Another five-year action plan for the arts in Ottawa has been drafted by the city. This comprehensive plan is intended to guide city council on arts, heritage and culture.
For a plan that didn’t fulfil all of its goals the last time, it sure does propose many things.
Open houses were held throughout the city to give residents an opportunity to give their input on the new plan. A concern that came up several times at one of the open houses was how the proposals in the plan would be prioritized. It’s hard to tell what the creators of the plan think should be put on the table first.
The plan means well. But it tries to do too many things. In reality, is council going to allocate enough money to accomplish all it proposes? It’s not very likely, so the plan should be streamlined. Instead of asking for the world, set out several clear demands so that council knows what matters most.
The last five-year plan met some of its goals. For example, more funding was provided to local artists and museums. But many of the suggestions weren’t implemented.
One initiative that remained unfulfilled in the last plan was promotion of arts and culture. For example, it proposed a local arts marketing campaign that was eliminated in 2004 should be reinstated. It also called for heritage tourism to be packaged and marketed better. A private sector partnership campaign was another initiative that didn’t work out. If the word does not get out, how is the industry going to survive and thrive? Marketing will increase event attendance and perhaps bolster more donations. This is proposed in the new plan, but is buried under many other suggestions.
The city should be commended for increasing spending for the arts. More than $2 million more was spent on the local arts and festival sector during the last five-year plan, totalling almost $5.5 million.
However, the city lags behind other major Canadian cities. Compared with Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Edmonton, our spending is the lowest. While it may not be feasible to spend as much as larger cities (Toronto and Montreal both spent around $17 million in 2008), we should at least be competitive with cities close to our size.
Additionally, Ottawa has a lower per-capita spending than five major cities. The per-capita amount we spend is $6.08. To compare, Winnipeg, Toronto and Edmonton spend around seven dollars a person, Montreal spends $9.35, and Vancouver tops the list with over 13 dollars spent per-capita.
There is no way that the current amount Ottawa spends on the arts will be enough to cover all of the initiatives proposed. The creators of this plan should recognize the sad fact that the arts aren’t as high on the agenda as they would like. A concrete plan with fewer suggested policies would be more effective in getting through to councillors.