Halifax might become one of Canada's worst-funded cities for the arts

Is Halifax heading headfirst into an identity crisis? The rapid clip at which the city’s been changing—we are the second-fastest growing urban area in the country, according to the most recent Statistic Canada numbers—makes fact of the fast-shifting sand beneath our feet. It’s been accompanied by the feeling that there’s a new building sprouting on every corner, like invasive wild roses: bright, beautiful and catching you with their thorns (and higher-than-their-floor-count rents).

A city changes or dies. But what makes the city live a good life?

The arts have long held a mirror to the present, a way to make sense of the moment—but these days, due to years of chronic underfunding at both a civic and provincial level, the glass is chipped; the arms raising it weary. (We have, after all, been left in the chill of a 17-year freeze on operating funds for arts organizations at a provincial level.)

But it might be about to get much, much worse: This Friday, February 17, as part of council’s budget committee, the city’s parks and recreation department will present its plan for the next fiscal year. A potential cut of 55 percent in city funding to arts and culture is being proposed for councillors’ consideration. (This means the current $540,000 the city spends annually on the arts could plummet to $240,000, should councillors vote yes on the proposal.)

“Right now, Halifax invests about $1.16 on behalf of each of its citizens into the arts. And the median across the country is a little over $7 per capita or per citizen. And this proposal, if councillors decide yes: This would bring us down to 53 cents per citizen invested in the arts.”

“Even without this cut, Halifax is well behind other cities and municipalities across the country. Right now, Halifax invests about $1.16 on behalf of each of its citizens into the arts. And the median across the country is a little over $7 per capita or per citizen,” says Stephanie Domet, Co-Executive Director of the AfterWords Literary Festival and member of the Greater Halifax Arts Coalition. “So we are way, way, way behind anyway. And this proposal, if councillors decide ‘Yes, this is how we’re going to avoid raising property taxes by making this cut’: This would bring us down to 53 cents per citizen invested in the arts.”

A cut of this size—more of a gash or gaping wound, really—makes Sebastien Labelle, Executive Director of The Bus Stop Theatre and fellow GHCA member, think that organizations “just would not be able to sustain themselves with that level of public support from the municipality. I mean, the fact is, that we’re barely holding it together right now. Seeing that kind of cut, that would be felt across the sector, across disciplines, would just mean that we would see organizations have to lay off staff,” he says, speaking with The Coast by phone a day after Domet, but echoing many of her feelings. He mentions how the broader context of the proposed cut is bleak, between rapid inflation and the province’s over-a-decade freeze on operations funding.

Sebastien Labelle, executive director of The Bus Stop Theatre Co-operative Credit: Ian Selig

The Greater Halifax Arts Coalition was founded in 2012, as a way to “put arts and culture on the radar for political candidates and at that time” during a municipal election, Domet tells The Coast. “At that time, they were working with some numbers from 2006 that revealed that Halifax was investing at that time, about 55 cents per capita in the arts.” (Back then, Halifax also ranked last place in paying for culture, behind the likes of Winnipeg and Windsor, Ontario.)

Domet takes a beat to let the numbers sink in before adding: “Back in 2006, the city was at a 55 cent per capita investment in the arts. Now in 2023, if they move forward with this, we would be worse off than we were back then.”

“So what we’re talking about here is the money that is given to an organization that allows them to exist, right? So it allows workers to get paid for their work. That’s it. It pays for the paper that goes in the printer and pays for the Internet hookups that allows us to send out our press releases and sell our tickets,” Domet adds. “And so the province is really no better than the city in funding these things. Which would be fine—except that both the city and the province trade on the vibrant cultural life here. In their communications to citizens, in their communications to potential tourists, in their communications to potential businesses: All of that material talks about what a deep cultural life this place has and offers. So they use our sector to make this place look good. But they do not invest in our sector.”

“They’ve been having it both ways, but they’re going to have to stop pretty soon, I would say,” Domet says. “Because we’re being threatened to extinction, really.”

When The Coast sits down with Eyelevel Gallery’s co-directors, Sally Wolchyn-Raab and Wren Tian, days before the February 17 meeting, Labelle and Domet’s words are still ringing in the air. “I moved here from Calgary, Alberta. And you would think that a city as conservative as Calgary would not be investing very much money in the arts, but their per capita arts investment that the city itself is making is over 7 dollars per person,” Wolchyn-Raab says, fingers arching on the table before her. “It’s like: Halifax, we’re trying to position ourselves as one of the premier, exciting, cutting-edge cities within Canada. And like, a national city, and not just the biggest city in Atlantic Canada—but we’re not meeting national standards.”

