Johnny Carline, CEO GVRD
Address to New Westminster Arts Council Public Arts Forum, June 14, 2006

Good evening ladies and gentlemen

I was happy to accept the kind invitation to attend tonight’s AGM as New Westminster is my community and I am happy to support it in any way I can. But I confess to having had serious doubts about actually addressing the group.

My contributions to the Massey Theatre Society were on the business and administrative side of the society, not artistic. I’m a career public servant who is paid to worry primarily about sewers, water pipes and garbage dumps. I would imagine just about everyone in this room knows more about the arts and culture than I do.

But I have spent an awful lot of time close to mayors and councilors throughout this region, so on reflection I thought maybe my perspective might be useful to you as you consider how to pursue your aspirations with local government officials.

I have become aware of the interest being expressed in an Integrated Fine Arts Centre. I am not competent to comment specifically on that proposal although it would clearly be consistent with and support many of the ideas I will be talking about.

However, I have often observed that we government officials, when faced with very specific facility proposals, will seek the broader context, the broader purpose and the broader strategy into which such a proposal fits. And without those, we sometimes find it difficult to establish priorities and respond in a positive way.

So my intention is to suggest such a possible strategic context based on three aspects of the value of arts and culture for a community like New Westminster.

I do want to acknowledge right at the outset the benefit I received from discussing these matters with Max Wyman, who is a GVRD director, Order of Canada recipient and the author of the book, the Defiant Imagination. However, I would certainly not lay at Max’s door the responsibility for any of my thoughts expressed tonight.

My first theme is one that I think the Arts Community sometimes bypasses. That is arts and culture is, and should be promoted as, a source of simple, popular recreation and entertainment.

Now do not get too alarmed. I am not going to suggest that all arts and culture should be measured by its popularity, or that bums in seats should be the overriding goal. My other themes will certainly moderate any such view.

Nonetheless, even though the conventional political wisdom is that there are no votes in culture, from a political perspective the number of people who are engaged in arts and culture is still an important consideration.

It helps justify supporting arts and culture with public funds. It demonstrates some self reliance in revenue generation. Well attended arts and culture events in the community can be a source of civic pride; they may have spin off benefits for local business; and they ease the pressure on the transportation system to downtown Vancouver. And clearly one of the best ways to engage people is to offer activities that interest and entertain them.

Much of this is relates, of course, to program content. The Royal City Musical Theatre Society has established a wonderful reputation by identifying and satisfying a popular market for traditional musical theatre.

The VSO, when it came to the Massey would sometimes vary its program and replace a more obscure piece with something like the Warsaw Concerto, a proven crowd pleaser known to most audiences. Take this too far and it may become an unacceptable dumbing down. But we should be ready to embrace some element of shrewd marketing.

Some of the process of generating popular appeal is the creative use of context, like the annual New Westminster Arts in the Park Festival.

This is good strategy which should be pursued systematically and relentlessly.

I remember in my time on the Massey, we put up a booth on the Hyack Parade route, and then staffed it with boring old directors like me with brochures about our programs. What a missed opportunity! We should have had one of our performing directors, like Colleen Winter in costume reprising some of her stage performances – how much more engaging that would have been!

And encouraging people to let their hair down more at cultural events may be of value. The television broadcasts of the Last Night of the Proms showed people having a wildly good time at a symphony concert. I wonder how much that helped some people get past the stuffy image of classical music and give it a try.

Have you ever witnessed the condescending, even contemptuous, looks the cognoscenti bestow on those enthusiastic but uncultured music lovers who dare to clap at the end of a movement instead of waiting until the end of the concerto or symphony?

Contrast that with the experience I had in Italy.

My wife is a Puccini fan. So when we were in Italy I booked us into a performance of a Puccini opera that was going to be played at the ancient Verona coliseum. The seats on the arena floor were like any other opera, occupied by people who arrived late in fashionable evening wear.

But we were in the upper unreserved, original limestone steps of the coliseum, crammed for an hour beforehand with Italians in casual dress. Beer, wine and sandwiches were served by young hawkers in the crowd, similar to a BC Lions football game. When the sun went down, everyone lit candles, transforming the coliseum into an even more incredibly romantic setting.

And when the lead tenor, singing from a cage where the princess had placed him, finished the most popular aria, the crowd cheered and cheered wildly and stopped the show. He was forced to leave his cage, come to the front of the stage and repeat the song for the crowd, before the opera was allowed to continue. Everyone, on stage and off, was having a ball, I do not think the art of opera suffered one jot, and the place was packed night after night. So I suggest emphasizing popular appeal with an element of just plain fun is a politically appealing strategy.

