Amended motion to support Vancouver's art community a 'slap in the face,' says councillor
Councillor who amended motion put forward by city's arts advisory committee said it called for more red tape
Vancouver artists have expressed anger and disappointment after a recent motion crafted by the city's arts advisory committee was heavily amended and passed on Wednesday despite the opposition of the councillor who originally put it forward.
Artists say the original motion, which would have asked staff to investigate ways to increase support for the arts and culture sector through new city positions and securing artist spaces with a community land trust, would have meaningfully improved their situations.
The motion, put forward by Coun. Pete Fry, also asked staff to look at the feasibility of increasing cultural operating grants by 10 per cent, and turning empty spaces into cultural areas, by the start of 2026 budget deliberations.
But in council on Wednesday, after hearing from around 50 artists and culture workers who overwhelmingly supported the motion, Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung successfully amended the motion to instead propose a roundtable working group and push higher levels of government for more funding.
While Kirby-Yung has defended the amendments as a way to more directly get grant money from higher levels of government to the cultural sector, artists say the new motion is watered down and does little to help them at a time when rapid redevelopment and the rising cost of living threatens their way of life.
"The ethical quandary for me is that all of those beautiful people who showed up to put their reputation and voice on the line, including myself, weren't allowed to respond," said Mark Busse, a member of the city's Arts and Culture Advisory Committee and producer of CreativeMornings in Vancouver.
"They pushed through a completely new policy that was not supported or considered by the creative arts and culture community."
Busse said the new motion isn't bold enough to help address the situation of artists in the city. While the original motion he helped craft wasn't perfect, he said, it was a start.
The original motion found that Vancouver had the highest population of artists and cultural workers among major Canadian cities, and despite generating over $6 billion in GDP in 2022, the cultural sector received only four per cent of the city's operating budget.
"Who do we want to be? A decade or two from now, who are we as Vancouver?" Busse asked. "Without arts and culture, we're doomed, in my opinion."
Concern over lack of spaces
In 2019, the Eastside Arts Society produced a report that estimated 400,000 square feet of visual artist production space was lost in the city over the previous 10 years.
Esther Rausenberg, art director and executive director of the Eastside Arts Society, told CBC News on Friday that an additional 80,000 square feet of artist space had been lost in the intervening six years as large-scale redevelopment proposals have been passed.
"It's ... critical that we have spaces where artists can work in, where they can do their rehearsals, where they can create the art," she said. "And that's part of the equation, I think, that has been missed."
In September 2019, the city set a goal to create 800,000 square feet of new or renewed cultural space by 2029.
"Specific targets include 650,000 sq. [ft.] of new cultural space, 150,000 sq. [ft.] of renewed space, 400 units of artist social housing and an aspirational goal of no net loss of cultural space," a city spokesperson said in a statement.
To date, the city claims it has reached 70 per cent of that goal, in part by securing 24 cultural spaces as part of redevelopment proposals throughout the city.
Rausenberg is skeptical of that figure, and another artist in the city said the city's math includes projects that are too far into the future to make a difference for artists now.
"Let's strip out the square footage that's just been allotted from rezoning, or from developer promises ... let's talk about what is actually on the table right now," said Luke Summers, the operations director of Vancouver's Beaumont Studios.
"How many spaces are there available for artists? How many spaces have we lost, and what can we do to rectify the situation as quickly as we can?"
Summers said he wants to see a public report of the city's claims around new artist spaces, and that the original motion before council would have provided multi-year funding and tangible help for artists needing spaces.
"Every dollar that's invested in the arts is spent many times over back in the economy," he said.
"And so I think it's really important for people to understand that it's not just a nice to have — it's something that drives business."
Councillors trade barbs
Fry, who put forward the original motion on behalf of the arts advisory committee, said its requests were clear and would have asked staff to simply study whether they were feasible before budget discussions.
In particular, he highlighted a request to create a culture navigator position at the City of Vancouver that would help artists through the permitting and regulatory process.
The Green councillor called Kirby-Yung's amended motion a "slap in the face" to the city's arts community.
"The overture to create yet another roundtable conversation ... really goes nowhere and kind of waters down a lot of the intention that came from the community," he said.
"We already have a roundtable, and it's called the Arts and Culture Advisory Committee, who actually put this motion forward."
Kirby-Yung, who is part of the majority ABC party, said her amended motion recognized the need for federal and provincial governments to be part of the art funding conversation, rather than downloading responsibility to the city.
She said some of the asks in the original motion were unrealistic and set up false expectations, such as one that would have added an arts tax or surcharge on private venues.
"The motion that came forward included establishing, for example, several new City of Vancouver positions," she said.
"I don't want to add to the bureaucracy. I would rather see additional funding going into the arts and culture sector."
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With files from Tanushi Bhatnagar