A massive 50 per cent cut in BC Arts Council funding and the channelling of Arts Council funding into a special legacy fund to promote the spirit of the Winter Olympic Games is being criticized around the province and in Cranbrook.

But the Liberal government is also defending the cuts, saying it has poured half a billion dollars into the arts and culture sector since first being elected in 2001.

Newly acclaimed Cranbrook and District Arts Council (CDAC) President Sioux Browning said the cuts are coming at the expense of artists that don’t make a living wage as it is and now their lives will become even harder.

“I’m a huge fan of the Olympics and I love amateur sport too and I thought the cultural Olympiad was fantastic and I fully supported it. But that said I worry about actual working artists because they can’t get any support.”

Browning said money from the new three-year, $30 million Sports and Arts Legacy Fund is supposed to go to young and emerging artists for artistic works that support the spirit of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

“They can use it for anything they want as long as it’s a tribute to the Winter Olympics, but why fund-raise to support something that isn’t necessarily going to help CDAC in the long run?”

Money diverted into the new Legacy Fund will be at the expense of other organizations that CDAC has funded in the past including the Symphony of the Kootenays, the Cranbrook Community Theatre and dozens of individual artists.

In addition to cutting core funding to art groups around the province, Victoria is also dictating the kind of art that gets produced through the Sports and Arts Legacy Fund and artists as a rule don’t like being dictated to, said Browning.

“With the limited funds we have now, I don’t need to be told how to spend it especially when some of it has to go to things like rent, paid staff and the services we provide to the artistic community.”

Browning, who has a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from UBC and teaches an on-line writing course at the university, is a volunteer on the seven-member CDAC Board and does not receive a salary herself. Funds from the Board’s budget pay for an office administrator, an assistant administrator, the Artrageous and Menagerie Galleries, more than a dozen exhibitions annually as well as funds given to support individual artists, she said.

CDAC also receives some funding from the City of Cranbrook and does its own fund-raising, Browning said. “I understand in these difficult economic times that everyone has to tighten their belts, but I also think a society is judged by how it values its arts and culture.”

Kevin Kruger, Minister of Tourism, Culture and the Arts, was on holiday and couldn’t be reached for comment. But Ministry spokesman David Greer said in a press release last week that since 2001 the Province has provided over $500 million to the arts and culture sector in British Columbia.

This year alone, artists and arts groups will receive more than $30 million in support despite severe economic pressures, he said

Since 2001, the BC Arts Council has distributed over $138 million in grants to support arts and culture groups that create cultural and economic benefits in over 200 communities around B.C., including a supplemental $7 million at the end of 2008/09 to sustain their clients through tough economic times, Greer said.

In July, Krueger wrote an email to each of the BC Arts Council’s operating clients from the spring intake assuring them that extra operating funding was available through the 2010 Sports and Arts Legacy to those that submit a letter of interest. The Council will award this extra funding to clients based on the peer-review committee decisions by October 31, 2010. 

But in an interview with Straight.Com, NDP arts and culture critic Chandra Herbert said he’s concerned about the real motives behind the 2010 Sports and Arts Legacy Fund. “I hope these are not going to be government propaganda festivals,” he said, adding the festivals will run in the three years leading up to the next provincial election in May 2013.

However, Greer said there have been “mischaracterizations” that the government has interfered with the BC Arts Council’s grant process.

“This is simply not true. The Province decides how much taxpayer money is available to the BC Arts Council, and the Council decides how to distribute those funds through an independent peer-review process.”

The controversy over the BCAC cuts resulted in the resignation of former BCAC Chair Jane Danzo Aug. 16 and criticism from arts groups across the country including Canadian Conference of the Arts President Kathleen Sharpe.

On Aug. 10, Victoria named Dr. Stanley Hamilton the new interim chair of the BC Arts Council. Hamilton is professor emeritus at UBC’s Sauder School of Business specializing in real estate and pension portfolio investments.