My second theme is the educational value of Arts and Culture in the community, and more specifically the role of art and culture in developing creative capacity and an understanding of the results of the creative process.

We have different types of mental processes. One broad set relies on logic, induction and deduction which we broadly refer to as rationality. A second contrasting set seems to be a more holistic process, imaginative and intuitive.

There may be legitimate debate as to how these two processes interact in different spheres of life and personal development. But most would agree with Max Wyman that the rationality of scientific truth alone cannot provide us with answers to moral and ethical judgments. The intuitive, creative process and the appreciation of its output will be critically important to developing the humanistic values that must drive our communities in the coming decades.

Obviously the artist is involved in a creative process. And so a Community Arts Strategy should involve creating as many opportunities as possible, through facilities and programs for people to exercise their own faculties directly in creative artistic endeavour.

Parallel to that is the process of arts appreciation, where we ask questions of art. It is this process that takes us beyond the simple I like/I don’t like judgment which simply reinforces existing prejudices and the closing of the mind, to a position of seeking an understanding the artist’s intentions and thereby opening up our minds to new ideas and values which might profitably challenge our own.

Max Wyman’s book relates the story of the meat dress fashioned by Jana Sterbak. 22 kilograms of flank steak formed into a frock and presented as a work of art entitled “Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic”. Why on earth would someone want to create that?

Well, according to Max Wyman, Sterbak was addressing “the commodification of the female body by fashion and demonstrated the transient nature of all flesh” – vanitas in the title referring to the familiar notion that all is vanity.

Well for sure, that’s not going to hang on my living room wall. But maybe it provoked reaction and discussion about an important social issue and contributed to what healthy, sustainable communities are going to need – the capacity for vigorous self examination and adjustment.

Art has indeed addressed political issues in powerful and influential ways. Picasso’s Guernica springs to mind as do the protest folk songs of the 1960’s. But I doubt that this is easy or commonplace at the local community level.

It may therefore be difficult to translate this critically important role of art and culture into local political currency.

What may help in political terms is the growing realization of the overlap between communities with a strong creative arts presence and communities that are strong and creative in other ways.

John Kenneth Galbraith wrote: “Those communities that are richest in their artistic tradition are also those that are most progressive in their economic performance and most resilient and secure in their economic structure.”

In recent years this theme has been taken up, developed and promulgated by an American named Richard Florida. His central idea is the importance of what he calls the ‘creative class’ in both the economic and social success of future urban centres in the information economy. The ‘creative class’ is the engine of the new economy and is attracted to communities which evidently encourage creative activities and people, not just in business, but in the community as a whole. Fail to attract this creative class and your community will not successfully compete in the new age.

Florida’s ideas have achieved such fame and following that they are acquiring political currency. So use them. For they clearly support both programs and facilities which encourage participation in and appreciation of creative arts.

This is an appropriate segue into the third theme: the importance of Arts and Culture in building community.

As with any social activity, the socializing process within the arts community is itself an important contribution to the wellbeing of the community. The acts of coming together, getting to know others, volunteering, organizing and so on, are all parts of what Robert Putnam and others have called building social capital. Social capital is to community what financial capital is to business. Without it, the enterprise will wither and die.

And there is perhaps some reason to suggest that the social capital developed in the arts community is potentially of special value.

To quote Max Wyman again: “people who take part in cultural activities are more likely to develop a sense of pride not only in the place itself but in their place within it. It helps build a society of flexibility and resilience, more able to absorb the shock of the new.” Surely an enduring pride of place combined with flexibility and resilience to the impact of change is very valuable social capital indeed in the kind of dynamic global society we increasingly inhabit.

Creative arts and cultural activities have been used to address the needs of the sick, the disabled, the incarcerated, almost anywhere in fact that rejuvenation of the spirit and renewed positive self awareness can be a benefit. It would be worthwhile for a Community Arts Strategy to contemplate these possibilities in specific terms.

For illustration, I will briefly refer to two of my personal experiences, one to do with youth, the other to do with drugs, both of which I think are important issues here in New Westminster.

In high school, my older son, after a stint in school plays, turned as many did to an interest in improv theatre. He and some friends formed a small group which in time expanded to number over a hundred from several schools. They created and performed for each other, wherever they could, with no space or facility to call their own – a constant problem.

I have had the privilege of watching many of them grow up. And now about fifteen years later, virtually without exception, they are all confident, empathetic, socially responsible and wonderfully balanced, enjoyable people.

