Disclaimer: Part 1 of this entry is for cynics, malcontents and curmudgeons. For those who prefer their reality filtered through hope and optimism, go directly to Part 2.

Part 1

Ottawa’s municipal-government approach to arts is so out of touch with the city’s creative reality, it should come as no surprise that when the Arts, Heritage and Culture Advisory Committee meets May 18 to decide a future path, Council will probably decide to cut real funding to the arts. The term “real funding” refers to the money that actually gets dispersed to those who make and deliver art.

This is the opinion of a City Hall administrator who told me last week there is no real appetite for spending money on things that the municipal government thinks people don’t care about.  Which is strange because of how much money the municipal government pays itself to administer arts.

This year the City will pay more than $260,000 in salaries to three positions that co-ordinate and organize arts funding in Ottawa. Add to that the approximately $250,000 that annually goes to the Council for the Arts in Ottawa, which hasn’t produced one new local initiative in almost two years, and you can understand why the local arts community wears the scent of cynical, malcontented curmudgeons.

It’s also why most in this sector’s 35-and-under demographic don’t have a clue that there are actually people being paid from the public purse to promote arts in Ottawa. Nor do they seem to care, as echoed by the words of 33-year-old photographer Olga Novoa from last year’s Ottawa Arts Summit: “You lose people like me (when you talk about arts funding) because we know there is no more money. Why aren’t we looking around the world to see where arts in working and then adapt that to our system?”

Because, Miss Olga, that would require leadership by people who believe Ottawa’s arts policy needs changing. Those people do exist, and their number is growing. Which leads us to the Optimistic Part.

Part 2

Two of those people are in Hintonburg.

Annie Hillis. Photo by Mike Levin.

One is Annie Hillis, who runs the Wellington West Business Improvement Area (BIA). She has hoarded dollars from her operating budget to create something called the Public Arts Fund. It’s now reached about $10,000, and Hillis will use it, in small amounts, to sponsor art projects in the BIA’s area. These aren’t juried projects that require forms in triplicate, rather “small actions that are memorable and magical.” Her goal is creative activity that doesn’t ask permission and that stimulates by its very non-bureaucratic action.

The other is Patrick Mills, of the Patrick John Mills Contemporary Art Gallery, who I believe to be insane, but in a good way. During the next four weeks, he will hold three exhibitions and a music event at his gallery. The funds he brings in, aside from art sales, will go to supporting the Hintonburg Arts Festival, half street party, half art event, in August. He believes art is a neighbourhood function.

Patrick Mills. Photo by Mike Levin.

He’s asked me more than once:  “Why is any art locked up?” And then he’s told me that a creative life is “not looking to Stephen Harper to put art in our world, but doing it ourselves, in a parking lot or a school gym,” whatever will get creativity bubbling in the community.

Both believe that just about any space can be a venue for creativity, and neither is ever going to get public money for their projects. But with their actions come that little bit of hope that arts in Ottawa can create its own leaders from within, and not from a line item in a City budget.