The Big Picture Revisited Part Two: Sustainability of Arts Organizations

Continuing from yesterday’s report on The Big Picture Revisited with a focus on Support for Individual Artists, today’s post will cover the forum’s discussion surrounding Sustainability of Arts Organizations.

In his introductory remarks on the topic, Ivan Jurakic cited an exceptional quality in the James North landscape that has intrigued me for some time now - the tendency for the street’s cultural leaders to own the properties they occupy. And regardless of the naggling feudalism of this model - must a Hamilton artist be a landlord in order to have a voice? - real estate ownership does create an enviably secure position for these galleries that will ensure their survival once property values rise with gentrification. When the time comes, these spaces will be the benefactors and not the victims of their own hard work.

Two installations from this month’s Art Crawl: from the AGH’s first One Night Stand to the oblique goings-on at the O.K. Food Mart, art only comes alive here once a month.

In the meantime, James Street North is vulnerable - so uncertain, in fact, that I struggle to put words to this month’s Art Crawl as per my usual practice. To borrow another observation from Ivan Jurakic, James Street North happened because so many things had gone wrong with the downtown, creating a void full of potential and little else. These spaces run on willpower and hope and very little money - the hundreds of visitors drawn to that street every second Friday are not an art-buying public, which is just as well when the work on show is frequently below the notice of the serious collector. Participation and community are the commodities of choice in a sector like James Street North, but these cannot hope to sustain our galleries in the long term.

So what is to be done? Some of the suggestions to come out of group discussions on Saturday afternoon closely mirror the measures that would help individual artists as well, and ultimately emphasize the importance of communication:

1. Community building between arts groups - hold regular forums and build a shared inventory of cultural resources.

2. Build more effective communications with the wider community to educate and inform on cultural happenings in the city. (I cannot emphasis this one enough: even as a fairly observant art insider I find events in Hamilton that slip under my radar all the time. That’s can’t be good for anyone.)

3. Establish partnerships with business and industrial sectors better equipped to advocate for the arts from a position of financial power.

4. Access to grants through the creation of an arms-length arts council for Hamilton.

5. Improved support from City Councillors - negotiate for use of city properties to host arts events and the elimination of property taxes for arts organizations.

While a wider network of support for the arts is desirable, I would argue that the arts need to learn to support ourselves before we can expect meaningful help from others. The unusual shape and function of James Street North demands a new economic model, one that is difficult to design using conventional wisdom but it should be collaborative rather than competitive.

Friday: The Big Picture Revisited Part Three: Engaging with City Hall

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