British Columbia's arts, culture, and heritage sector needs help.
Across all Canadian provinces, the arts, culture, and heritage sector in British Columbia is the only region that has shown positive GDP growth since 2019 (Hill Strategies, 2023). Despite this success, BC’s arts, culture, and heritage sector continues to strain under the weight of foundational challenges decades in the making, brought to the surface by the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and general economic instability. The sector is confronted with an urgent need for a new vision for arts, culture, and heritage in the province that builds an action plan to respond to regional, national, and global challenges.
In November and December 2023, the BC Coalition of Arts, Culture, and Heritage sent letters to the Minister of Tourism, Arts, Culture, and Sport, the Premier, and several other key officials in the Government of BC with requests for support.
Below are the Coalition's three strategic requests. The full letter can be downloaded here.
Increase annual BC Arts Council budget to $55 million.
For a nearly 20-year period between the early 2000s and the late 2010s, BC’s provincial government invested less in culture than any other province in the country. Actions have been taken by the province in recent years and through the pandemic to remedy this chronic underinvestment, however, the compounding impact of COVID-19, high inflation, and a general affordability crisis threaten to erase any gains we’ve made in the past five years. We call upon the Government of BC to fulfill its 2017 election promise to double the BC Arts Council's budget and raise this amount to $55 million to account for inflation. Increasing the annual BC Arts Council budget to $55 million will provide a valuable long-term investment in BC's arts, culture, and heritage community.
Photo: Decolonized money exhibit from the Bill Reid Gallery
Maintain COVID-era investments in arts, culture, and heritage.
On the ground in communities, the sector continues to rely on pandemic-focused support to sustain its existence – special one-time BC Arts Council funding delivered in 2023 prevented catastrophic closures in our sector. We understand that pandemic-level investments are not intended as a sustainable, long-term plan, but these funds have been a lifeline for a sector that has been in crisis long before the pandemic. We call upon the Government of BC to maintain the current financial, pandemic-recovery funding ($34.5 million annually) to be distributed by the BC Arts Council and its partner agencies, in the 2024/25 and 2025/26 fiscal years. In the immediate term, maintaining COVID-era investments helps to stabilize the sector and ensure the survival of our cultural organizations and events until longer-term plans can be put in place.
Photo: Two Rivers Gallery
Work with the sector to develop a provincial arts, culture, and heritage action plan.
No matter how hard individual artists or cultural organizations work, the system in BC that has been built over decades does not work. It inevitably leads to burnout and the slow impoverishment of our province’s cultural legacy. We call upon the Government of BC to work with our sector to initiate an inclusive and resourced action plan development process that will create a new vision for the sector, along with sustained funding models supported by economic and infrastructure development planning. An action plan for our sector will leverage the impact, creativity, and innovation of BC's arts, culture, and heritage sector to build a sustainable, healthy, and resilient future to support all British Columbians.
Photo: 2023 BC Museums Association Gathering in Haida Gwaii