I won’t insist on what caused what, but their story is, I believe, further evidence of a positive association between involvement in a collective cultural activity and positive citizenry.

In Italy, I had the privilege of visiting San Patrignano. It is a vast complex of residences and activities occupied by almost 2000 drug addicts and run by drug addicts. We might call it a drug rehabilitation centre, though they do not view it that way.

The relevant point for this discussion is that a critical component in their restoration to health is to rediscover self esteem through becoming craftsmen of the very highest quality.

Hand made wallpaper, hand crafted leather goods, wrought iron work and similar items are made by these addicts, all of the highest standard of craftsmanship and, in my opinion, artistry.

An average of 500 addicts a year graduate from this facility, not simply freed from their addiction, but as remarkable positive citizens. As one addict, a truly beautiful human being, put it, “we become once again protagonists in our own lives.”

Nowhere in the world have I found the human spirit to burn brighter or the sense of community to have reached a nobler level than I found in San Patrignano.

And the artistic content of the program; the process whereby they discover they can indeed create something worthwhile and beautiful is, I believe, a critical part of the process of rediscovering self esteem. That they too are worthwhile and beautiful.

Surely these are important lessons and opportunities for us as we struggle, not very successfully in my opinion, with our communities’ drug problems.

I want to add one final but I think very significant aspect to the community building value of arts and culture.

As we reflect on what the core values and characteristics of our community are, it seems to me our attitude towards culture in the broader sociological sense of multiculturalism is extremely important.

Canada has prided itself on adopting multiculturalism as distinct from the American melting pot notion. As a country of many immigrants, it was envisaged that Canadian residents would be able to preserve significant parts of their original culture with pride, while participating in the larger Canadian society, and that all Canadians would be enriched as a result. It is a vision with laudable intent.

But recently very disturbing and controversial reports have come from Holland and the UK about cases where similar multicultural policies have appeared to break down and inter-cultural strife has become bitter and even violent as a result. It seems one of the unintended causes may have been the preservation in too static a fashion cultural differences and thereby the reinforcement of isolation as much as engagement.

One possible response to this is to ensure that our approach to multiculturalism is more dynamic and engaging. Allow me to stretch the notion of art to include the culinary arts, to illustrate the idea I am struggling towards.

Food has been a major factor in the early engagement between cultures, as we have learned to appreciate each other’s cooking. (Some may want to exclude English cooking from that but I’ll let that pass.)

Initially, at our most apprehensive, we simply sought to discover what these foods were with a view to knowing what we could tolerate and what we should avoid. With more engagement we learned to enjoy, to understand and to create for ourselves. With even more engagement and a slight shift in attitude, we are learning to mix and develop new ‘fusions’. Here the notion of the contribution of several different cultures to a new creation finds material expression on the same plate.

It seems to me there may be a model here and that a Community Arts Strategy may have a role to play.

If we are to progress from static multi-culturalism vulnerable to isolation, to one of truly creative and positive engagement, then we need to progress from simply providing space for one cultural group to perform their culturally specific arts to the same culturally specific audience.

We need to find ways to share performances and share audiences far more and encourage our cultures to interact in ways that fosters inter-active cross-cultural creativity.

Max Wyman tells me that the process of cultural fusion is already occurring. The GVRD will make a presentation to the World Urban Forum on the social cohesion benefits of such an approach to arts and culture using local examples. You will know better than I, whether this dynamic is occurring widely or at the local level, or whether in fact much of our arts and cultural activities are inadvertently encouraging continued cultural isolation.

However, to promote cross cultural arts and culture activities in order to foster present and future social and cultural harmony; to encourage the possibilities of inter-cultural understanding and creativity; these are surely vital strategic goals that will resonate increasingly at the political level.

And so to recap:

• The first of my themes is arts and culture as a source of popular entertainment and fun as the foundation for popular engagement.

• The second builds on this to develop through engagement in the arts and arts appreciation the creative, intuitive faculties of individuals that will find broader social value.

• And the third articulates that development of individual capacities into the development of social capital and community as a whole, noting important specific components, such as youth, drugs and inter-cultural harmony and cohesion.

I offer these respectfully, not knowing how far you have already explored these themes. I suggest them simply as food for thought, points for you to consider, as part of a possible contextual strategy which might resonate at the political level and provide support and direction for your more specific aspirations.

I thank you all for this opportunity, for your attention and I wish you well with your deliberations.

Thank you.

Johnny Carline