government funding

State of the arts: how arts funding affects our communities

By Canadian University Press February 12, 2012

hen Stephen Harper famously declared that “ordinary people” don’t care about arts funding during the 2008 election campaign, artists and arts groups were quickly forced to prove their worth.

In 2009, $45 million was cut from the federal arts budget, and not long after, the government of B.C. made serious cuts of its own. Since those serious cuts to arts funding in 2009, many artists and arts groups in B.C. have had to find innovative ways to generate money while struggling to make ends meet.