Wren Tian (left) and Sally Wolchyn-Raab, co-directors of Eyelevel artist-run centre. Credit: Submitted

The idea of sufficient funding is something so removed from the day-to-day of all the arts sector workers in this story that, when asked what their working lives would look like with an adequate budget, they each take a significant pause. Tian talks about how it’d simply make it possible to shift out of survival mode. Better accessibility and fairer wages are also mentioned by Tian and Wolchyn-Raab. “Eyelevel is an organization that does what’s called paying CARFAC fees,” begins Wolchyn-Raab, referencing the Canadian Artists’ Representation. “CARFAC is a national organization that establishes the minimum amount of fees that you should pay an artist for exhibiting their work or giving an artists’ talk, something like that. And like all organizations across the city, we mainly just skim right on the edge of that CARFAC minimum…And we’d love to pay more. Like, we think artists deserve way more than [the minimum]. I don’t know, I think when you get a CARFAC fee, it depends on how long it took you to make a piece. But I think on average, it works out to, like, $2 an hour that you’re making as an artist. We’d like to pay artists more than that.” (Reminder that Nova Scotia’s minimum wage is currently $13.55, increasing to $15 this October.)

“I think on average, it works out to, like, $2 an hour that you’re making as an artist.”

“There’s this impression that people are working in the arts as though it’s like their pastime or their passion—like a side project or something,” Labelle says. “But it’s people’s jobs, it’s people’s livelihoods. And if you’re cutting in the arts, you’re causing layoffs, and job losses. But if you’re investing in the arts, you’re creating employment. I think that people often miss the fact that the art sector really, right now, is not a healthy sector.”

“I think people perceive artists as being happy with what they do, because they’re in the arts or whatever. You know, because I guess it’s our job to instill wonder and joy and entertainment, and instill that in people’s minds,” he adds. “But it is our job as artists. It is a job. It’s not a hobby. It’s a real thing. I think we suffer a lot from that misconception about what the art sector is—and the important and concrete role that it plays directly in people’s lives in terms of their livelihood, but more broadly in our city and region as economic drivers.” (It’s worth noting here that According to the Culture Satellite Account’s 2020 numbers, Nova Scotia’s culture sector contributes $989 million to Nova Scotia’s GDP. This means it accounts for more than 14,000 jobs—employing more people than farming, fishing and forestry combined.)

“Cutting arts funding isn’t adding to any other services [that] is going to help our community,” Tian says, raising their voice slightly to be heard over the two building sites neighbouring Eyelevel’s home, the 2482 Maynard Project (which is also home to The Blue Building Gallery and Wonder’neath Arts Society). Their eyes flash at the coincidental resonance of the chorus of power tools. “They’re not actually adding on to other important services for the community.”

Later, they add: “Arts is like a placeholder, a band-aid solution for socializing and mental health and well-being and more holistic approaches in that way, as an outlet.” This can mean someone finding their sense of belonging by joining an activity at Wonder’neath, for example, or someone making use of Eyelevel’s warming centre during a cold snap. “Art isn’t just this fancy thing that you can go see. It’s the ways that the arts are funded here goes into smaller organizations that really support other people and spaces in different ways.”

(Labelle agrees: “Investment in the arts: We know that it builds community, it builds social relationships, it builds wellbeing in terms of physical and mental health and generates jobs and economic opportunities. And so, it’s really an investment that has a lot of return,” he says, noting that these strong determinants of health can be seen as a preventative measure that takes strain off the health and justice systems later.)

A decade-plus of lack of new provincal funding—followed by what Wolchyn-Raab calls the “an austerity measure” of the proposed 55 percent cut—means that, for about a decade, the constant bass note thrumming against Halifax’s ever-evolving everything has been an underfunded arts sector, forever spinning more out of less. But as Domet and Labelle both warn, scraps can’t stretch forever.

“I do think that this is a moment for us to think about the place we want to live in. Where do we want to live? What do we want this place to be like? What do we want to prioritize?” Domet asks. “What are these other cities doing that allows them to spend $7 per capita on the arts?”

A day later, Tian adds to the question: “Why are they cutting the arts funding where it’s already barely even funded? It’s like, who are they investing in?I think it’s important that we bring it back to the police budget, always, because they keep reinvesting in them. And it’s so telling, right? Like, if you’re saying what a city decides to invest in or cut speaks to what that space is, why are you investing in HRP more? Why are we still adding so much more money into the police budget, even after everything in 2020, where the city decided they were going to get on board and re-understand their notions of what policing means? It’s just bullshit. Like: You are claiming all these things, you were putting out all the flags for different things like, as like events come up. And yet, you’re still reinvesting in the police again, and again, even after everything, even after the 18th [of August 2021, when police forcibly removed citizens from city parks],” they say. “It’s like: Why are these cuts happening? And who are you then prioritizing?”