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News flash: investing in arts and culture is good for cities! This is the message Greg Reed, board member of the group Business for Arts, delivered to the economic development committee Feb. 21. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Arts and culture funding used to be driven by public money,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Reed said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Now the conversation starts with: how do we get the private sector involved?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
His answer: if governments pony up the cash first, the private sector will follow. He gives the example of the SuperBuild fund, the $325 million that the federal and provincial governments forked over to grand cultural institutions. Since $325 million wasn’t nearly enough to fund the ROM’s giant crystal and give the AGO the Frank Gehry treatment, private funders stepped in to fill the gap.<\/p>\n
But what about the smaller guys? On the heels of all the hoopla over development in the Queen West Triangle (QWT), I expected at least part of Reed’s presentation to touch on the need to ensure affordable spaces for artists to live and work.<\/p>\n
As Reid Henry of Artscape put it when I interviewed him last summer: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Councils typically understand the feeder system for hockey — minor hockey investment can lead to guys in the NHL — but they don’t put the same investment into the feeder system for art.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
In the art world, the minor league players often get the brush-off. But when I ask chair of the economic development committee Kyle Rae about funding live-work spaces for artists, he makes it sound like old news. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We’ve been doing that for years with our support for Artscape,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says. As for the QWT, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There have been very few phenomena more beneficial than the shifting of the arts scene across the city,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Rae argues, pointing to the migration Toronto’s arts community has made from Yorkville, to the Annex, to Queen West over the years. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I’m not interested in the talk that West Queen West is the last place it should be. I don’t want this process to stop.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
That’s quite a different take from the speech he made a couple weeks ago during city council’s debate on whether to appeal the OMB’s decision in the QWT. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When we have a hub or enclave that has developed over the years then you nurture it,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he argued. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This area is just beginning to blossom.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
If Ottawa hands over that 1 per cent of the GST that mayor David Miller has been asking for (which it should), Toronto will receive an additional, and sorely needed, $450 million a year. But according to a report from the Toronto City Summit Alliance, a $0.07-per-kilometre road toll would snag us $700 million, while emission-based vehicle registration could net another $300 million. Considering Toronto’s financial straits (not to mention the world’s environmental ones), why aren’t we pursuing these options more aggressively?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"