seven nations of Grand River Country to organize a “Culture as Capital ManiFest and Homecoming” event for, say, 2026 or 2027.
What I’m suggesting here is that as working capital -- social, economic, civic and even moral capital -- cultural wealth is better than gold, which reflects the light in a special way but is itself inert: It just sits there for everyone to covet and squabble over, while the arts enrich, enlighten and enliven the hours, days, weeks, months and years of our very lives.
I’ll try to explain more fully what I have in mind in future Evening Muse posts, but it won’t be conclusively. There is no intention to present a total vision that can then be infused with cash, assembled and set in motion like some ready-made business franchise. I just think it would be good to have something to look forward to, to imagine and to work towards, together.
This line of thinking may not have come through in Terry Pender’s Record article. But what he wrote did appear to strike a chord: The response was almost overwhelming. An amazing number of people of all ages and backgrounds came forward to say they wanted to be involved in helping to put the arts back on the public agenda and restore something like an arts council.
Since that article was published I’ve sat down with scores of people to talk about the state of the arts in our neck of the woods, and what I’ve learned through these discussions has led me to the hopeful conclusion that circumstances are ripe for purposeful, meaningful and effective action. There’s an opportunity here to start breaking up some of the logjams that are holding up progress on so many fronts, including destructive patterns of thinking, conversing and persuading.
These musings about celebrations and manifestations, fanciful as they may be, are grounded in common sense and, equally if not more important, a sense of commons, and by that I mean something related to what we call the House of Commons in our parliamentary democracy.
What I’m imagining is political, as it must be if we’re talking about the public agenda. The dream is about doing my bit to stir up thoughts and energies that will prove to be the antidote to the “Canada Is Broken / Make America Great Again'' malaise, here in the True North if not in the revolutionary republic down below.
The nation state we share the continent with was conceived in partisan conflict that became a civil war between English settlers on this side of the Atlantic and their government back in the Great Metropole. They’ve never gotten over that trauma, and to this day still commonly delude themselves with the notion that “government is the problem,” and appear to be standing ready to resume firing their guns and cannons against one another.
Canada evolved more peaceably, which, hopefully, leaves us better equipped for the pursuit of truth and conflict transition, and for achieving and maintaining peace, public order and democratic government.
Here in Waterloo Country, with the miraculous peace of the lion lying down with the lamb as our emblem, we should be able to resist the impulse to slip into the familiar grooves of polarization and avoid taking sides in what are called the “culture wars”.
The way forward is to rise above the fray in a way that invites contrite hearts into the sunshine and leaves incorrigible hate, fear and resentment mongers standing out in the cold of their own making.
We have a right to hope. And to imagine. We have the right, sometimes even a duty, to associate in order to be able to get things done. There is no denying, however, that as April, 2024, unfolds, the general outlook is rather dismal.
The electorate appears to be turning on Justin Trudeau’s administration, just as we once turned on that of Kathleen Wynne, Stephen Harper, Paul Martin, Mike Harris, Bob Rae, Brian Mulroney and John Diefenbaker. The task at hand is to face the fact that this time, there really is nowhere to turn to. The only alternative left is us - the people of Canada - working together, each in whatever corner of the land we’re fortunate to be able to call home.
On the Waterloo arts, culture and heritage front, things have only gotten worse since the new year arrived. Following the clumsy way Regional Council dealt with the miniscule surplus that resulted from their decision to leave the Musicians of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony out in the cold with their struggle to keep one of our proudest cultural achievements alive, we learned about the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund debacle.
And now the storm clouds are gathering again over Wilmot, with those unfortunately timed patriotic statues and 770 acres of precious farmland as bones of contention.
I hope that we will be able to avoid the familiar grooves of “us versus them; yes versus no; this versus that” partisanship, and take an all-things-considered approach to these and other potentially divisive issues. Instead of sectioning off into mutually hostile camps, let’s embrace the complexities involved and set our sights on the best possible outcome for each and every one of us, and for the earth, the very ground we live, work, learn and associate on.
Because the arts are an integral part of living, working and learning, they can serve as the means towards achieving a new, sustainable kind of prosperity. Culture-related creation, conservation and appreciation are also a natural gateway to associative endeavour: As the Waterloo Regional Arts Council motto used to say: “The arts are not a sector, but an all points connector.”
Believe me when I tell you, in good faith: Drawing on our cultural capital can and will equip us for finding a practical, peaceable and joyful way forward.