Can the Arts Save Hamilton?

It proved a funny question with which to frame Thursday night’s panel discussion at the Art Gallery of Hamilton: why ask if the arts can ’save’ Hamilton when it became readily apparent that everyone in the room already took the affirmative for granted? The more accurate shape of the debate - and there was debate to be had - was perhaps, ‘Who is empowered to mobilize the arts to save Hamilton?’ It is, frankly, a far bitchier and less productive question.

From left to right: Terry Cooke, Professor Eddie Friel, Jeremy Freibuger, Jacqueline Norton, Gary Santucci

The fact is, all the local speakers on the panel - meaning the Imperial Cotton Centre’s Jeremy Freiburger, Jacqueline Norton from the City of Hamilton’s Film and Television Office, and Pearl Company co-founder Gary Santucci - have something to contribute to Hamilton’s emerging status as a creative city. The importance of partnerships was a recurring theme during the more positive moments of the two-hour discussion and that element, particularly as expounded upon by the utterly fantastic Eddie Friel, is best kept firmly in mind.

I have to admit to a certain degree of gleeful gratification in Eddie’s participation as the keynote speaker, being the bloke chiefly responsible for the cultural revival of Glasgow that led to its European Capital of Culture designation in 1990 and made it a kick-ass city to study my MFA. Glasgow was the first place to show me the potential for cultural revival in the Hamilton I had left behind, and the comparison between the two cities has been a preoccupation of mine for quite a while now. Knowing that the man himself can also see the parallel is inspiring to say the least. The disconnect between these two sides was downright impenetrable at times, and I couldn’t help but wince at times to think that Eddie Friel had to witness the worst of this so soon after singing Hamilton’s praises.

Even more refreshing was his straightforward, impeccably honest narrative of Glasgow’s challenging rise from the poverty of the sixties and seventies, stemming from a refusal to negate people and their homes from the economic map simply because their skills have fallen out of date, be that Glasgow’s diminished history in tobacco and shipbuilding or the faltering steel industry in Hamilton. Eddie (and he did insist on Eddie) repeatedly drove home the notion that cities are for people rather than industries, and that the city must invariably adapt to a changing post-industrial narrative, one in which the arts are a prime mover of people and capital but must be uninhibited by the excess baggage of a political agenda.

That demand for an unencumbered art is what led Eddie to respond to Gary Santucci’s summation of his ongoing battle with City Hall over the Pearl Company’s zoning issues with a frankly baffled: ‘Why are we still planning cities for a nineteenth century economy?’ That precise hit upon the backward politics stirring beneath the surface of Hamilton’s cultural revival unleashed the proverbial elephants in the room in a fashion that was less spectacular than tiring, with numerous audience members contributing their own narratives of cultural breakthroughs frustrated by municipal bureaucracy. These repeating stories are collectively compelling evidence of a severe lapse in judgement on the part of City Hall, but individually failed to contribute anything to the discussion that wasn’t already sharply illustrated by the plight of the Pearl Company and reduced what was meant to be a question period to a Festivus-calibre Airing of Grievances. The awkward discord wasn’t particularly helped by the various gaffes of the government representatives in the room either - panelist Jacqueline Norton, with all the greatest good-will in the world, was probably ill-advised to take a coy stab at Santucci’s situation in her preamble before his and likely didn’t endear herself to the audience by singing the praises of the ‘risk-taking’ Torontonians who have contributed so much to Hamilton by deigning to move here.

Ultimately, the problem of the evening was best addressed by some closing remarks from Jeremy Freiburger about the need to adapt the language of art to a range of motivations. As someone who has built the Imperial Cotton Centre of the Arts by a willingness to communicate effectively with both artists and government, he is well positioned to understand the work needed to bring positive cultural change to Hamilton. As Eddie Friel concisely summed up again in his distinctly Irish fashion, it’s simply time to just ‘Get it done.’ And preferably stop living in past grudges and arguing about it already.

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