The '00s Decade in Edmonton Arts More About the '10s, According to Them

Like most Canadian cities, Edmonton struggles to define its artistic heritage and vision.

The '00s was the decade where they actually got that struggle down in writing.

Edmonton's cultural plan, titled The Art of Living, was published in 2008 and plots out some kind of a path through to 2018.

That plan is noticeably handicapped by such statements as the following:

"Edmonton’s inferiority complex is as deep and murky as the North Saskatchewan River flowing through the middle of it."

Taken from an essay included in the plan, titled Boom, Bust, by Todd Babiak, that sentence is a really unfortunate idea to propagate within the city's own cultural roadmap.

Another section of the plan, labeled "The Edmonton Story", begins with this tepid blurb:

"Edmonton is seen by many outside the city, and many inside it, as a new place, a place without significant traditions or history."

Nearby, the following passage:

This document is meant to
act as an inspirational tool for artists, heritage
workers and administrators alike, but it’s also
reflective of another aspect of a western, and
Edmontonian, sensibility, which is this: we get
things done. This plan contains dozens of
action-oriented recommendations. In some
ways, it is a feel good document, but documents
are better than feel good if they also do some
good.

Excuse me? A "feel good document"?

Unfortunately, anyone reading this document is not going to come away feeling good. They are going to come away thinking, "Edmonton may have good intentions but isn't quite there yet."

Or, maybe they'll think, "heh, heh, Edmonton is to culture as Stephane Dion is to politics."

Anyway (would I do anything as dumb as write, "any-who"? no way!) some may say that Edmonton is only being honest by including such downers in a cultural plan. I ask, how many times have you told your mother-in-law she has bad breath and her clothes don't fit?

If your MIL is working on a plan, and you wanna help, maybe you stick breathmints or mouthwash in there at the most inconspicuous place, along with four-dozen other sundry items, without actually making it the headline of the central thesis, so that she doesn't talk to anyone within ten feet of her for the rest of her life.

I remember arriving in Montreal after spending years in Alberta (near Edmonton) and Saskatchewan. At the time, I was aware, for some reason, that Edmonton had twenty-some-odd theater companies. It immediately dawned on me that Montreal, the supposed cultural mecca, had a similar sized English-speaking population (about a million people) to Edmonton yet Montreal only had three English theater companies - one-tenth the number as Edmonton!

Based on that alone, I can say with authority that Edmonton's cultural plan is pure hogwash.

With the proliferation of the internet, social networking, Youtube, hundreds of TV channels, etc., the numbers of people engaged in various forms of art and social networking vastly surpass the numbers engaged in same even ten years ago. With that in mind, it could be said that, in many ways, all cities have returned to a nearly even position in terms of their art establishments. The only things that keep them differentiated are mostly false pretensions which are only validated when people believe them, and, the almighty art buck which, unfortunately, is located in places like New York, London, Milan, L.A. and Miami, and in places like Shanghai, Venice and Paris... anywhere but in Canada.

That said, given Toronto's nano-microscopic profile on the world visual art stage, there is no valid reason for a city like Edmonton to apologize for its own culture or its history. We need all of Canada producing art at full throttle in order to stake out our place on the vast mural of global culture.

It may be honest to include negatives - it is never dishonest to omit them. Time is short and art thrives. Rewrite the damn plan, get out there and make art!

(to be continued...)