SpiralTruth

In Obama, the Arts, and Soft Power, Raymond J. Learsy talks about the increased focus Barack Obama would will give the arts if he is when he is elected President.

I have mixed feelings about public funding for the arts. I’m certainly not a big supporter of government grants to individual artists. Perhaps this is because I’ve never attempted to apply for these grants myself. I think I share with a lot of other Canadian artists, a disinterest in trying to mold my work around some status quo definition of “Canadian identity” which is certainly something that helps a lot of the folks I see getting grants. I do see a lot more funding that doesn’t seem as focused on preserving that nebulous notion of Canadian heritage, but the same essential problem still remains. Who decides which artists get funded and which ones don’t?

In a pure market economy, it’s everyone, voting with their money. And while this doesn’t always result in good art, it is fair in the sense that artists are rewarded by how much the public wants them to produce new works. With government grants, you essentially get a small group of people dictating what will be promoted to the public. There’s always the chance of a benevolant dictatorship, but more often than not, it turns into a game of who knows who.

That said, after reading Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class, I’m intrigued by the ways in which funding the arts can boost today’s rising creative economy sector, thus justifying a certain amount of public funding. Here’s Florida’s thesis in a nutshell:

The manufacturing jobs that are gone are gone for good. Maybe we could have done something to keep them while increasing the quality of life and innovation in North America, but we didn’t, so let’s look to the future. The “creative class worker” has been emerging as a great generator of wealth, both for the worker him or herself and for the economy as a whole. Members of this class of worker tend to be attracted to areas with lots of diversity and entertainment options. It’s the whole bohemian thing. You’re not going to get these people to fuel a 21st century economy by building new sports stadiums. In fact, Florida suggests that things like new stadiums are more often than not an economic drain on a community. In this sense, funding the arts in some way is actually a cheaper, more effective way of making your community more attractive to the creative class, which in turn will boost your community’s economy.

Spending money on making the arts a fundamental aspect of a community also creates more opportunities for creative professionals to mix with the entire community, often comprised of many service and working class members. Florida worries that the rise of the creative class has the negative effect of stengthening the divide between creative professionals and lower income jobs. Quite often, creative professionals can live in a community that also houses a lot of lower income workers, and add nothing to it – only increase the cost of living. However, if the two groups interact, there is a greater chance that creative workers can add value. Florida sees creativity as a fundamental human drive, not something that’s the privilege of a few. The more creativity is encouraged in service jobs and the like, the more people in those industries are able to join in this rising sector. But that can’t be accomplished if the two types of workers seek different entertainment and live different lives in their off hours.

It will be interesting to see what ideas Obama brings forth in the area of funding for the arts. Perhaps he’ll be able to avoid the traditional route of individual grant funding to create a much more accessible and fair way of fueling arts in communities across America. If his adoption of the Internet as a fundamental tool in his campaign is anything to go by, I think he’s got a pretty good shot at innovating in this area as well. And since Steven Harper looks mainly to the United States for his own policy decisions, it is in Canada’s best interest that the U.S. once again becomes an economic and cultural example to the rest of the world.