By Carly Stagg
Ottawa’s arts community is vibrant and colourful, full of talented contemporary artists and galleries as eccentric as their creativity; unfortunately the money to support these institutions is lacking in our nation’s capital.
Historically, the Ottawa arts community has been under-funded and with the new municipal government inheriting a $120-million deficit, many in the arts community fear that arts funding will suffer.
“Art is always the first to face funding cuts, people think it is superfluous but art contributes an awful lot to the economy,” says Karen Jordon, administrator of the Enriched Bread Artists studio, a collective of artists housed in the old Standard Bread bakery on Gladstone Avenue.
Ottawa’s arts’ spending continues to be among the lowest in Canada – currently, the city’s per-capita spending on arts is $3.89. Comparatively, Vancouver spends $11.64; Montreal, $11.32; Toronto, $5.26; and Quebec City $6.95.
Mela Constantinidi, director of the Ottawa Art Gallery, believes that Ottawa’s municipal funding shortfall is due to Ottawa’s position as the national capital.
“Because of national institutions in the city, historically local politicians have been unwilling to support the infrastructure for local arts,” she says.
Linda Balduzzi, executive director of the Ottawa Arts Court Foundation says that municipal politicians have assumed that, being the national capital, the federal level covered the arts and culture in Ottawa.
“National institutions do not help local talent,” Balduzzi says. “Federal institutions do not an identity make.”
The art scene is a difficult place for an artist to make their fortune; Jordon says that of the 23 artists in the gallery, only two or three are able to support themselves on the profits from the sale of their work.
John Barkley is one of those fortunate artists. He started out in 1996 doing landscaping and construction at night and toiling away at his art at night.
Today, Barkley has work displayed in four galleries; two in Ottawa, one in Montreal and Toronto.
Barkley explains that in order to make a living, artists have to build a name for themselves by displaying their work, but because of Ottawa is a relatively small city with limited gallery space, it is often easier to build a name outside of the city.
“You have to make it outside of here and then come back,” Barkley says. “Ottawa is fairly small compared to Toronto, Montreal and New York.”
Ken Emig is another EBA artist who is currently working on a commission through the City of Ottawa; however, Emig says that receiving such funding is a difficult feat for artists because “public art commissions are few and far between.”
The Ottawa Art Gallery is the largest taxpayer funded art gallery in Ottawa. The building itself was once a courthouse but was rechristened The Arts Court in 1988 because it now houses a myriad of programs from the visual, performing, literary and media arts.
“The gallery is bursting at the seams, in terms of human and financial resources,” says Linda Balduzzi,.
“We can’t progress with any momentum; we are at 100 per cent plus occupancy because of the lack of capital development.”
Because of the limited space in the Arts Court, Balduzzi says that to reserve the stage in the Arts Court Theatre, groups have to call a year and a half in advance.
And that space crunch also prevents the gallery from being able to display its own collection.
The lack of municipal funding curtailed the growth of other art institutions in Ottawa as well; Constantinidi says that the Great Canadian Theatre Company is a fantastic company but has “very poor digs” in which to work.
“We have a mayor that seems turned on to what the arts community wants to do but there is also the incredible deficit,” says Constantinidi. “Arts is an easy target because there are no unions and no collective agreements.
“Until the city realizes it has extraordinary assets in its arts community and until it financially supports arts organizations, local arts will continue to be marginalized.”