Hilary Peach: B.C. government “hijacks” $10 million from cultural community
This originally appeared on the Poetry Gabriola blog.
Way back when we learned that the BC Liberal government was planning to cut arts funding in B.C. by up to 92 percent (they settled for around 80 percent) all kinds of weird things were going on.
Among them, Gaming was supposed to be administrating the B.C. Arts Council awards; multiyear Direct Access commitments were, then weren’t, then were, now aren’t, being honoured; Direct Access funds and Bingo grants were amalgamated into Community Gaming Grants; and money was being transferred around between fiscal years and programs in an elaborate shell game to make it look as though the funding was still there. It was confusing, and gave the impression that nobody really knew what was going on.
Recent developments suggest that somebody in government knew exactly what was going on and is now preparing to hijack $10 million of what little funding remains.
During the sudden (as in zero notice to organizations affected) restructuring of provincial arts funding the Direct Access Gaming program was annihilated, but a very small amount was eventually restored, earmarked for “youth programs, and fairs, festivals and museums”. Fairs? Since when did arts funding include “fairs”? A prevailing paranoia lingered in the aftermath of the laceration of hundreds of small organizations.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.